Comment by ughugh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ughugh | Hacker News Reader

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I used RH and liked it in the 90s, but since then I don't see why a RHEL-based distribution for server isn't a good enough option. I understand that is just being parasitic, but it is free after all- why pay for it? So, I think Linux is strong and will be strong with or without RH. Sure it's great that they provide a major paid option for customers that feel like they have to pay something, but I don't respect any tech company that pays for Linux because they feel they need to just to have the support. If they like the distribution and want to support them, fine. But, don't do it because you feel that you have to have support.

Also, I interviewed for RH several years ago and was not impressed. Their employees seemed fairly unmotivated, and despite the number of people I interviewed with, it didn't seem very well thought out. I didn't like their distro at that point, so it was a bad idea in hindsight to interview with them. I just didn't believe in RH anymore, and going there only solidified that.

I think you underestimate the necessity for reliable support, especially in some sectors.

E.g. for Telcos, where any outages must be fixed within specified (short) timescales in order to be allowed to sell telco service. It's less risk for a business to say we pay X per year, and if the shit hits the fan we can just pick up the phone.

The other thing offered by RH is to say: here is a distro, we've tested it and can sign off on it being stable. That is also worth a lot in some sectors.

I've always been a strong advocate of Red Hat support, and it never ceases to amaze me how many free software (as in freedom, and as in gratis) that I use in my day to day exists thanks to Red Hat.

That said, "self-support subscription" per $349/year doesn't feel right to me. May be the old basic support option wasn't that good, but it WAS support you were paying for.

It doesn't change all the good things around Red Hat, but I must admit it's very disappointing.

EDIT: typo

Ironically enough, that is exactly the reason most people buy it. However, I believe you underestimate the criticality of support.

If you're a tech-savvy startup, then sure, you just put a few guys on staff, but if you are most other kinds of businesses, then you'll employ some 'good-enough' administrators for the day to day operations, but you won't be able to necessarily employ a full team for something that isn't core to your business.

Another common scenario is in government, or large companies. Especially in government, we, as tax-payers, would consider it wasteful if the gov were hiring top notch tech engineers to maintain their file shares and directory servers. They are also completely unwilling to put a system in place with a company that not only will be available for same-day support on critical systems, but will also have to be relatively certain that company will be around in 10 years when they are still running those systems.

In short, support is probably more important than you're giving it credit for, but even for customers where it isn't, RH's credibility has opened the doors for every other Linux distribution and their ability to do work inside the Enterprise.

Personally I would be delighted if the government hired (as in permanent, not by the hour) top-notch tech engineers to maintain their IT infra. It would most likely cut down IT costs enormously while at the same time making things running a lot smoother ...

Government work would just infuriate any top-notch engineers by moving too slow.

Simple changes move slowly, and hard changes take forever. Naturally, it isn't a limitation of the equipment, but the bureaucracy in place.

I've been involved with projects where, after having already spent money on hardware and software procurement and over 3 months worth of man hours on actual implementation, the project stopped because a DNS change request form was filled out incorrectly. Correcting the form and getting it reapproved took four weeks to correct what was literally a one character correction.

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