Red Hat rumors and OS Support (fwd)

some interesting info on the future of "support"f or some RH versions.

-m

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 14 Aug 2003 14:24:16 -0500
From: Tom 'spot' Callaway <tcallawa@redhat.com>
Reply-To: rhl-devel-list@redhat.com
To: rhl-devel-list@redhat.com
Subject: Re: OS Support

On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 13:04, Chuck Wolber wrote:
> So... Is the rumor true that as of December 31, 2003 there won't be any
> supported OS from RH other than the Enterprise line? If so, what will
> happen to this list and the initiative behind it?

Let us be really careful how we use the word "support".

Maintenance for all existing RHL products (Maintenance is defined as
bugfix, security fix, and enhancement packages) is set on a timetable
for each release. The timetable for maintenance for a release is "at
least twelve months", with no guarantees beyond that.

So, lets look at the RHL products that still exist:

Red Hat Linux 9 (Shrike)        April 30, 2004
Red Hat Linux 8.0 (Psyche)     December 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Valhalla)   December 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 7.2 (Enigma)     December 31, 2003
Red Hat Linux 7.1 (Seawolf)    December 31, 2003

(pulled from http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/)

All older RHL products have been End-Of-Lifed.

RHEL has a longer maintenance life-cycle. RHEL products have maintenance
"for a period of 5 years from initial release", with no guarantees
beyond that. This means that RHEL 2.1 has maintenance until May 31, 2007
(happy birthday to me). Lots more details about RHEL's maintenance
policy at:
http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/rhlas_errata_policy.html

Now Support (note that I've capitalized it), in the sense of being able
to file a trouble ticket (by phone, email, or web) with Red Hat Global
Support Services (GSS) is only available for RHEL. So, there is
currently no Support for RHL products (7.1-9). In the past, we were
Supporting the RHL 7.* series for RHEL customers who planned to migrate,
but that offer has expired.

You can still file Bugzilla reports on products that are not
end-of-lifed (actually, i think you can file them on eol'd products too,
we're just not going to do much about them), and Red Hat still
encourages this, but there is no SLA (Service Level Agreement) around
the resolution of RHL bugs.

Now, how does all of this affect RHLP? Not much. If you want guaranteed
errata from Red Hat for more than a year or Support, RHEL is where you
need to be looking. RHLP serves to meet the needs of Linux users who do
not need a long-life-cycle product with guaranteed Support &
Maintenance. We're just taking RHL from a product to a project (with
scheduled point releases).

Does that help to clear it up?

~spot
---
Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> SAIR LCA, RHCE
Red Hat Enterprise Architect :: http://www.redhat.com
Project Leader for Aurora Sparc Linux :: http://auroralinux.org
GPG: D786 8B22 D9DB 1F8B 4AB7 448E 3C5E 99AD 9305 4260

The words and opinions reflected in this message do not necessarily
reflect those of my employer, Red Hat, and belong solely to me.

"Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal." --- T. S. Eliot


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