Red Hat Introduces Desktop Linux Competitor (eWeek)

Posted May 4, 2004 19:03 UTC (Tue) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

I'm not a RH user nor have I been (Mdk now investigating Gentoo, here),
but I'd guess this does two things.

1) It provides a way for corporations that are used to paying for stuff,
and that therefore tend to ignore Linux because it's free, to do just
that, pay for stuff, so they can audit it. This is the thing Linux has
run into time and again, and what Star Office ran into when it was free.
Notice how Star is getting a lot of press now and how it's supposed to
finally be comparable to MS's version in usefulness? A lot of that
visibility wouldn't be there, and fewer corporations would be using it, if
it were still free, altho Open Office is there for those that CAN cope
with free.

2) As I understand it, previously, one could use a single RH Up2date
subscription on multiple computers, but it was a hassle, as one had to
keep changing the profile manually between the two. I'd assume this is
much the same. The desktop management modules can likely be switched
around as well, but it's going to be a hassle to do so, and many
businesses will simply choose to purchase the packages and forget about
attempting rotation for in-service machines, anyway, tho unlike some
proprietary-ware licenses, they'll be able to switch-out/update the
profiles with little hassle when they switch out hardware.

#2 anyway is simply a semi-informed guess from this spectator on the
sidelines, but the semi-informed part is based on previous RH observation,
and is the way they like to do things, so..

Also keep in mind that if they go switching profiles, it's possible one
machine will get "lost in the shuffle" and not updated with a critical
patch. If they have enough modules for all their seats, the management
system should track all that and alert someone if one of the profiles
failed to get its update, for whatever reason. Thus, there will actually
be three reasons to keep current, (1) the honesty/legality thing, for
those that care, even if RH isn't in the business of siccing the SBA
hounds on its customers as MS seems to like to do, (2) the hassle factor,
and (3) the security tracking factor. Together, that seems reasonable
enough for $70 per seat per year, considering how much labor costs, to
address that additional hassle and security factor, at least here in the
US.

Duncan