How would integrating RHL into Fedora affect ISVs?

[Richi Plana]

Hi,

Currently, it's common to see third party software developers developing
for and recommending the usage of RedHat Linux. For instance, Rational
(now IBM) supports the latest version of RedHat Linux with its ClearCase
line of products. Now that RHL is Fedora, are there any guesses as to
how these ISVs will take it? Is Fedora guaranteeing these companies no
changes in the version of libraries in a system for a given release version?

I'm just worrying that whatever perceived attraction developing for a de
facto standard like RHL might not carry over to Fedora. My next email
for tonight will be to Rational to ask if they'll be making releases for
Fedora.

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Richi Plana wrote:
> Currently, it's common to see third party software developers developing
> for and recommending the usage of RedHat Linux. For instance, Rational
> (now IBM) supports the latest version of RedHat Linux with its ClearCase
> line of products. Now that RHL is Fedora, are there any guesses as to
> how these ISVs will take it? Is Fedora guaranteeing these companies no
> changes in the version of libraries in a system for a given release version?

To your latter question, I imagine not and to your former, I imagine that
ISVs will certify against RHEL releases, such as WS or AS as appropriate.

Best Regards,
Alex.

[Michael K. Johnson]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 11:12:47PM -0600, Richi Plana wrote:
> Currently, it's common to see third party software developers developing
> for and recommending the usage of RedHat Linux. For instance, Rational
> (now IBM) supports the latest version of RedHat Linux with its ClearCase
> line of products. Now that RHL is Fedora, are there any guesses as to
> how these ISVs will take it? Is Fedora guaranteeing these companies no
> changes in the version of libraries in a system for a given release version?

Red Hat's goals for Fedora Core do not include enabling non-open-source
components.

Red Hat has strong ISV relationships, and all our promises to them, goals
to help them, and relationships with them are in the context of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.

michaelkjohnson

"He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book."
 Linux Application Development                     -- Ben Franklin
 http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/

[Kjetil Mikkelborg]

So for companies which does not need a support contract from redhat, but
just are used to buy box sets, and use AS and WS for spesial cases, will
now be in a situation were windows and linux has the same costs, just
that windows allready comes preinstalled?

I know that looking at OS Licenses is a wrong way of saying either is
more or less expensive, but for time being, linux still has to fight
it's way in to the regular companies, and with increased costs and
forced support, redhat is looking less and less as an alternative.

Even tough this is not directly up to Redhat, they have their saying,
since support from ISV's is probably the main important thing for using
linux as a alternative to both windows and unix. OSS tools is good, but
not good enugh for a massive switch from existent infrastructure. I
cannot tell my users to switch to CVS just because it will fit a migrate
to linux plan, and drop all of the clearcase feature they are used to.

If redhat fedora is going to live, Redhat should focus on making ISV's
to support it, and focus on making fedora and other distro users aware
that their AS and WS line is more suitable for real work. Then it will
be more easy to get users to accept it, and embrace it.

The last thing redhat fedora should be is just another debian distro
witch is in no way usable for anything else than playing with in peoples
spare time.

Let us use fedora as a crowbar for getting redhat on peoples desktop,
and then focus on showing what Redhat WS does better aftewards, not the
otherway around.

tor, 2003-09-25 kl. 11:22 skrev [e-mail]:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Richi Plana wrote:
> > Currently, it's common to see third party software developers developing
> > for and recommending the usage of RedHat Linux. For instance, Rational
> > (now IBM) supports the latest version of RedHat Linux with its ClearCase
> > line of products. Now that RHL is Fedora, are there any guesses as to
> > how these ISVs will take it? Is Fedora guaranteeing these companies no
> > changes in the version of libraries in a system for a given release version?
>
> To your latter question, I imagine not and to your former, I imagine that
> ISVs will certify against RHEL releases, such as WS or AS as appropriate.
>
> Best Regards,
> Alex.
>
> --
> fedora-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list

[Peter Boy]

Am Don, 2003-09-25 um 17.24 schrieb Michael K. Johnson:
> Red Hat's goals for Fedora Core do not include enabling non-open-source
> components.
>
> Red Hat has strong ISV relationships, and all our promises to them, goals
> to help them, and relationships with them are in the context of Red Hat
> Enterprise Linux.

That is a good decision from a conceptual point of view. Buy may be a
bad one froma pragmatic marketing view.

Currently RH is *the* reference implementation which guarantees market
share and visibility, closely followed by SuSE. Provided SuSE continues
to sell its boxed set as well as its enterprise version, both with a
defined relationship, they might be able to become *the* reference
platform and United Linux might get reanimated.

PB