On Tue Mar 04, 2003 at 10:52:18PM -0500, Jim Hubbard wrote: > I think that now is a really good time for Mandrake to reconsider their "end > of life" policy. Here's how I see it: Redhat has effectively shut out the > very folks who made their distro popular by changing their update system to > a paid service and by saying that they'll only support a release for 1 year. > So now no admin in his right mind would download Redhat and install it on a > server or even purchase the standard box set for a server installation. In > fact, really the only viable Redhat server solution today is the "Advanced > Server" product. It's been a real double barrel slap in the face for many > loyal Redhat users. > > Mandrake right now has the opportunity to gather many of those disillusioned > Redhat users in one fell swoop by announcing that they will provide security > updates for the upcoming 9.1 release for 3 years. Mandrake uses a superior > system for distributing updates (one that doesn't overload their own > servers), so that, coupled with Mandrake's excellent utilities, puts the > equation already in Mandrake's favor as opposed to Suse and other distros. > Now all that is needed is a clearly longer and reasonable support term and > Mandrake will be THE choice for small time admins wanting to leave Redhat. > This should be done before a group forms to build free updates for Redhat > products after EOL, which will happen I think in about a year when dead > versions start piling up.
Corporate Server 2.1 was just announced, and it has a 3 year life policy. It's also cheaper than RHAS I believe. There is your choice. Supporting 9.1 for 3 years isn't an option. Mandrake Linux 9.1 is a desktop OS and while it works quite nicely on servers, that is not it's intended (read: support from us) function. That being said, someone using 9.0 can use the updates from Corporate Server with a minimum of fuss because Corporate Server is based on 2.1. Yes, not everything will be updated due to the differences in packages (ie. no updates for gaim, etc.) but the basic stuff for servers will be. In essence, 9.0 has just received an unofficial lifetime of 3 years. Next year, when the next Corporate Server comes out (IIRC likely based on 10.0), users using 10.0 will get unofficial updates for 3 years (and by unofficial I mean these updates will be for Corporate Server, which will likely be based upon 10.0). > I realize that supporting an old distro costs a lot of money and Mandrake is > currently broke. I also realize that Mandrake has already stated their own > EOL policy. However, I believe that if Mandrake can see this opportunity > and capitalize on it, their user base will expand greatly. Otherwise, many > admins will simply bite the bullet and learn how to live with Debian. I > like Mandrake's commitment to open-source, and I think they have the best > distro out there overall. But for now, I have to choose Debian. I hope > Mandrake can give me a reason to do otherwise. Without more immediate resources, we just aren't able to do this. The EOL policy was put into place for a reason; changing that now and going against the very reason for doing it in the first place isn't an option. -- MandrakeSoft Security; http://www.mandrakesecure.net/ Online Security Resource Book; http://linsec.ca/ "lynx -source http://linsec.ca/vdanen.asc | gpg --import" {FE6F2AFD : 88D8 0D23 8D4B 3407 5BD7 66F9 2043 D0E5 FE6F 2AFD}
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