Post #78,686
2/1/03 7:33:55 PM
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My 2 cents
I speak as a technical user. I don't sell tech, I sell
results. I've been burned by vendor dependancy, so I
will go out of my way to avoid it.
In the case of RH AS support vs RH Consumer, it is a matter
of what do you compare it against?
In the "good old days" of SCO Unix, I'd spend about $3K
per server for the software, then another $2K per server
per year for support. That was it. No choice at all.
Oh, actually, the $2K was for the cheap support. I
could spend a lot more.
So now most of my dual Xeon servers have RH 7.x. My latest
IBM dual Xeon has RH AS. And it runs better. Why?
I dunno. I have 2 very smart sysadmins who are quite
happy using it, and it costs far less to just slap it
in the other boxes than struggle over the differences.
We are HAPPY paying $800 for the disk and than $1K per year
per server. JEEZ! This stuff is saving me FAR more as I pull
processing of the IBM Z800 and the Sun boxes. And it is still
far cheaper than SCO Unix ever was.
While a specific vendor may say "RH Only", it is a matter of
cost for them to support anything. You may say it is lazy or short
sighted. I say I'd rather have them say RH only and charge me
$1000 per year for support, than have them add 10% of support
staff to suppor the rest, and charge me $1100 to cover the
cost of the additional personnel.
So, as time goes on, and someone starts abusing the position,
ie: RH quadruples the support price, then we start looking
at alternatives. And not just for support, but for the OS
itself. That was NEVER a choice when SCO doubled the support
cost on me, until Linux came along.
AG, you have an oxymoronic phrase that pretty much convers
it all:
The move makes Red Hat "consumer" releases worthless to businesses
They are businesses, NOT consumers. They use tools to make money.
They need to judge the value of the tool relative to the value
of the income assoicated with it. RH says that anything other than
RH AS is not for business. Hell, it's FREE on the web. Why should
there be any constraint on what service they offer long with it?
You mention support for support "NC mills and molding machines" for
10 years. I assume (not really knowing) that these are expensive
machines that don't change very often, and the price to replace
them with something else far outweighs a chunk of support cost.
Linux is the reverse. There is a huge pressure to push forward,
replace with the latest and greatest, and the price for the
replacement is less than the price for support. It would be
insane to maintain support for 5 years of Linux "consumer" releases.
There can be a release every 6 months. And if RH doesn't, SUSE,
Mandrake, Debian, etc, etc, will. So RH HAS to.
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Post #78,706
2/1/03 9:48:29 PM
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That's why monopoly is so easy.
You clearly state you prefer software publishers support only Red Hat, because your cost might be slightly higher if they supported other distributions.
You say you will only look at alternatives after Red Hat raises their costs over your threshold of pain.
When does a monopoly raise prices above the threshold of pain? Only after there are no longer viable alternatives. When you still had alternatives to chose from, Microsoft Office was cheap, and Microsoft wasn't at all picky about licensing. Now it's $500 per seat (and going up) and they are plenty picky about licensing. Are you starting to investigate alternatives now?
Most purchasers chose the path of least resistance. "Microsoft is causing problems for WordPerfect, so it's a little more hassle to use, so lets just go with Microsoft and avoid the hassle". Save a little now, pay a lot later.
Yes, there were alternatives to SCO. Esix Unix was better, far more complete, very standards compliant, and cost a lot less, but software vendors refused to support it, and customers said, "We are HAPPY paying $3000 for the disk and then $2K per year per server. JEEZ! This stuff is saving me FAR more as I pull processing off of Unisys", so soon there were no alternatives.
To prevent monopoly, customers must actually buy alternatives and demand support. Yes, I know, it may be a little more hassle now, and cost a touch more, now, but it'll save a lot in the future. Yes, I used Esix Unix, and had several clients who did, but most took the path of least resistance, paying a lot more for SCO.
If commercial Linux does not end up with a Red Hat monopoly, it will have a former monopolist to thank for that. IBM has a very intimate understanding of the mechanics of monopoly, and has stated firmly they want to see at least two Linux distributions with international support structures, but no more than three. United Linux will probably stay with us, because IBM will make sure people buy it.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #78,727
2/2/03 1:35:14 AM
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Disagree
Please tell me exactly what is different
from RH AS that I can't get from anyone else
other than the cluster manager. And If I
choose not to use that, what locks me in?
If it is a matter of the deal with the
application vendor, again, that is a choice.
We've all been burned before. We've hopefully
learned not to go down that path of absolute
dependance. But you HAVE to make a choice.
Sometimes you choose wrong, sometimes for
the short term, sometimes you win.
As annoying as Rick is, he is right. This is
reality. Make a choice and move on.
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Post #78,764
2/2/03 12:52:56 PM
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No, you cannot make a choice and move on.
The choice has already been made for you by the many who follow the sacred Path of Least Resistance.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #78,783
2/2/03 3:42:19 PM
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Not worthy of a response
Other than to berate the fact that it is not
worthy of a repsonse.
Did you address any points?
No.
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Post #78,777
2/2/03 2:47:50 PM
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I don't buy your arguement here Broom...
Please tell me exactly what is different from RH AS that I can't get from anyone else other than the cluster manager. And If I choose not to use that, what locks me in? Cluster Management? You mean to tell me that CLuster management is the only things RHAS gives you? Wow, the Enterprise Kernel (big-mem 5GB+) and a higher resolution scheduler... more in line for what I would term OLTP biased vs. Workstation biased. Also by default the the sysctl set "busy IO defaults" to more inline with a "server style" non-foreground aimed machine or a "transactional-services" machine. It also has alot of semaphores and much more ability to address and use SWAP more effectively using the vm they have stuck with since pre-2.4.10. The forwardported that VM into 2.4.18... kinda why so many companies are having difficulty with responsiveness and memoery sharing on RedHat machines. You may have capable admins, but it go without saying that unless you know exactly what a specific product gives you, you can't know how to tweak it. I have always said there are some VERY good things about most of the RedHat Kernels, then again I wouldn't want some of the "hacks" they have in there if I were to put it into production. Fer instance, early in the 2.4 realm (RH7.1) the 2.4.2 kernel had a BIG problem with syncing data on filesystems... most any file-system but main upon dismount of Reiser Filesystems and it did also have difficulty with EXT2 FS also. A hack they made... seemed to affect only certain system configs.
| [link|mailto:curley95@attbi.com|greg] - Grand-Master Artist in IT | | [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry/|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] [link|http://pascal.rockford.com:8888/SSK@kQMsmc74S0Tw3KHQiRQmDem0gAIPAgM/edcurry/1//|ED'S GHOST SPEAKS!] | Heimatland Geheime Staatspolizei reminds:
These [link|http://www.whitehouse.gov/pcipb/cyberstrategy-draft.html|Civilian General Orders], please memorize them.
"Questions" will be asked at safety checkpoints. |
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Post #78,781
2/2/03 3:37:30 PM
2/2/03 3:46:08 PM
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Yes you do
In the list of what you said, what is the RH AS ONLY feature?
All of them are available to the enterprising admin who wants to add it himself. They are just packaging it. None is proprietary to RH, and if RH decides to add a true proprietary hook for a specific app, and then I chose to use that app, then I would do so knowingly.
But RIGHT NOW, there is nothing so special that I can't do it myself. I just choose to pay them to do it.
I also choose NOT to tweak it myself. As TonyTib pointed out, we got a business to run. As I add specific tweaks they are more and more likely to lock me into something (I consider) non vanilla and painful to migrate away from.
Note: I don't consider modifying semaphores that type of tweak. I'm perfectly happy have that stuff in the boot scripts (or wherever else my adin has put it). Alto, you always have to modify the atd launch for multi-cpu.
Edited by broomberg
Feb. 2, 2003, 03:46:08 PM EST
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Post #78,784
2/2/03 3:55:30 PM
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What I mean by tweaking...
Doesn't mean I am recompiling the kernel with Modifications... What mostly I am talking about tweaking are "soft setable" IO tweaks... Allowable buffering, caching, sharing, locking, garbage collection, etc... If you don't monitor the machine for at least a while and bump settings up or down to match they way the machine flexes you aren;t doing justice to the hardware.
I'll let the "I just pay them to package it" statement, just that IF they do indeed add some things that LOCK you in... make sure you can get out from under that...
| [link|mailto:curley95@attbi.com|greg] - Grand-Master Artist in IT | | [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry/|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] [link|http://pascal.rockford.com:8888/SSK@kQMsmc74S0Tw3KHQiRQmDem0gAIPAgM/edcurry/1//|ED'S GHOST SPEAKS!] | Heimatland Geheime Staatspolizei reminds:
These [link|http://www.whitehouse.gov/pcipb/cyberstrategy-draft.html|Civilian General Orders], please memorize them.
"Questions" will be asked at safety checkpoints. |
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Post #78,787
2/2/03 4:35:14 PM
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See, we DO agree
Kills ya, doesn't it?
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Post #78,788
2/2/03 4:36:20 PM
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pragmatic vs logical decision
What is the least I can pay now and still switch horses in the future if needed. Business decision.
thanx,
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #78,728
2/2/03 2:12:47 AM
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Re: My 2 cents
broomberg wrote:
RH AS is not for business. Hell, it's FREE on the web.
You know, I believe I posted earlier a claim that RHAS included some non-redistributable components, but now I'm not sure. RH's Web site is completely unenlightening on the subject, but I gather from elsewhere that all the contents are lawful to redistribute. I hear that one can gather all the SRPMs. Thus, if you wish, as a non-customer, you can do that, build as many as that will build right away, boot the partial system, then rebuild the rest. In theory, you could then construct ISOs, and distribute those. Nobody bothers to do that, but I see no reason they couldn't. (If I were a customer, I could check the product details for any proprietary claims to shipped binary CD contents. At a distance, I can't easily tell.)
My recollection is that almost all of the differences traditionally lay in RHAS's "enterprise" kernel RPM (which is always available in source form, as required by the licence given the binary's distribution to outside parties). That was where RH offered many of its patches first, such as their version of the "bigmem" patch to malloc up to 4 GB RAM on i386 -- but their "enterprise" kernels were only a little less dodgy than their regular ones, until the day they hired most of VA Linux's laid-off software engineering department. Now, at least their NFS and eepro100 support isn't as unreliable, but I'm still not convinced their kernels are particularly good.
It would beinsane to maintain support for 5 years of Linux "consumer" releases. There can be a release every 6 months. And if RH doesn't, SUSE, Mandrake, Debian, etc, etc, will. So RH HAS to.
The way things are shaping up, one thing you'll need to pay significant dinero for on a periodic basis is a guaranteed stable application interface for proprietary binary userspace software. You may recall that RH's unsubtle moves with the so-called "gcc 2.96" were directed towards hastening stabilisation of support for C++ -derived binary modules. That was all about shrink-wrapped software.
People (including lwn.net) bitch from time to time about the Debian Project "ending support" (updates) for numbered versions (Debian 2.1/slink, 2.2/potato, 3.0/woody...), and I always thought those complaints were Unclear on the Concept of that distribution, in that, if you just keep doing "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" as intended, you'll progress smoothly through stable=slink to stable=potato to stable=woody to stable=sarge, etc., and at every step is "supported" in the intended sense. But, as reliable as that is, it may or may not stably support binary-only software you want to run on it. That's part of what RH offers for money -- and SuSE, which for practical purposes is the sole substance behind United Linux.
The real long-term threat to RH dominance in this area isn't SuSE/United Linux, nor IBM's well-intentioned but mostly clumsy and ineffectual arm-twisting, by the way, but rather the LSB. Which, by coincidence, I'm hoping to give some help to, soon (technical writing and such). Not that I personally care a lot about guaranteed support for proprietary Linux i386 binaries, but it's a worthwhile task to re-level that playing field.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
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Post #78,830
2/3/03 12:02:25 AM
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Out of context
Look at the line above what you quoted!!!
I am under the impression RH AS is purely pay, but my admin claims that is only if you want the support. It may be the tweaked kernel is downloadable but AS "as a total package" is not.
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Post #78,843
2/3/03 1:37:04 AM
2/3/03 1:37:58 AM
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Re: Out of context
bloomberg wrote:
Look at the line above what you quoted!!!
Huh? Um, OK, if you insist. But I suspect you're under the impression that I was disputing what you said. I wasn't doing that.
The sentences immediately preceding the quoted sentence were as follows: "They are businesses, NOT consumers. They use tools to make money. They need to judge the value of the tool relative to the value of the income assoicated with it."
OK, those sentences parse correctly, and seem to logically connect and make sense. But I'm unclear on what your current point about them is.
I am under the impression RH AS is purely pay, but my admin claims that is only if you want the support. It may be the tweaked kernel is downloadable but AS "as a total package" is not.
Well, if you guys own a copy, then you could settle the factual question about proprietary rights through inspection, as opposed to speculating or going by inference and likelihoods. Perhaps you wouldn't mind doing that. As I said, nothing on RH's Web site really properly addresses the question, except in suggesting (without ever quite nailing down) that the recurring fees are for service and support.
Everything I've seen suggests very strongly that 100% of RHAS is lawfully available and redistributable, and that RH offers all of it for public ftp in SRPM format. What I've seen also suggests that nothing prevents people compiling those RPMs and redistributing the binary results. Whether anything on the RHAS boxed-set binary CDs is somehow encumbered (e.g., compilation copyright a la OpenBSD?) nonetheless is an open question of fact.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
Edited by rickmoen
Feb. 3, 2003, 01:37:58 AM EST
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Post #78,879
2/3/03 9:05:22 AM
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Missed it again
RH says that anything other than
RH AS is not for business. Hell, it's FREE on the web.
I was referring to the "consumer" versions in a silly obscure way. "anything other". The whole discussion was triggered by RH withdrawing support for the Non-AS versions. And since I still believed you could not download AS, I didn't catch the confusing possibility that someone would think I could be referring to AS.
But yes, we essentially agree. I just don't like to be misquoted, even when the misquote makes me look smarter than I am.
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Post #78,920
2/3/03 11:11:02 AM
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Now hang on a minit thar buddy...
I just don't like to be misquoted, even when the misquote makes me look smarter than I am. And Who just do YOU think you are misleading people like that... we all know ewe's dumberer than granite!!! "It's a joke, son, a joke..."
| [link|mailto:curley95@attbi.com|greg] - Grand-Master Artist in IT | | [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry/|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] [link|http://pascal.rockford.com:8888/SSK@kQMsmc74S0Tw3KHQiRQmDem0gAIPAgM/edcurry/1//|ED'S GHOST SPEAKS!] | Heimatland Geheime Staatspolizei reminds:
These [link|http://www.whitehouse.gov/pcipb/cyberstrategy-draft.html|Civilian General Orders], please memorize them.
"Questions" will be asked at safety checkpoints. |
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Post #78,943
2/3/03 12:21:31 PM
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Sorry, this thread is dead
On screen 2, destined for oblivion.
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