R: Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES

[Fraser Campbell]

On November 16, 2003 01:25 pm, login-Zd07PnzKK1IAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org wrote:

> Next how does this work:
>
> "Red Hat's Enterprise Linux family of operating systems is available on a
> per-system, annual subscription basis."
>
> After the one year of subscription expired, the OS will be out-dated,
> right?

See the first question of their Enterprise FAQ:

    Additionally, Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are all supplied with a
    year of support, and customers can continue to obtain support for 5 years.

I believe that after a year you'll pay another 349 or 799 USD depending on the 
support level you want.  If you pay then you will continue to receive access 
to redhat security and other updates for the ES version that you bought.  If 
you don't pay then you won't get updates and you'll be entirely on your own 
for security updates, application support, etc.

Eventually (apparently in about 5 years) support for RHES 3.0 will be 
discontinued and your choices will be to upgrade to a newer version of ES or 
to support the installation yourself ... and naturally you'll continue paying 
Redhat yearly.

> This is very discouraging from Red Hat by removing the non-enterprise
> OS from their shelf and forcing to buy Enterprise version at least for
> average home users.

IMO, it's also discouraging for Linux support companies and independent 
contractors working with Linux.  The only reason to "subscribe " is to get 
Redhat's support, Redhat is (rightfully I think) betting the farm on support. 
It would be nice if Redhat left a little more room for others to play ... 
forking out a minimum of 350 USD for ES can bump up the cost a of an 
installation a fair amount for independents.  At the very least they should 
offer a non-business use or educational version ... hell even Sun does that 
with Solaris (20 USD to download).

I'm still rather happy that I chose to go with Debian over 5 years ago, still 
see no reason to switch ;-)
-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Georgetown, Ontario, Canada                               Debian GNU/Linux

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