Red Hat errata policy updates and product end of life
| From: | Mark J Cox <mjc@redhat.com> | |
| To: | redhat-watch-list@redhat.com | |
| Subject: | Errata policy updates and product end of life | |
| Date: | Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:28:59 +0000 (GMT) | |
| Cc: | redhat-announce-list@redhat.com |
This email outlines our new policy for errata support for Red Hat Linux
products and gives the end-of-life dates for currently supported products.
With the release of Red Hat Linux 8.0 in October, we have been evaluating
the errata support periods for our previous Red Hat Linux distributions.
Usually when a new major version is released we would immediately
discontinue errata support for all but the final point release of previous
versions.
Every errata released by Red Hat undergoes vigorous testing and QA
procedures on each supported release and platform. By discontinuing errata
support for older releases, we are able to concentrate on the supported
platforms and ensure timely fixes to critical issues.
We believe Red Hat Linux users should be able to plan migrations and
upgrades in advance and therefore need an errata support policy that gives
clear guidance on on product end-of-life dates, without any immediate
discontinuation as we release new major revisions.
Therefore, starting with Red Hat Linux 8.0, we have updated the errata
support policy and will now provide errata support for all releases of the
base OS for at least 12 months from the date of the initial release. The
Red Hat Linux Advanced Server product line is not affected by this new
policy.
We have also taken this opportunity to clarify the end of life dates for
errata support for our current products:
Red Hat Linux 8.0 (Psyche) December 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Valhalla) December 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 7.2 (Enigma) December 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 7.1 (Seawolf) December 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 7.0 (Guinness) March 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 6.2 (Zoot) March 31, 2003
All users of these products should plan to upgrade before the given end of
life dates in order to continue to receive errata. In addition, the
following products have now reached their end of life for errata and are
no longer supported:
Red Hat Linux PowerTools (6.2, 7, and 7.1)
All Red Hat Linux releases for the Alpha and Sparc architectures
Red Hat Linux 7.1 for the IA64 architecture
This policy, as well as our current errata and advisories, are available
from http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/
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Posted Dec 31, 2002 3:51 UTC (Tue)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (9 responses)
And yes, I do actually buy official Red Hat CD's.
Posted Dec 31, 2002 5:10 UTC (Tue)
by aturner (guest, #4037)
[Link]
Posted Dec 31, 2002 10:18 UTC (Tue)
by AlanCox (guest, #4858)
[Link] (6 responses)
Alan
Posted Dec 31, 2002 12:41 UTC (Tue)
by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Dec 31, 2002 14:22 UTC (Tue)
by jwharmanny (guest, #971)
[Link]
Besides, would it be fair to expect a distributor to support software which is deprecated for a long time by their original authors?
Posted Dec 31, 2002 14:33 UTC (Tue)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (3 responses)
You are absolutely correct. So tell me again why I should buy official Red Hat CD's instead of just downloading ISO's? It's a dumb business decision.
Posted Dec 31, 2002 14:39 UTC (Tue)
by tjc (guest, #137)
[Link] (2 responses)
No one is telling you why you should do anything. The reason I buy Red Hat CDs is to support the contributions they make to the free software community. Buying an RHN account is another good way to do this.
Posted Dec 31, 2002 16:54 UTC (Tue)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (1 responses)
Nevertheless, from a business point of view, one reason I do buy Red Hat CD's is to make sure Red Hat is viable in order that it can continue to provide support. It's not the only reason, but it's an important one, and if Red Hat lessens its support, it means that reason is less of a reason now.
As for saying "find someone else to support the software", I think that's not very realistic. In spite of widely-available source, Red Hat is still in the best position to support its own products. Inevitably, a company builds up internal knowledge about its systems, and Red Hat could probably fix a problem with RHL much more cheaply and more quickly than an outside person.
I'm the author of a few free software projects, and I know that I can fix things in my software much more quickly than anyone else, because I'm past the learning curve.
I urge Red Hat to reconsider this decision, and to provide support for 24 months.
Posted Dec 31, 2002 18:01 UTC (Tue)
by tjc (guest, #137)
[Link]
I'm the author of a few free software projects, and I know that I can fix things in my software much more quickly than anyone else, because I'm past the learning curve. Yes, exactly. A lot of people don't realize what goes into maintaining software, especially someone elses software. It's in some ways a lot more work than developing it in the first place. There are a couple of things I don't like about sawfish, but after looking at the code for a few hours I realized that it would probably be easier to start from scratch than to try to figure out how it works. That, and my lisp skills are pitiful. I urge Red Hat to reconsider this decision, and to provide support for 24 months. It might be in their best interest not to provide extended support. Support takes resources, but it doesn't generate any revenue other than good will. It's likely that the drop in good will be less than the savings in support costs. I think most of the people who post messages like "that's it, I'm not using Red Hat any more!" probably weren't using it in the first place. Trolls, for the most part. People like you and me will probably continue to use it despite any misgivings (although I have recently developed a rather acute addiction to apt-get).
Posted Jan 2, 2003 23:19 UTC (Thu)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link]
Posted Jan 1, 2003 21:41 UTC (Wed)
by blocke (guest, #5105)
[Link]
This is a nice little kick in the shin for people like me who work for .edu's and were trying to push RedHat/Intel as a replacement for aging Solaris and NT installations.
$800/year per server totally eliminates the price advantage of RedHat over Solaris/Sparc and Windows for client and servers. Not to mention this announcement leaves a MAJOR GAPING hole in their product line for workstations stuck with proprietary applications (think Engineering software, Mathmatica, etc) where a one year upgrade cycle would be a major PITA.
Even if Advanced Workstation were out today for 32-bit intel it would most likely be too expensive to make it desirable over Windows and Solaris/Sparc (plus hardware) with the discounts given for educational institutions.
So it RedHat actively working to shut themselves out of the university/higher learning markets?
12 months is way too short. I have clients still running RH6.2 quite happily. It must be at least 24 months, preferably 36 months.Too short!
I think what they're basically trying to do is get people like your clients to switch to advanced server which has longer life times. Honestly, considering what they're asking for non-advanced server, I can't blame them. Keeping all those packages up-to-date on all those different versions must of been a real PITA.
Too short!
Nothing stops other people maintaining old releases for longer. Unlike proprietary software you have all the pieces. My guess is that if sufficient people want 6.2 after all that time, you'll find people making a business out of supporting it.Too short!
True... We have at least one machine still happily running RH5.2, whichToo short!
has been unsupported for ages, now... But, did that mean we're screwed,
and forced to upgrade? No, absolutely not... It just meant we couldn't
just look to RH to provide us with neatly packaged RPMs to keep stuff up
to date... We can still do the work ourselves, if necessary... At some
point, the effort of doing so may outweigh the effort of upgrading the
system, at which point we may do so... But, until then, there's nothing
wrong with happily chugging along with an ancient, unsupported system...
The only real problem I see is security updates. Old distro's come with old packages. All major software (kernel, Apache, SSH, etc.) have several vulnerabilities which are only resolvable by upgrading the respective applications and libraries to newer versions. Upgrading the whole distro would be much easier then upgrading those major apps by hand.Too short!
> Nothing stops other people maintaining old releases for longer.Too short!
So tell me again why I should buy official Red Hat CD's instead of just downloading ISO's?Too short!
No one is telling you why you should do anything.
Too short!
As for saying "find someone else to support the software", I think that's not very realistic. In spite of widely-available source, Red Hat is still in the best position to support its own products. Inevitably, a company builds up internal knowledge about its systems, and Red Hat could probably fix a problem with RHL much more cheaply and more quickly than an outside person.Too short!
6.2 was released in the spring of 2000. That means the product was supported for 3 years when it is 'discontinued'. While that seems like a short time, it is 12 development cycles in Red Hat time. Most of the items on it are not maintained at that level upstream and there isnt a yearly revenue stream of at least $400,000 to pay for the engineers that would be needed to keep the product up. That 400,000 would pay for about 2-3 engineers, 1-2 qa people at $60,000 on average salary. The rest would get soaked up in insurance for both company and people... plus all the other overhead costs...Too short! Get real
Red Hat errata policy updates and product end of life