Fedora Project: Announcing New Direction

[Jeremy Dreese]

> And undoubtedly, this is going to piss off a lot of people who were
> quite happily taking advantage of Red Hat Linux with 3 years of errata
> without paying a cent. We can't do that anymore. It's too expensive,
> we'd cease to exist. Fedora Core is the compromise. We spent a long time
> trying to make the most people happy, we listened to all the complaints
> (yes, even the most irrational ones), and we came up with the best
> option we could.

I agree that people who expect to get software (and updates) from RedHat forever
and not pay anything have little room to complain.  RedHat is a company that
needs to make money; otherwise, there won't even be a company.  However, I do
believe that RedHat is neglecting a very important market by not focusing some
attention on edus.  I understand that Fedora Core is perhaps an attempt to help
this group, and we'll have to wait and see if that addresses the edu needs.  But
I know that there are some universities who are very willing to pay RedHat for
software/support/updates but simply can't afford the price "bar" that has been
set.  Most companies have educational pricing because they understand the value
of having educational institutions use their software; I'm sure there are plenty
of others who could detail this reasoning better than myself, but tops on my
list is that we're teaching the future decision-makers who will be working at
the companies at which you're trying to sell your software.  It seems to me that
RedHat has plenty to gain by offering some special pricing to edus.  As far as I
know, I haven't heard any mention of this (I specifically asked a RedHat
salesperson about this, although admittedly it was quite awhile ago).

> I agree wholeheartedly that we need to do something special for the
> unique needs of educational institutions, and we're working on
> something. If your educational institution would like to talk about
> finding a way to meet your Linux needs through Red Hat, I would be happy
> to arrange such a discussion.

I'm glad to hear that you are working on something.  There is a university linux
list (univ-linux at linux.duke.edu) that I'm sure would be interested in discussing
this with some folks at RedHat.