On Wednesday 23 July 2003 06:48, Stefan van der Eijk wrote: > Main difference (IMHO, from what I've seen): > > * urpmi is a cash generator. You need to pay (or tollerate being > nagged every 60 days) to use it;
I think you mean up2date is a cash generator; urpmi is more a cash drainer for Mandrake: They pay people to code urpmi and keep the repositories up to date, but since not a single Mandrake user knows how cool urpmi is it generates $0 in new sales. Of course if everyone knew how cool urpmi was, that'd be a different story. I recently managed to get someone off of Debian after two years of listening to him bitch about how "Woe is me, Debian is so out of date, but I can't live without apt-get, and I can't believe anything like that could work for rpm." > * up2date can't connect to more "media". With urpmi it's possible to > configure multiple media and have different media servicing > different environments --> /chroot/9.0 uses --media=9.0, > /chroot/9.1 uses --media =9.1, etc) If you run up2date from within the chroots (using /chroot/8.1/usr/sbin/up2date, /chroot/9/usr/sbin/up2date, etc., and the corresponding /chroot/*/etc/whatever-up2date-uses) they can each have their own media (by selecting a different service and/or by having a different /etc/redhat-release file). What you can't do is update a _single_ environment from multiple media (e.g., the way most people have main, contribs, update, and plf as media and urpmi searches all of them). > * Nice thing about up2date is the web interface where it's possible > to manage packages on your system(s); If we got gnorpm working again, we'd have the same functionality, wouldn't we? And you forgot another big difference: * up2date has an automated update system, which (IIRC) can tell you when new updates are available, optionally automatically download them for you when your online and idle, and even more optionally automatically install them for you. > Has anybody provided an alternative service for RHN / up2date? This > should be possible, since which service you connect to is configureable, > and the up2date software itself is open. Just putting the server part > together. I think the server software is also open source. So just get a server and run it, right? > Leverage the Internet mirrors or torent, and price it at 50% > of what RHN costs... You can't call it RedHat, then make it > RedCapNetwork...Why not? In my last post, I suggested a group of Redhat users running such a service for free. But yeah, I guess the same idea could also be used to run the service for half price. RedCapNetwork could still be a trademark violation; if your name is intended to or likely to confuse or mislead a "reasonable" customer, you can't use it. So, if you're sure it'd be obvious to any reasonable person you (or Redhat's lawyers) can imagine that RCN isn't the same thing as RHN, you'd be fine, but I'm not sure it is, and Redhat probably has better lawyers than you. Why not just call it "Up2date Network"? Or, if they've trademarked "up2date" just "RPM Update Network." > RedHat made a biz-model out of keeping systems up2date, which makes > sense. Mandrake built a technically superior product (IMHO), but just > forgot the biz-model... I doubt up2date is a substantial piece of Redhat's revenue; I just don't see how a subscription service for a free distribution that anyone else can give away updates for isn't going to make you rich. Especially when you give it to individuals and non-commercial organizations for free, and you throw it in with the service contracts you sell to corporate customers. Now, if you throw in a few proprietary programs (which users _can't_ just share with each other or set up their own mirrors for)... well, then you have MandrakeClub minus the goodwill. Which might make you half as rich and successful as Mandrake....
