Re: support for RedHat distributions

[Duncan Napier <dgnapier@sfu.ca>]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Leslie E. Ballentine wrote:

> 
> How did Linux live and thrive before RedHat?  Perhaps the community should 
> revert to the previous model, whatever it was.
> 

That model is basically Debian, which is an offshoot (or arguably, the
final goal) of the GNU project. Debian's objective IS a free OS. It
has a reputation for being rock-solid and well-maintained. Its
disadvantages are 

1. slowness to implement new features (presumeably due to its maintainers
taking a cautions approach to new features)
2. lack of support by commercial vendors
3. it is not RPM-based (this is from the current SFU maintainance
standpoint)

see

http://www.debian.org/

As to moving to SuSE, that may be fine for the short term, but what is
there to stop SuSE from discontinuing its free distributions as well?
Especially if RedHat is successful with its new business model. 

Perhaps we should resign ourselves to having to ultimately pay for
Linux at some point. (This is not unreasonable, in my opinion).