Too short!

Posted Dec 31, 2002 18:01 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137)
In reply to: Too short! by dskoll
Parent article: Red Hat errata policy updates and product end of life

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.

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).