little practical effect [LWN.net]

little practical effect

Posted Jan 2, 2003 5:54 UTC (Thu) by djao (subscriber, #4263)
Parent article: Distribution support: how long is long enough?

Disclaimer: I am a redhat user, but I have no other relationship with the company.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with their errata policy. Would you rather have no guarantee at all, as was the case before, or a guarantee of "at least 12 months" of errata support? If the guarantee was "at most 12 months" then I could see something to complain about, but given a choice between no policy at all and a policy guaranteeing at least 12 months, I'll take the 12 months any day.

The 14 months of projected errata support for redhat 8.0 is actually in line with redhat's historical trends for point-oh releases. I went through the redhat support pages and found the support lifespans of previous redhat versions to be as follows

4.0 - 10 months
5.0 - 16 months
6.0 - 17 months
7.0 - 28 months (assuming March 31, 2003 cutoff date)

The real story here is how redhat 7.0 has been supported for such an amazingly long time. Viewed in this perspective, their new errata policy is actually nothing new at all, as it is merely a codification of what they have already been doing in terms of errata support.

In fact, historically, the only redhat versions that have ever enjoyed protracted errata support have been the final point revisions within each major version (4.2, 5.2, 6.2), and, though your guess is as good as mine, my reading of the new policy is that this pattern will continue. For example, in the very same announcement it is stated that redhat 6.2 will be supported until March 31, 2003, giving it a full 34 months of errata support, which is well in line with what I think a final point revision should have.

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limited support duration was: little practical effect

Posted Jan 3, 2003 11:27 UTC (Fri) by akumria (subscriber, #7773) [Link]

The real story here is how redhat 7.0 has been supported for such an amazingly long time

Actually the real story here is the minimal support duration of commerical Linux offerings.

Perhaps you feel that 28 months is a long time. However most companies demand, and obtain, support for around 5 years from their software vendors.

Microsoft released Windows XP on the 21 Oct 2001; and according to their Life cycle roadmap they will have general support for 5 years and potentially 2 further years of hotfix/security support.

In contrast RedHat released RedHat 7,2 on the 22 Oct 2001; and they intend to EOL hotfix and security support in December 2003.

26 months versus 60 months. RedHat, now less than half as good as Microsoft

redhat and Microsoft

Posted Jan 4, 2003 4:17 UTC (Sat) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link]

You managed to miss my point completely. There is a whole world of difference between the amount of support I expect for redhat 7.0, and the amount I expect for 7.3.

You are certainly right to complain that redhat's support lifespans pale next to Microsoft's, but I think redhat deserves praise for actually improving their point-oh support level (from 10 to 16 to 17 to 28 months), rather than criticism for not matching Microsoft.

28 months is an amazing amount of support for a point-oh release. Comparing redhat to Microsoft here is useless since Microsoft does not release operating systems every six months like redhat does.

For a proper comparison, you need to use the final point releases (4.2, 5.2, 6.2, 7.3) of redhat, which are IMO the only versions that should ever be considered for production use at all. The support lives of these versions are well above 12 months, and nothing in the new policy changes that.