On Wed, 26 Mar 2003 18:36:39 +0100 (CET), you wrote: >Well, as it has been said before, the one year thing is a minimum; they >will probably (and almost certainly need to) make at least some security
Red Hat 8.0 errata ends Dec 31 2003. This is already specified on Red Hat's website. http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/ >fixes available well beyond a year. It would be suicidal to stop issuing >very important updates for the backbone services that linux is famous for: >web, bind, sendmail, etc. It would be a public relations disaster for >Red Hat to NOT provide patches for cases we have seen before -- some >destructive worm sweeping across the internet. So I am going to chose >to believe, from all I've read, that certain important security patches will >be available over some longer period of time -- until proved otherwise. Red Hat is basically splitting into to areas: 1) Red Hat Enterprise Linux, where you will get (assuming you pay) errata support for 5 years. 2) Red Hat Linux, with minimum of 12 months of errata. And yes, its a minimum. But as Red Hat are indirectly telling us with the termination of errata for 8.0 at the end of this year you are no longer going to get multi-year errata support for the base product. This is for 2 reasons. One, as Red Hat moves to a faster integration schedule for new technology the prospect of binary compatible releases for 2 or 3 versions disappears, so maintaining/testing errata for multiple releases become more expensive. Secondly, by removing the multi-year errata they force you to make a decision between upgrading your OS at least yearly or buying the much more expensive Enterprise product. >I suspect that many businesses will welcome the Enterprise edition. I >heard some of the rhetoric from a Legato Networker salesman this morning; >we are going to hear it a lot from sales drones who are selling software. >They like it. I agree, many businesses will like Enterprise and the guarantees it provides. But many other businesses (and others like colleges) will dislike the fact that the base (and affordable) line of Red Hat Linux will no longer be viable due to its rapidly moving nature and lack of long term support. >People like me in academia will continue to run my workstations and servers >on the rapidly mutating red hat linux version. My upgrade cycle is and >has been pretty much always been: >keep the desktops on the bleeding edge, keep my servers just a bit behind. So you wait 3 to 6 months after the release of 8.0 or 9 to allow the initial bugs to be worked out and for you to gain confidence that your server will work as expected, and oops you now only have 6 to 9 months of errata left unless Red Hat decides to be generous and extend the errata period. So are you going to add your servers to the upgrade cycle, or are you going to pay for the Enterprise edition? -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
