the simple version is:
Fedora is the beta to every new version of RHEL that will come out.
Fedora is the version you use if you want all of the bells and whistles,
RHEL is what you pay for if you want stability and a OS that is
certified to work with platforms like Oracle.
Mike Dittmeier, MCSE, RHCT
On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 23:11, Ken Elliott wrote:
> Gee, Brian. It seems like Red Hat created their own mess here. Even if it
> is a "non-mess".
>
> I'd say RH needs to greatly simplify the story and make it a no-brainer to
> know which version of FC matches a version of RHE. Otherwise, I suspect
> everyone will stay a bit confused.
>
> Look at all the typing you've had to do on this subject.
>
> BTW, good to have you back...
>
> Ken Elliott
>
> =====================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Bryan J. Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 9:27 PM
> To: slug@nks.net
> Subject: [SLUG] Re: Moving from Red Hat
>
> Various people wrote:
> > 1. I like X ...
> > 2. blah ... Fedora ... blah
>
> Personal preference is always a matter of choice. I never discredit the
> choice of others, as it is personal preference. I support a lot of
> distributions, especially Debian-based distributions like Xandros as well as
> Debian itself, and SuSE is making more commercial in-roads thanx to Novell.
> This is all fine, as people often argue that "choice is good." But why does
> one need to continually expense Red Hat?
>
> Because the one thing I have continually butt my head up against is people
> stating things about Red Hat Linux and, now, Fedora Core that are simply
> _not_true_, or full of _incorrect_assumptions_. This is not "choice," it is
> "versus." In other words, it is "marketing" and "unintentional FUD." And
> when this is portrayed in the IT media, I just have to wonder how much of a
> disservice we, the Linux community, are doing to ourselves?
>
> I don't know how many times I've seen myself get "reamed by the majority" on
> a list as a "Red Hat apologist" only to have someone mention off-list that
> they work for a major integrator and that I'm 100% correct. This has also
> led to some excellent opportunities for myself, even if only short-lived
> work. Some people call me a jerk, and while I don't deny that I am
> sometimes abbrassive in some of my responses, they should take note that I
> don't "bash" distros or feel the need to make an argument "versus" just to
> merely profess my preference. In fact, I consider the whole "versus"
> comments to be the main problem of the commercial software world. Let's
> reduce it to technologies, not brand names and products. E.g., a "ports"
> distro versus a "packages" distro, not Gentoo v. Red Hat, or FreeBSD v.
> Linux in general -- because there is _major_overlap_ that assumptions don't
> show (and are, therefore, incorrect).
>
> Red Hat "assumptions" start as far back as Red Hat Linux 5.0 and the GLibC 2
> change, which was a _major_ necessity. They happened again with Red Hat
> Linux 7 and GCC 2.96/3 adoption forcing strict ANSI C++ compliance that
> broke compatibility with GCC 2.8/2.91.66 (the latter aka EGCS 1.1.2). The
> backport of NPTL to 2.4 gave yet more avenues for people to complain, yet
> NPTL was being forced in 2.6.** But many don't recognize that with Red
> Hat's "plunge" into GLibC2, GCC3 and NPTL -- they forced developers to
> support inevitable changes that were going to happen in the near future.
> Red Hat is just the messenger with these ".0" revision changes for "early
> adopters," but is rarely thanked as such (even when they _do_ maintain older
> versions _specifically_ so people don't have to convert for years -- far
> longer than most other distros I might add).
>
> [ **NOTE: I document most of these "ABI Compability" reasons here:
> http://www.vaporwarelabs.com/files/temp/RH-Distribution-FAQ-3.html#ss3.3
> ]
>
> They continued through endless comments on the Red Hat(R) v. Fedora(TM)
> trademark details only made matters worse to this day. Red Hat(R) tried to
> use the "Official" prefix and that didn't work. And then it came ot a head
> in 2002-2003, largely because Red Hat(R) had serious issues with the USPTO
> thanx to Sun and other vendors who claimed "Red Hat(R)" was public domain."
> Why? Sun and countless others didn't license but left all the Red Hat(R)
> trademarks intact in their distributions, resulting in the disputes. But at
> the same time, even when Red Hat explicitly stated companies like
> Cheapbytes.COM could still call their CD's Red
> Hat(R) Linux, the demonizations still wouldn't end.
>
> The only thing Red Hat is guilty of is assuming people wouldn't abuse their
> trademark in a 100% redistributable version. They were wrong.
> But while people now demonizing Red Hat for this, they don't bother to
> notice that no other, major commercial distributor allows unlicensed use of
> their trademark either in off-shoots. You don't see Sun sporting a SuSE
> trademark on their Java Desktop, and even then Sun had to license the rights
> to it anyway (unlike when they used Red Hat(R) Linux prior).
> As Red Hat constantly tries to state all over their Fedora site, "it's a
> return to Red Hat's roots" -- i.e., here's a trademark and distribution
> system that offers everything we always did with Red Hat Linux.
>
> Michael Tiemann can say one thing in an interview and the IT media will
> report another. Red Hat released a flavor of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
> called "WS" and then even sold a shrink wrapped version explicitly called
> "Red Hat Professional Workstation" and the media still said they were only
> selling server software. So probably the biggest and direct example of Red
> Hat trying to convey one more time "Hey! We still offer a desktop
> solution!" was in the _intentional_mislabeling_ of 10 and 50-license packs
> of RHEL WS as "Red Hat Desktop." And yet the IT media still say Red Hat has
> exited the desktop.
>
> Now people ask me to point to Red Hat's site to "prove" my statements are
> "true." They use IT media articles to prove theirs are "true." The IT
> media has been predicting Red Hat would "close up" their Linux for a longest
> time and it hasn't happened. In fact, when Sistina decided to "close up"
> their LVM and GFS technologies, Red Hat bought them out, and re-released
> them GPL. And before that, when Mission Critical Linux started to "close
> up" various NFS fail-over technologies, Red Hat bought them out. And going
> even before that, when Cygnus considered "closing up" various GPL offerings,
> Red Hat decided to finally buy them out too (although it was for other
> reasons too, Red Hat had been considering it for a long time). When has the
> media _ever_ shown these moves in a positive light to Red Hat?
>
> No, it was in fact the opposite. Many people predicted that Cygnus
> developers would leave en-masse as Red Hat would turn their stuff from GPL
> into proprietary. Didn't happen (actually, the opposite happened, Red Hat
> tried to get into the embedded market with too much GPL focus).
> In fact, to this day, most commercial companies love Red Hat for their
> GPL-focus and community efforts, but think they take it too far from a
> commercial support standpoint. Probably the biggest coup to date is Red
> Hat's buying out the Netscape Directory Server from AOL for $20M, which will
> go GPL no later than April 30, 2005. Netscape Directory Server is at the
> foundation of Sun One's directory implementation, and I'm sure Red Hat's
> move to GPL it for _all_ to use is a final statement that "hey, OpenLDAP
> ain't getting there." We all continue to benefit from the proper usage of
> Red Hat's IPO capital to ensure the best software stays GPL or becomes GPL.
>
> Which brings me to my final point. The Red Hat Fedora page has changed and
> the "About" and "Objectives" pages now match _everything_ that was Red
> Hat(R) Linux before. But people can't put it together. So, the top
> 5 things you _won't_ here Red Hat representatives say ... for obvious
> reasons of marketing ...
>
> 5. We use the exact same release model for Fedora(TM) Core as Red
> Hat(R) Linux prior, but we changed the terms 1 for 1 to something else.
> In fact, most of our developers still call it "Rawhide" when they know they
> are contractually obligated to call it "Development" now. In fact, we
> merely made previously non-public resources, like the Red Hat(R) Linux
> lists, now renamed Fedora lists, open to the public for subscription by
> anyone.
>
> 4. We provide the systems, network infrastructure and personnel for the
> entire, official Fedora project, and even if this currently being moved to
> Duke University under an independent Steering Committee, this will not
> change. It is also the #1 legal reason why we have strict "free software"
> guidelines in Fedora, because it's a liability issue for us, a US-based
> corporation, regardless. The Red Hat(R) Linux development model was always
> open, and now we have formalized the method this is done with the Fedora(TM)
> Core "Steering Committee."
>
> 3. Every single package in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, _every_ single
> package, has a _direct_ Fedora version, right down to the package name and
> number. Packages that are marked "EL" typically just have unsupported
> locales removed**. The "EL" kernel may have some hardware additions under
> NDA, but builds perfectly on Fedora**. As a result, with exception of the
> kernel, you can create a 100% exact instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
> with Fedora Core, by maintaining the exact package versions.
>
> [**NOTE: You can find these references in various mailing list archives at
> Red Hat. They go into detail on how most "EL" packages differ.
> Otherwise, the packages of Fedora Core and RHEL are the _exact_ same. ]
>
> 2. Following onto #3, this is why we release Fedora(TM), under new
> trademark guidelines. Now anyone can take our best stuff, and build their
> own distro -- right down to _exact_ Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages. This
> is also why the "White Box" and other "rebuilds" of RHEL from source are
> self-defeating. Because they have to now remove the trademarks in the
> packages, whereas they are a non-issue with Fedora(TM). That's the whole
> reason for it! RHEL exists for a reason, which brings us to #1 ...
>
> 1. SuSE was first with the Enterprise Linux idea, and our customers told us
> Red Hat Linux 6.2"E" was the wrong strategy. Do you really think we are
> going to admit this? Heck, it's right in SuSE's marketing literature! They
> were first, okay, we admit, our own clients liked it better! So we had to
> change. After 2 years, we finally evolved Red
> Hat(R) Linux into Fedora(TM) Core, to address this new, split strategy.
>
> Regarding #2, I have now been at 2 _major_ Fortune 100 companies over the
> past year. They are doing _exactly_ this, maintaining an internal Fedora
> repository that matches their RHEL deployments, as well as planning for
> future RHEL releases (e.g., Fedora Core 2 before RHEL 4 came out). Why? To
> tweak support for Oracle and other software on potential "updates" to RHEL
> before they are released.
-- Mike Dittmeier President, Blue Crab Technology, Inc. 2206 Avenue C Bradenton Beach, FL 34217-2217 mike@bluecrabtech.com www.bluecrabtech.com (941) 812-3011----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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