On Thu, 2 Nov 2006 08:59:07 -0600, Jim Marshall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
-snip- >I see one factor is Support and how it works in the Open-Source world. >When I looked into this it is a bit different in the terminology. We use >SuSe Linux and first I needed "e-Maintenance" not to be confused >with "Support". This is true with SUSE as well as Red Hat. The difference is that Red Hat bundles the cost of support in with every license. Novell does not, so you can buy your support from Novell, or anyone else you feel comfortable with. -snip- >When things break the fixes come out of the Open-Source community when it >gets fixed. Not appealing for those used to PMR's and gettting PTF's when >things break. Not exactly true. Both Red Hat and SUSE will fix problems, and send the updates out as maintenance. They will then try to get those fixes integrated into the official source tree of the respective project. If a fix already exists in a newer version, they will try to "back port" the fix to the version they are shipping, since they are trying to minimize the amount of changes that happen during the life any particular version. >"Support" means you can actually call someone and report a problem. >Novell's offering was $13K for the rights to call and chat. Not much more >than that in the contract. This doesn't sound like any level of support I've seen documented from Novell. Usually, the differences between level of support involve things like "web or phone support," "time to respond," "days of the week when support is available" and things like that. In all cases, support means you have the right to report a problem and get it fixed. >IBM "Support" was more interesting. You call IBM on the same number as >z/OS, open a PMR, and IBM will create for a fix if needed. Then after you >are back working, IBM will staff the problem into the Open-Source >community to the party responsible. Then eventually the fix comes out in >the e-Maint process or new release. IBM is also available for questions, >etc, exactly like one does for z/OS. And this sounds like the type of support you have available from Novell and Red Hat. The difference being you're not calling the IBM Support Center, but rather the group of people that actually produced the distribution you're running. >I am told IBM has about 15-20% of the code in the SuSe Linux which much of >it has to do with I/O and exploiting zSeries. I know of sites who run Red- >Hat and work fine. I have not looked into IBM & Red-Hat offers offers >comparable to e-Maint and "Support". This is totally wrong. When IBM's Linux developers first contributed their code to the open source community in December of 1999, it amounted to a delta of about 5% to the existing code base. Both SUSE and Red Hat were able to pick up those changes and use them. The main difference since then (and it is much less of a difference with RHEL4, RHEL5 and SLES10) is that SUSE was more willing to incorporate IBM-contributed code that had not yet been accepted into the official Linux kernel source tree. With the release of the Linux 2.6 kernel series, IBM has been successful in getting almost all of their changes accepted fairly quickly. As a result, the differences in IBM contributions that appear in SUSE versus Red Hat are much more dependent on which kernel version is shipped in any particular distribution release. For more information on this, and other topics surrounding it, see "Selecting a Linux or Linux/390 Distribution" in the latest z/Journal at http://www.zjournal.com/index.cfm?section=article&aid=604 Mark Post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
