I don't think inquring/questioning Red Hat customer needs is particular
useful, as any provider's customers are always going to have needs.
The question is how can Red Hat meet those needs, as well as ensuring
the customer most effectively makes Red Hat aware of them.
There is also the issue, which Red Hat announced at the 2008 June Summit,
that the development time for the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux release
would be extensive. For this reason, Red Hat extended "Phase I" of the
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release cycle by a full year on both release 4
(which has now passed) and release 5 (which is still in effect), allowing
an additional year for feature requests.
It is important for customers to not only note these details, but contact
their Red Hat representatives, file appropriate requests via their
premium and TAM support channels and otherwise make Red Hat aware of
those needs. The more that do, the more justification there is for a
"Tech Preview," possibly a concurrent release or even a rebase at some
point.
As a developer myself, trust me, rebases are the easiest. They also
break ABI/API compatibility. It is not easy to maintain backports
(I've done it myself before, I cannot even imagine the level of detail
required in a Red Hat errata or update). But customers pay for ABI/API
breakage avoidance. If every customer called for a rebase, I bet Red Hat
would listen very quickly. But given that customers pay for the
backports, and the majority rely on them, it's important for customers
to file requests for Tech Previews and concurrent releases.
And please do it while Phase I is still open for Red Hat Enterprise
Linux release 5. Comments on this list aren't going to have the same
effect as CRM and IT tickets, and as many, many people have pointed
out, the Red Hat employees following this list have less say than
customers do directly. ;)
-- Bryan
P.S. I'm sure it's difficult meeting all the different customer
requirements. Hosting is very different than, say, financial, etc...
Newer features are not what Red Hat Enterprise Linux has always been
about, but it is where Fedora lives. I've seen hosting providers
rotate platform installs every year, and in that regard, Fedora works
very well, and provides the latest features.
Fedora is quite enterprise capable and I wouldn't say so if I didn't
have some clients relying on it as well. For everything else, or
when the SLAs are required, there are Red Hat solutions and the
corresponding channels for requesting enhancements/engineering.
--
Bryan J Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance
------------------------------------------------------------
"Now if you own an automatic ... sell it!
You are totally missing out on the coolest part of driving"
-- Johnny O'Connell
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