Red Hat no longer free

[DragonBreath]

Looks like there wanting there piece of the pie now too, can't say I blame them.

http://www.computerworld.com/softwar...,86827,00.html

db

[Xayd]

They will now fail.

They had a couple of decent ideas, and were in the black with free software, but now they'll start to slip, imo.

There will no longer be those hundreds of thousands of people to download the free OS and test it for them, report the bugs, report the security flaws, etc.

The money spent to maintain their "enterprise" edition in house when replacement of what the free users offered back to them is considered will outweigh any potential profit.

The people who would've used Linux anyways will switch to Gentoo, Debian, etc. The people who will buy Red Hat will get a lesser product than they would've gotten had this move not been made.

In the end the loser is Red Hat and Red Hat's users.

[Karnevil9]

I think Fedora is suppose to take the place of the home users Redhat, while Enterprise will be concerned with coporate editions. You can check out the Redhat forum in www.linuxquestions.org for debate on this same subject.

[D1D]

Yes, RedHat is no more. RH9 will only be supported into 2004.

[mairving]

Couple that with Novell just buying SUSE and RH may be some trouble or SUSE will follow suit. It seems to me that it would violate the GPL also. It's not a huge loss since there are plenty of other distros out there that are free and will remain that way. I wonder also if it will have a filter down affect. If RH will start charging some of those that are RH based a fee.

[revelation]

I don't agree. Red Hat is targeting the "Enterprise" market. In that realm the compitition is the likes of MS and others. For a company wanting to run servers and such Red Hat would still be an atractive alternative. The other free edition would probably still be the type that we are used to downloading for free and reporting bugs to Red Hat.

[DragonBreath]

There will be no more free redhat distros.
db

[RobH]

My understanding is there will be no more support for the free distros of RH?? am I wrong in this assumption?

[mairving]

Originally posted by revelation I don't agree. Red Hat is targeting the "Enterprise" market. In that realm the compitition is the likes of MS and others. For a company wanting to run servers and such Red Hat would still be an atractive alternative. The other free edition would probably still be the type that we are used to downloading for free and reporting bugs to Red Hat.

What I am saying is that RH won't be installed on Web Hosts which a good portion are running RH now. I would think that most will probably either head to FreeBSD or maybe Debian. That is a big market. RH is not getting any money out of it but they are getting plenty of exposure from it. Since hosting is so competitive most aren't going to fork over money to RH, they just couldn't afford it. RH is already in the Enterprise but I really do believe this move will hurt them if only because they are viewed in a bad light.

[RHLinuxGUY]

Thats not entirely true. They have to give out a copy of their Linux, or they are breaking the rules of what linux is about. the only difference of getting linux free over the internet (burnt copy, lan, or other means) is that u wont get as much help from the company and u wont get as much software that is included with the BOUGHT version.

[mairving]

It is true. It will cost them $349 for the least expensive version that RH has. Support is still extra on top of that.

[Dave22]

Originally posted by RHLinuxGUY Thats not entirely true. They have to give out a copy of their Linux, or they are breaking the rules of what linux is about. the only difference of getting linux free over the internet (burnt copy, lan, or other means) is that u wont get as much help from the company and u wont get as much software that is included with the BOUGHT version.

There wasn't much help from RH anyway if you d/l'ed the free version. Those of us who used it in it's "free" incarnation are used to fending for ourselves for support. After all, isn't that the idea? (Yes, there's an argument for appealing to the masses, but that's another debate)

If people hate this idea so much, there are plenty of other distros out there (as was pointed out in other posts). Freedom of choice is the pillar of the open source community and this hasn't changed it. Will it put some people off? Yep. Will the bottom fall out for RH? Maybe. The good part is that this model of OS development and distribution lends itself to flexibility. Heck, if you are scared about sticking w/ RH because of some perceived shortfall, go to a different distro. Apache, Postfix, sendmail, MySQL or any other app can run on most of them anyway. The "meat" is in the apps, not the OS. The distros are all based on the same basic kernel. (Oversimplification here, but I thing y'all get my drift)

I wouldn't get too nervous about a name change and some philisophical/business decisions that Red Hat (the company) made on this one. Some may disagree, but I just can't get all "doom and gloom" over this.

Improvise, adapt and overcome.

[LiGhTBoY]

I thought fedora was supposed to take over the "production" for the home edition (free) of redhat...

[Blakhart]

All the more reason to go BSD. The first, the original, "free" *nix-like os.

[Bushtree]

Yes, i am very pissed off about this as i run redhat on my dedicated servers.

[RobH]

Originally posted by Blakhart All the more reason to go BSD. The first, the original, "free" *nix-like os.

But does BSD have as easy to use GUI that Red Hat does? Ease of use,graphical interface is what is drawing the grester numbers to Linux-imho

[Mac Medic]

Red Hat will be fine. The only users this affects are the ones the downloaded the free version anyway, and RH obviously didn't make any money there. If those users start to buy the OS then it will be found money for RH. They make all of their revenue from corporate users and will continue to into the future, especially so with IBM dumping all M$ products (shhh, thats a little insider info). So to say that RH is no more considering they existed very nicely without charging consumers for the OS is inane. This will only serve to increase their bottom line and secure their place as the Linux market leader.

[mystvearn]

I heard that there will still be a free version, but with ads in it. Or is that some rumor?

[LiGhTBoY]

Isn't mandrake supposed to be supported by ads? (future)

[Blakhart]

But does BSD have as easy to use GUI that Red Hat does? Ease of use,graphical interface is what is drawing the grester numbers to Linux-imho


Try it and see.