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The closing of Fedora Legacy Linux returns us to the question of linking community support with the bottom line.
In a December 30 posting to the Fedora Legacy List, which supported
the extended-release version of RedHat's Fedora, engineer Jesse Keating
said a lack of volunteers and contributions led to the decision.
The closing of Fedora Legacy Linux returns us to the question of linking community support with the bottom line.
In a December 30 posting to the Fedora Legacy List, which supported
the extended-release version of RedHat's Fedora, engineer Jesse Keating
said a lack of volunteers and contributions led to the decision.
Now Novell is piling on, linking its latest lead in Linux download statistics directly to RedHat's decision not to raise its contribution to the Legacy project.
The claim is subject to dispute. Novell's gain may the result of its
deal with Microsoft, or it may be temporary. But the depth of
obligation open source vendors owe to their communities is still worthy
of discussion.
It's a tough balancing act. Vendors like RedHat face financial
demands from internal developers, support groups, enterprise customers
and stockholders, as well as their communities. And, as Keating noted
in another message, RedHat was not the only company that perhaps should have given more.
In the case of Fedora Legacy, moreover, RedHat faced the prospect of
competing with itself, pouring money into an effort that would delay
upgrades by its own customer base. It made business sense to rely on
volunteers.
Or did it? Ubuntu, which has an active international list of
contributors, has also pushed ahead of Fedora in downloads. This is
helping Canonical, a small firm in the Irish Sea (actually
the Isle of Man, above) which offers paid Ubuntu support. And Novell,
with its Microsoft millions, must once again be seen as a serious
competitor.
So did RedHat do the right thing here, in a business sense? Opinions
don't matter in this case the bottom line is the bottom line.
Read the original article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=900 |
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