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Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register)
The Register takes a look
at Red Hat's current "end-of-life" schedule. "Microsoft comes under
regular fire for its apparent eagerness to end-of-life its products, making
them more difficult and expensive to support, and hence forcing users to
upgrade to the next version. But without fanfare Red Hat has quietly
introduced its own approach to end-of-life, and compared to this,
Microsoft's idea of an upgrade cycle looks pretty sedate. As of the release
of Red Hat 8.0, the company is only guaranteeing errata maintenance for the
12 months following a product's release."
(Log in to post comments)
Mixed feelings Posted Jan 28, 2003 0:17 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] I always figure you *should* upgrade, that it's too much to ask to keep everything legacy application patched. And, it's not as if it's a huge licencing burden; the thing with M$ is that you have to pay gigantic amounts each time you upgrade to upgrade every system. With RedHat, if you're paying for support, you keep paying for support. If not, buy one CD to upgrade all your systems... or download the CD. There's also the Alan Cox argument that if enough people want support for legacy systems, it's an open source OS: if there's enough demand and people who will pay, surely somebody will step up and start maintaining patches for legacy RedHat OSes.On the other hand, for RedHat, 12 months is really kinda short. I tried RedHat 8.0 for about 24 hours, long enough to figure out that I really didn't want to be running RedHat 8.0. (I think the "wait for x.2" heuristic for RedHat must still apply.) But if 7.3 becomes deprecated before 8.1 or 8.2 is out, you're stuck. (I've switched to Debian myself, which is conservative enough that by the time a new "stable" release comes out, you can be pretty confident upgrading to it.) -Rob
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 1:03 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] This is just more motivation to switch all my systems over to Debian.RedHat doesn't have anywhere near enough value added at this point to be trying to get away with this. Throw in the fact that their upgrades cost an arm and a leg plus you have to pay extra for automated software updates and its not hard to see where this company will be heading in a year or two without some major changes. Suse is a much better value for those who want commercial support, and Debian is far superior to RedHat for the knowledgable user. Its hard for me to see how RedHat can grow their business with their current philosophy given the existence of these two alternatives.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 1:27 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Debian dropped support for slink almost immediately after potato came out. This record compares poorly to Red Hat's; at the moment, Red Hat is still supporting 6.2, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3, in addition to 8.0, each with a customized set of upgrades. I am sorry that Red Hat has decided to discontinue this support, but the Debian folks have no grounds to throw stones.
Debian Doesn't Throw Stones Posted Jan 28, 2003 3:06 UTC (Tue) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] Please don't take remarks from random users of the Debian distribution as "Debian throwing stones". The Debian Project expresses itself on its website and in formal announcements. Debian developers speaking as such identify themselves.Speaking as a (regretfully lapsed) Debian developer, I don't disparage Red Hat for dropping support for old releases. Speaking personally, I think they may be missing some income opportunities in not offering support for older releases, at extra cost. Of course it would be much less work to offer patches based on actually up-to-date versions of packages, rather than trying to hack old versions the way Debian does. Thus, a fully-patched RH6.2 system might be hard to distinguish from a current release — it would be a 6.2 system in name only, just to satisfy management timidity. Confining these patches to paying customers might depend on tricks in the Red Hat Network product: customers would be allowed (per the GPL) to redistribute the updated binaries and sources that get installed, but without an RHN subscription, it would be a lot less work just to install a current system. (I wonder if I have just described their Advanced Server product.) Anyhow, Red Hat is in a far better position to judge its own profitability than I am.
RHL6.2 is RHL6.2, and that matters. Posted Jan 28, 2003 14:16 UTC (Tue) by cr (guest, #3685) [Link] >Thus, a fully-patched RH6.2 system might be hard to distinguish from a>current release it would be a 6.2 system in name only, just to >satisfy management timidity. Not so. A fully-patched RHL 6.2 still has a 2.2 kernel and KDE 1.1, and can run gracefully on a 100 MHz machine with 32M DRAM and a 1G drive. (That old IBM 100MHz can play WAV files cleanly, while a K6-400 running RHL7.2/KDE in 64M gurgles them.) Such a machine will take a minute or two to switch accounts or bring up Netscape, but it's eminently usable once you replace kmail with Sylpheed, and even though it's older technology you can keep it Net-secure by hardening it with Bastille and keeping up with the RPMs. It's working for a living rather than sitting as toxic waste in a landfill. Up until now, RHL6.2 has been what I've told friends to install on roadsiders and older boxes when they want a relatively painless introduction to Linux. It's been close-to-preload marketing for Red Hat, too: when someone starts out with a branded product and has a good experience, they tend to stick with that brand, especially if the product fulfills expectations in an area other than the person's main interest. All those RHL6.2-loaded older boxes have been selling folks on putting later releases of Red Hat on their newer equipment, in businesses, non-profits, and veteran-user and new-user homes alike. Up until now. With this change, I can't recommend RHL6.2 because, without the update RPMs, there's no way the less-educated user can keep the box secure. Given the new aggressive policy, I can't recommend Red Hat, period. For my own older hardware, I also will be looking into Debian: if there's a relatively painless way to put KDE1.1.1 on Woody, I'll find it. Maybe then I'll again have a good simple answer to "what distro should I put on THIS thing?" Good luck, Red Hat. It's been fun and educational. I hope you're doing the right thing for your business.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 4:15 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] I hope you don't consider me one of the Debian users "throwing stones", because that was not my intention.I wouldn't fault RedHat for dropping support for 6.0, 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2 right now. Support for all of those could start with the words "Upgrade to 7.3, then...." I would consider that wholly reasonable. But 12 months is short enough that you could get stuck without an x.2 release supported. I know this sounds like numerology, but there's a lot of long experience to suggest that the wise person who wants a stable system waits for x.2 before installing any major release of RedHat. I think it was 18 months between 6.2 and 7.2, for example. Were I a RedHat customer, I'd really rather they support the "mature" version of the previous major release until the new major release itself becomes "mature"-- by community standards, not by whatever RedHat would quote (doubtless that any released version is fully tested and thus mature, which I consider historically false). (Within point releases of a major release, however, I wouldn't fault them for dropping support within a few mere months. 8.2 comes out, give 'em six months on 8.1 and then say they need to upgrade if they want further support.) As for Debian not being in a position to point fingers, that isn't really true. When a new "stable" Debian release comes out, it really is quite stable; better than a typical x.0 RedHat release. As such, according to my criteria, it's not so bad for them to quickly drop support from an earlier "stable" release. To my mind, RedHat stopping to support 7.3 before 8.1 or 8.2 is out would be more comparable to Debian dropping support for the current "stable" and telling everybody to start running "testing". Not a perfect comparison (nothing will be), but better than comparing each RedHat release to each Debian release. -Rob
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 5:55 UTC (Tue) by schutz (subscriber, #3760) [Link] As for Debian not being in a position to point fingers, that isn't really true. When a new "stable" Debian release comes out, it really is quite stable; better than a typical x.0 RedHat release. As such, according to my criteria, it's not so bad for them to quickly drop support from an earlier "stable" release. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Debian Potato is still supported (for security updates), even though it was released in August 2000 (2 1/2 years ago) and the next release, Woody, was released last July. So it's not that bad. Frédéric
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 17:36 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] Other then as a happy consumer I am in no way associated with the Debian effort. I never implied otherwise.BTW, I pay for RedHat support. I don't pay for Debian. My expectations are thus significantly different in the first case as compared to the second. In addition, upgrading from one distribution of Debian to another is trivial, especially for the sophisticated Linux user. Which was the prospective audience I mentioned in my earlier response. I've been a Redhat supporter for a number of years. That support has been slipping for awhile now, and this latest move is pretty much the final straw.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 1:15 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Ok I worked for Red Hat for 4 years so I am a little biased.. but come-onHow do you expect a company to keep maintaining things forever with maybe 30 engineers who are dedicated to the OS? There are over 600 packages for say 3-4 releases each at different revs, and well there arent as many people paying for supporting the old ones as one would think. Most people just want to ride the FreeBeer train as long as they can. Many packages on the list are 'deprecated' upstream faster than Red Hat is willing to do so themselves. There were too many times when I worked there that the upstream developers have said we arent going to look at this XYZ bug, but paying customers said "we have to go through 6 month testing for any major changes in software code" and Red Hat has to drop 2-3 developers on fixing 6 month old 'legacy' code in the meantime. I don't agree with everything Red Hat does in its business practices, and I also feel 12 months is a bit short... but I also know that maintaining 4.2 for 2+ years was a major drain of resources during every errata because even the original developers had no idea what various code bits did anymore. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Your bill has come due.
Ah - but 8.0 is RH's currently shipping release Posted Jan 28, 2003 14:13 UTC (Tue) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link] As a general rule I can't disagree, but the problem is that 8.0 is Red Hat's CURRENTLY SHIPPING RELEASE as of late January 2003. To say that this release will go out of support from 2003/12/31 is pushing things a bit I would say. It certainly does not help me make my case that we should be converting our desktops from Windows to RH Professional, that's for sure.sph
I agree with you Posted Jan 28, 2003 17:58 UTC (Tue) by sam (guest, #1329) [Link] I agree with you. That said, I was a long-time user of RedHat 4.2; I don't upgrade to 5.x until late 1998 or early 1999. Of course, a lot of people were using 4.2 for a long time because 5.x had a lot of bugs from the difficult GlibC transition.I think we have established that people want RedHat to continue supporting their OSes for more than a year. You have demonstrated that people do not want to maintain older code without getting paid. We have not yet established that people are willing to give RedHat enough money so that RedHat will be able to do this. For all of the people complaining about this policy: How much are you willing to pay for RedHat to continue providing updates? - Sam
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 2:31 UTC (Tue) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link] I think that RedHat, and any Distro maintainer, really has only a fewviable options when it comes to support: 1. Only release a new distro every year or two; users won't really like this. 2. Only maintain a distro for a short while; this is what Redhat is doing. Users won't really like this. 3. Make the distro much smaller, and thus easier to maintain for longer periods of time; users won't really like this. Personally, I'd like to see #3; a "core" product that could be counted on for a certain amount of time, and maybe an extras package that is discontinued faster. This would allow people to maintain their database, mail, etc servers while other packages could be ignored. However, I'm not sure how many packages Redhat would be able to removed to make the "core" distro.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 10:05 UTC (Tue) by mwilck (guest, #1966) [Link] > Only release a new distro every year or two; users won't really like> this. Commercial customers do like this, that's the whole point of Advanced Server and SuSE Enterprise server. For end users, too, there might be better options than publishing a new version every 6 months. By keeping the most important user land applications up-to-date, distributors would strongly reduce the need to upgrade the whole distribution.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 18:03 UTC (Tue) by bockman (guest, #3650) [Link] I think that commercial distros should stop completely to make 'software releases'. Software releases are for software that you sell. For free software, it is better to make a 'neverending upgrade'. You install the software once, and never have to do it again. Just, from time to time, connect with the distro server (for a fee) and upgrade what and if you want to. A bit what I am experiencing with Debian testing/unstable, but whith more care in testing the package upgrades before making available for download (paying customers don't like to be used as beta testers), and holding the the users hand in the upgrade process. <p>They already do some of it with up2grade. They should push in this direction, making upgrades so smoot and painless that nobody will ever need to reinstall the software from scratch, but nobody will also fear to upgrade unless for very pratical reasons. <p> Also, the neverending upgrade model will allow to better plan for software obsolescence, dropping components nobody is interested into and keeping old software that is still very popular (of course, the target audience for software popularity should be the paying customers, not the free downloaders ).
continuing upgrades unsupportable Posted Jan 31, 2003 15:22 UTC (Fri) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] There's a problem with this idea as it makes it very, verydifficult for the supplier to make any guarantees at all to the customer. You can't get a straight answer to "what version of our software are you running?", because the customer may have updated on any day and perhaps not updated everything at once. The distinction remains between a maintenance patch and a That distinction alone makes it worthwhile giving a version
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 2:38 UTC (Tue) by swsnyder (subscriber, #3913) [Link] This Red Hat user doesn't blame them a bit. It costs money to support software that no longer contributes to the company's revenue stream.And the comparison to Microsoft's end-of-life policy is a false one. When Microsoft stops issuing fixes for my OS I am SOL, as nobody but them can provide those fixes. Red Hat, on the other hand, just packages other peoples software. I can turn to those software authors to get updates and fixes. In short, I am not *dependent* on Red Hat. If they stop issuing RPMs for my version of RHL, it is an inconvenience to me, not a brick wall. That is the difference between Red Hat's products (and policies) and Microsoft's.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 17:45 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] The problem is that RedHat does in fact provide a for pay support service. Why should I pay them $80+ per year per system for software support if they're going to stop supporting me after 12 months and force me to go to the time and expense of upgrading?RedHat has a very muddled revenue stratagy from what I can tell. They keep increasing the price of their distribution, then they charge for timely software support and then they cut back the length of the support they are willing to provide to a very minimal level. All of which point to panic and a lack of vision in my eyes. Pick a stratagy and stick to it.
Core of the Problem: Dependency Management Posted Jan 28, 2003 3:14 UTC (Tue) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link] The core of Red Hat's problem here is that each new distribution release has a large enough set of core library and subsystem changes that selective upgrade of components is simply not feasible.That's why there have to be separate RPMs for 4.2, 5.2, 6.2 (let's confine ourselves to truly stable releases here) and 7.3. We all know I should be able to run any 4.2 RPM on a Red Hat 7.3 or 8.x system, and I should be able to install a set of RPMs to run a Red Hat 8.x RPM on an old 4.2 system. (Of course we also expect that, in some cases the number of RPMs to upgrade might be excessive --- that upgrading the whole system and downgrading specific packages for "legacy" reasons will sometimes be the better strategy). For the most part we're seeing that the package management system in Red Hat simply isn't sophisticated enough, yet. I manually know how to install a set of shared libraries and export an LD_PRELOAD_PATH to force a particular application to use an older, or newer set of libraries, as necessary. I know how to manually create a chroot jail and how to write a wrapper script in that environment --- providing a complete "subsystem" for me to test new versions of applications, even a whole distribution, or to support a legacy environment. In fact, I routinely do this for my Debian installations (manually). When it boils down to it, the only part of the system that could not, technically, be managed using Linux' shared library versioning and/or chroot "jail" features are at the kernel level. However, new kernels provide a high degree of backward compatibility, and the number of utilities that are affected by non-backward compatible changes is quite small and limited (procps,modutils, raidtools etc.). So, it seems that we (as a community) could go further to modularize Linux software and insulate it further from these sorts of "all or nothing" upgrades. With that and further development of rollback and system configuration checkpointing (ensuring that upgrades aren't "one-way" risk propositions) the fact that "old versions" are only supported for a supported for a limited time will be moot. JimD
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 3:28 UTC (Tue) by erat (guest, #21) [Link] I agree with the end-users who are not seeing this as a huge ordeal.However, having dealt with ISVs, OEMs, and resellers/integrators (until very recently I worked for another of the "major Linux players") I can say that this has the potential to become an ordeal for professionals. These professional types install software and don't reinstall or upgrade for years unless absolutely necessary. One of these folks could probably make a mint providing updates and support for defunct Red Hat distros, but I think in the end lots of these people will end up migrating to something that moves more slowly and is guaranteed to be supported for X number of years. UnitedLinux comes to mind immediately, but I'm sure others out there offer similar guarantees. In the end, I believe that Red Hat "the business" is going to hurt over this decision unless they at least offer ISVs, resellers, etc. some kind of extended support option. If they cut off everyone and say "sorry, you're just going to have to run updates on the hundreds of computers you currently service", I would be very surprised if the reseller in question installed any more Red Hat systems. End users seem fine with installing and supporting their own systems, but folks who paid for their relationship with Red Hat, inconvenienced themselves by getting RHCE certified (expensive, and for most folks requires travel), set up a solid base of customers expecting a bit of longevity in the 3rd tier support, etc. may end up feeling sufficiently screwed to say "manyana, amigo" and go elsewhere. Just my two shares of VA Software stock... (No, I didn't work there.)
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 9:55 UTC (Tue) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link] This is NOT the end of the world ... RH6.2 users can still upgrade from source when security issues need to be addressed.Naturally RH have the right to apply their support resources in a way which benefits their, and their stockholders', interests. However... 1) The fact that RH seems to be ending support for hardware platforms other than IA32 appears to be being ignored. 2) Just think of the outroar if M$ tried to force upgrades in this way. Well, they DID (though not quite as agressively as RH), there WAS an uproar, and there was a considerable amount of fudging around when the new policy was to come into force. Personally I think there should be a two-stage cutoff: (a) support for enhancements & cosmetic fixes to be short - say until the next minor release but one; (b) support for critical security issues (those which could result in the system being rooted, or abused in a major way by an intruder) should be guaranteed for a reasonable time - I'd suggest 3 to 5 years.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 15:58 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] The sad point is that ending support for Alpha and Sparc comes down to simple market economics. They were money losers and unlike Microsoft, Red Hat can't charge such a large premium on their main product to pay for money losers.THe ratio of sales were something like the following: 1 Sparc for every 10 Alpha boxes sold, 1 Alpha box sold for every 100-500 Intel boxes sold. However, the feature requests and bug reports were sometimes in the opposite ratios. And the worst part was that the number of people in the community who could fix those problems were much much much smaller than in the Intel community. On the other two points, I think that if people are willing to pay for that long of a support then a company would deliver it. Most people want the support for ever, and dont want to pay for it.
apt-rpm - regular updates wouldn't be a problem if redhat used it Posted Jan 28, 2003 10:02 UTC (Tue) by ahornby (subscriber, #3366) [Link] The main problem with redhat upgrades is that there online tools (e.g. up2date) are pay-for and only support patching, not release upgrades.I've been using apt-rpm from Fresh RPMS for a while now, which doesn't have these problems. Apt-rpm provides a free solution, with an open back end (so that you can publish your own packages - for example gstreamer use apt-rpm in this way) and works really well. The alternatives, up2date and red-carpet, have closed back ends, you have to get redhat or ximian to publish your package for you. Perhap we would go to Red Hat Bugzilla and raise enhancment requests to ask for this?
apt-rpm - regular updates wouldn't be a problem if redhat used it Posted Jan 28, 2003 14:11 UTC (Tue) by utidjian (subscriber, #444) [Link] "The main problem with redhat upgrades is that there online tools (e.g. up2date) are pay-for and only support patching, not release upgrades."This is NOT true. I wish people wouldn't keep saying it. I have several dozen systems running Red Hat, I use up2date, and I haven't paid them a dime to use it. It IS a "free" service. However... if you want faster performance you will have to pay a subscription. I see no problem with that. I also maintain a local mirror of the updates. I am planning to move my updateing system to Autoupdate. http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~gerald/ftp/autoupdate/index.html It is also "free" to do release upgrades. However, one usually does those as all or nothing. While I can install and run many Red Hat 8.0 RPMs on a 7.3 system (and vice versa) I usually don't. One can even do release upgrades over the network... or even the internet. That has been possible with Red Hat since, at least, Red Hat 4.2. -DU-...etc...
apt-rpm - regular updates wouldn't be a problem if redhat used it Posted Jan 28, 2003 15:47 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Regular updates would still be a problem for Red Hat. It takes a week to QA a release with 1-2 developers and 3-4 QA engineers in most cases going through the various versions of the OS, the various hardware setups, and the various standard layouts to make sure that problems havent cropped up.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 10:38 UTC (Tue) by mgh (guest, #5696) [Link] I think that Redhat is making a wise decision to a point, but I believe that they would find that they could sell support for older releases once they passed their original use by date. So they provide access to subscribers who pay for updates for 12 months at rate 1 and 24 months at rate 2 etc etc.Contrary to what most people believe a lot of corporates view free as risky and they they'd prefer to pay and if you offered them two contract staff, one at 105% of "typical rate" and another at 45% of "typical rate" they would take the expensive one - why? less risk. When a company is faced with a testing and migration project or pay $$$ to maintain status quo - they will pay the $$$ because it is less risk. Redhat - don't cut the support, just start charging for it after 12 months. Fair enough, you want free stay with the crowd, you want more stability and longer term use from our products? we're happy to oblige.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Feb 3, 2003 10:50 UTC (Mon) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link] I think there is definitely an opportunity here for a business to offer support for old Red Hat distributions, after the 12 month window is up.Companies would subscribe to receive security updates to (say) 6.2, and you'd have a few techies monitoring Bugtraq/LWN/whatever, and backporting patches into 6.2. Publish the patches only. Build binary RPMs and deliver them to your subscribers through an apt-rpm/RHN-type mechanism. Rich.
Red Hat intros 12 month only support on 'consumer' OSes (Register) Posted Jan 28, 2003 17:20 UTC (Tue) by samadhi (guest, #2434) [Link] This cannot be a good thing, can you imagine if you were head of IT at company with 10,000 or so desktops that you had deployed Redhat onto and you had to get them all upgraded every year!This level of upgrading would introduce massive admin costs into the organisation, one of the areas in which Linux is supposed to excel. I have seen so many posts where people have claimed (correctly in my opinion) that significantly more Linux boxes can be administered by a single admin than NT boxes. If you have to upgrade every system every year you can kiss goodbye to low admin costs. The first thing potential hackers will do is save up all their security exploits until just after support expires, then god help the admin who has only managed to upgrade 1/2 their boxes so far, bang goes the Linux claim that it has superior security. I suppose you could alway start upgrading imediately a new release comes out, nothing like going in at the bleeding edge to get a good reputation for bug free stable software. The comment made earlier about finding the fixes yourself and then compiling everything simply won't wash in a large business scenario this is exactly why companys tend to buy distributions. Not to mention if it takes Redhat 30 people to support an old OS surely it will take any other company at least this amount of support staff to perform the same roll (Again spiralling support costs). And as far as server operating systems go, any admin worth his salt running a mission critical system would not usually consider upgrading to a new release for the best part of a year after release as stability is paramount. The problem is Redhat want to play with the big boys, but at the end of the day their toys just won't last long enough to make this a reality. They either need to make up their minds to release and support systems that businesses will want to buy or go back to playing in the small leagues. Oh well, time to find a new distribution.
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