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How many Fedora users are there?
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 3:17 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)In reply to: How many Fedora users are there? by ajross
Parent article: How many Fedora users are there?
Please, let's lay off Red Hat bashing. Even if Red Hat were to drop Fedora today, you could still get all of their development work by downloading RHEL SRPMS. Also, Red Hat employs some fine developers that are contributing to important FOSS projects daily.
> Either a company feels that its community support is the foundation of its mindshare and business model, or it does not. It is clear from the above which category today's Red Hat, Inc. falls into.
It's not clear to me at all. Good company executives usually make their decisions based on verifiable information. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know why a free software project like Fedora should be bankrolled by Red Hat.
For instance, I use Fedora on my machines (among other reasons) in order to keep in touch with the direction of Red Hat development, so that when new versions of RHEL and CentOS come along (working with which pays my bills), I know what to expect and what to recommend. I'm guessing Red Hat executives in charge of bankrolling Fedora would find statistics related to how many people out there do the same interesting.
By providing verifiable information to Red Hat executives, Fedora has a much better chance of surviving as a project, IMHO.
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How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 3:33 UTC (Thu) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]
Good company executives usually make their decisions based on verifiable information. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know why a free software project like Fedora should be bankrolled by Red Hat.
There was a time when Red Hat promised that its software would always remain free and open. When they recognized that they didn't write the software in their product, but that they received it from a pre-existing community of users. When they perceived their product not only as a way to make money but as a way to give back to the community.
When the point has been reached of even considering the possibility of terminating the community distribution, it is clear that this spirit is dead at Red Hat. It's a shame, really, because it's not the way the people who ran the company I remember felt. Is it "bad business" to view the community as primary? Maybe. But in the open source world, it's also parasitic and selfish.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 4:24 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> When the point has been reached of even considering the possibility of terminating the community distribution, it is clear that this spirit is dead at Red Hat.
I respectfully disagree.
If a piece of software can be downloaded as a bunch of buildable SRPMS, it is free software. And that's RHEL. It is available free and it is open just like RH promised, keeping the spirit alive, with or without Fedora and regardless of what Jonathan Schwartz says.
In fact, if you don't like building RHEL from scratch, you can get a starting point by downloading ISOs from RH: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/eval/.
You and I may not like RHEL support pricing structure, but that's a whole different ball of wax.
If Red Hat see that providing financial support for Fedora is financially worse then not having Fedora, then they have to do what they have to do. But I'm not seeing they are considering that yet. They just want to know how they're spending their dollars. And that is a good thing, IMHO.
> Is it "bad business" to view the community as primary? Maybe. But in the open source world, it's also parasitic and selfish.
How can Red Hat be parasitic and selfish when you can download as FOSS almost all software that Red Hat wrote themselves, plus all the contributions they made to other projects, like glibc, gcc, kernel etc.? By paying developers to make this software, they are financing FOSS. There is nothing parasitic and selfish about that - the whole things ends up back in the community.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 5:09 UTC (Thu) by davej (subscriber, #354) [Link]
Yawn. It amuses me how every time something controversial relating to Fedora appears out come the conspiracy theories and the claims that "OMFG Red Hat are killing off Fedora".
For a company "considering the possibility of terminating the community distribution", we're doing some pretty darn strange things. Like say, trying to hire more developers that work exclusively on Fedora.
The day Red Hat decide to "abandon the community" is the day I (and probably several other Red Hat employees) start looking for another job at a company with values we believe in, and Red Hat management realise that. Four years ago, that was my reasoning for joining Red Hat. Because it wasn't "just another company" without values that employees actually believed in. Today, I'm still at Red Hat, because those values still hold true, and for as far as I can personally see in the future, it will remain that way.
Much ado about nothing.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:31 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
I accept your words at face value. However, maybe you can contribute the message up the chain that an image problem exists?
I dunno how to combat an image problem with the village idiots, but I think it's important to Red Hat that the Fedora Doubt goes away. It will have intangible benefits.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:50 UTC (Thu) by davej (subscriber, #354) [Link]
I think Seth summed it up much better than I could. I don't deny that in some peoples eyes things don't look quite so rosy, but we've come a long way over the last few years, and overcome a lot of obstacles (Some of which admittedly took way too long).
Comparing the Fedora project of 2003, which was still very closely Red Hat controlled to what we have today is worlds apart. (And we still have a long way to go). The fact that the discussions that prompted this article are even happening publically is testament to that.
We got criticised (rightly) for making decisions behind closed doors, and now we're getting criticised for doing our dirty laundry in public. Yes, sometimes some really bad ideas come up, and the phone-home idea perhaps wasn't as thought through as it should have been, but the point is: It was aired to the community, to get feedback before being implemented. Who says we aren't listening?
Regardless of what we (Red Hat, or the Fedora project) do, we aren't going to please everyone, and in many cases, we shouldn't try to. If a vocal minority had their way, Fedora would be shipping enablers for binary kernel modules, and other proprietary garbage by now.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:28 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
The image problem has existed to some people since 1994. After spending years in Red Hat support trying to combat that image.. I realized there is nothing that can be done to change it in those people's minds that have a bad idea about Red Hat. From what I can tell, it is a partisan/religous debate in their minds.. and so their brain does not process information favorable to Red Hat, but only see information that fits their cause.
All you can do is just keep trucking.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:56 UTC (Thu) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]
The image problem has existed to some people since 1994.But, as I've pointed out, not to me. I used Red Hat throughout this period. Hell, if you google around, you'll probably find references to me defending you guys from the anti-corporate hordes. I was loyal.
Yet you have lost me as a customer. Now, one way to deal with this is to put your head in the sand and write my dissatisfaction (and, potentially, lost sales) off as an inevitability. Another is to question whether Fedora is worthwhile at all and (apparently) threaten them with resource constraints if they can't prove their popularity.
Still another might be to consider if, just possibly, it was a change in behavior on Red Hat's part that caused the loss of mindshare. One is tempted to point out that in 1994 (or 1997, when I started using the distro), every penny that Red Hat spent on development popped back out in a downloadeable ISO that we could use for whatever we wanted, just like we were "real" customers (which, I argue, we were). This wasn't true of SuSE, nor of Caldera, nor of any of the other now forgotten attempts at a commercialized linux distro. But Red Hat was Free, and we loved you guys for it. And we used your software. And when we got a chance to write checks for linux, we wrote them to you. And you won.
Where did that Red Hat go? From where I sit, the company seems to be called "Canonical" today.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 18:18 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Hear hear. I stuck loyally with Red Hat from versions 4 through 7, even the bad days. Problem was, as Red Hat started going after the Enterprise market , they were leaving their day-to-day users into the ghetto (that's what it seemed like to me anyway). And that's cool -- they can do whatever they want. And now I mostly run Debian and Ubuntu.
Mugshot is pure comedy... I'd suggest cancelling that bizarre project long before worrying about Fedora funding!
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 13, 2006 1:09 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> One is tempted to point out that in 1994 (or 1997, when I started using the distro), every penny that Red Hat spent on development popped back out in a downloadeable ISO that we could use for whatever we wanted, just like we were "real" customers (which, I argue, we were).
Given that English in not my native language, I went and checked what the customer actually means. Here is the first hit (and others are similar) from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/customer:
------------------------------
1. One that buys goods or services.
2. Informal. An individual with whom one must deal: a tough customer.
------------------------------
Now, unless want to call downloaders "tough customers", it would seem that they were no customers at all :-). And that's the rub here.
Red Hat is a company (companies generally exist to make money). They identified the market they wanted to address (mostly, it would seem, Unix server replacements). With that market, they also identified their customers (yes, the *real* ones). They went for it and their customers decided to pay subscription fees for a certified distro. They made money. I'm not a fortuneteller, so I don't know what's going to happen next.
> Where did that Red Hat go?
See above.
Whether we like this or not, unless we're shareholders or employees of Red Hat, we cannot decide what they should do. It is completely up to them.
And free market competition will do the rest.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 13, 2006 14:08 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
I no longer work for Red Hat... I left 5 years ago to do other things for a while. I also only use RHEL at work since I do not have a reason to pay for it for home use (there I use Fedora, Centos, and rpath)
I was only trying to point out that back during the time I worked there (1997-2001) and before I worked there.. Red Hat had an image problem with a certain set of people who labeled Red Hat as "money-grubbing" in one way or another.
The fact was that the boxed sets were always a money loss. If we took the maximum number of boxed sets we had ever sold, we found that to cover the cost of developers, ftpsite, etc. we needed to charge a minimum price-point of USd ~75.00. Add on just installation support we needed to sell them at USD 85.00. [The reason for this is that for a listed price of 75.00, the company only sees about 35.00. The rest is selling through channel costs and dealing with returns by channel, etc.]
The only profits we made were for specific support projects, and they were not enough of them to really keep us going.
When we priced box sets at 60.00 for RHL7, we saw that the majority of the original Red Hat buyers saw that was too much for them and sales of that product were too low. The only way to make money on selling boxed sets was to not have more than 2-4 developers and 1-2 support staff (and hope the quality of the product didnt suffer *ha*).
Does this mean I am trying to convince you not to dislike Red Hat? No. I am just trying to explain things from my point of view.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 19, 2006 12:22 UTC (Thu) by JamesEM (guest, #41209) [Link]
>By providing verifiable information to Red Hat executives,>Fedora has a much better chance of surviving as a project.
Any RedHat exec with sense should never make that trade, if the
Company gets into difficulties. It was clever to separate the "Brand
Values" of Fedora and RHEL, but that doesnt make Fedora as "disposable"
as the free staff that _created_ the critical mass for RedHat
to be able to exploit the mainstream market. Many "useless burdens"
were discarded at RedHat Linux EOL like an empty booster stage.
Maneovering for profit and success is rarely a victim free exercise.
Suddenly. many enterprise level support people found themselves
downgraded to "enthusiasts" relegated to Linux Desktop development,
and seeking credible enterprise alternatives that are more open
and less ethically mutable. At a disadvantage in their own market.
Should RHEL maintain entirely separate R&D support? I went ballistic
on the selinux list when RHEL rpms were offered up for (free!) testing.
The place for that is Fedora, otherwise a US taxpayer organization is
being used to underwrite commercial corporate R&D and provide unfair
market advantage. Thats a complete no-no, here in the EU.
Besides, all RHEL testers have a right to expect a financial return on
any such effort, surely? That *is* the business model Redhat chose for
themselves!
This grates with the guarantee of open access to a distro that once
benefitted from FREE R&D, and testing. Corporate execs at RedHat did
indeed lose the plot. Its easier to seek forgiveness than permission.
But they'll never regain my trust.
I dont like being made a victim. RedHat "mugged" a lot of long term
supporters and contributers with their changes. The personal ROI for
supporting Open Source products is a difficult enough niche. They
"captured" a substantial third party support market for themselves.
Fedora was the only return on that. Not good enough. ( for me ).
I've rejected the entire edifice, in total disgust.
A substantial investment in my time testing and integrating early selinux
as S/RPMs in RH Linux 9 went down the toilet at the EOL of that product.
Never again. Now: an additional learning curve to gain the same
skill levels with Debian/Ubuntu; a burden that compromises MY ability to
make a return on many years of OSS experience. Time and money. I no
longer have alternative sources of income to subsidize free R&D, and
for sure I'm not inclined to do that at no cost for any for-profit
corporate!
Corporate reality: Metrics ARE necessary.
So: with a little imagination, make it an open participation exercise.
You'll get better data! No sneaky stuff, no need for it.
Perceived as a tinfoil-hat type by some, yet I'm perfectly
happy to submit ( and use personally ) unique IDs for builds I maintain.
How hard can it be to "open source" _behaviour_ in this regard?
If the user has complete control over how those IDs get exposed from
their systems, its a non-issue. If you dont want to participate, then
dont provide the information.
( There should be a clear choice, and no penalties for choosing ).
Separate metrics and tracking. They are not the same! There need not be
privacy invasion; IP as a unique identifier is useless as a metric.
Forget that approach.
How hard is it for a given distro provider ( Corporate business _or_ org )
to openly have a simple form that combines various unique things from a
particular build - disk ID, MAC NIC address(es) into one (big) hash that
has a simple index number on their database? System builder gets the unique
index number, the company bean counters and marketers gain useful metrics.
The sysadmin ( by index ID only ) is invited to participate. Volunteer the
status of your build ( test, disposable ), or mainstream use. Even better.
Heck, why not provide a "group" ID, with some simple inventory and journal
fields for people to use? Thats could be of mutual benefit, if implemented
properly.
Hmmm. Maybe the community can support an OSS project like this as a common
standard for all distro providers? Just a thought!