FC2 Issues

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, Sean Estabrooks wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 16:54:11 +0000
> "Christensen Tom" <paveraware at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I would just like to publicly voice my complete and utter disatisfaction 
> > with you people.  Redhat has been my linux of choice for 6 years, and I 
> > appreciated FC1, but since I can't install FC2 because of 2 very huge bugs 
> > (the dual booting bug, and the Asus Mobo bug) that were known well in 
> > advance of release, and were not fixed, and remain unfixed, I will never be 
> > using or recommending a redhat product ever again.  You have seriously 
> > destroyed a good product and a good name by not following the #1 tenet of 
> > open source software, namely RELEASE WHEN ITS READY!!!  How could you let 2 
> > bugs of this magnitude go completely unresolved through 3 test releases and 
> > the final release when you knew about both of them immediately after test 1 
> > was released in February??!!  Get your act together re-release new ISOs that 
> > fix these 2 problems within 2 weeks or you are costing redhat an estimated 
> > 50k/yr in licenses that I control.  We will be moving to Novell/Suse.
> > Thank you,
> > Tom Christensen
> > 
> 
> You have to do what you think is right.   But you're not showing a very
> deep understanding of the situation.   

Actually, I think it's *you* who's not showing a very deep understanding 
of the situation.

> To start with, Fedora has a very
> remote (if any) relationship to any RedHat _product_.   FEDORA IS 
> **NOT** A MISSION CRITICAL PRODUCTION READY PRODUCT.   
> Why that is so hard for people to understand is beyond me.    Buy a 
> RedHat product, don't vent on a community project which apparently 
> has  nothing to do with you or your needs.   

There are probably two reasons why he's so upset:

1) Intellectual: Redhat radically changed the focus of the product when 
they changed it from RHL to FC.  For a large portion of us, RHL met our 
needs.  For another large portion of us, FC does not.  So, we had a 
product that we loved and could rely upon, and now (as you stated), FC 
does not.  So we now have to spend the time and effort to find a distro 
that *does* meet our needs, time and effort that are dearly needed 
elsewhere.  Plus, some of us staked our professional reputations on RHL 
and the migration path from RHL to RH.  That path no longer exists, 
because there is no way in hell that I (for one) will ever install FC2 on 
a client's production server.  Used to be I could install RHL and show 
them how things could be better than Windows, then get them to purchase 
RHN or RHEL.  No longer.

2) Denial, grief and anger are standard emotional responses in any loss.  
When you get emotionally invested in something and it gets 
taken away, you *will* have "loss issues".  Case in point:  I was *proud* 
to be using RHL, I promoted it at every opportunity, to everybody, secure 
in the knowledge that it was stable and each release would be supported 
long enough to be a viable windows replacement.  Now that RHL is gone and 
FC doesn't even pretend to be a replacement,  I feel like the rug's been  
jerked out from under me.  

- At first I tried to deny that RHL was gone, thinking that I could just  
use FC and things would go on.  

- Then I got angry.  How *dare* RH remove the product that I loved so much 
and replace it with something that was *designed* to force me to buy 
a product?  How dare they remove the product that I used to bragg about to 
all of my family, friends, and acquaintences?

- Then I started trying to "make deals" with folks on this list.  "If only 
the FC developers" would do x, y, or z, then we'd be okay.  We'd be back 
to that good ol' RHL once again, just with another name.

- Then I got depressed.  I'd lost a friend, after all.  Or perhaps that 
friend became permanently crippled is a better way to look at it.

- Now I'm somewhere between the depressed and acceptance stages.  I've 
realized that FC is simply not going to be able to live up to RHL and I'm 
going to have to find another home.  It's a shame, really, because now 
that our shop is moving to linux, we very well may move to Novell's SuSe 
instead of RHEL.  We're evaluating Open Exchange as I type this, and it's 
been very cool.  We like Novell's track record on support and stability.  
RH's lost the one advantage that they had, which was that we could test 
things out for free and then upgrade when we were ready.  Now that they no 
longer have that advantage, Novell's looking better for corporate 
customers.

So, yes, he's upset.  I was also.  I'm learning to let go.  I'm still on 
this list to learn.  But unfortunately the FC community has decided that 
FC is to be an OS by geeks for geeks.  This is fine, as I'm a geek and 
enjoy messing with unstable distros for fun.  But IMHO, RH's move removed 
the last free, stable distro that was appropriate for the masses.  You may 
think that this is okay.  Myself, I'm still grieving.

Ben