Re: [OS:N:] K12 and Red Hat

[Ryan Senior <rsenior cait org>]

I know exactly how you feel.  However the educational institution that I
am at is making the switch from Debian to Redhat, for exactly the reason
of support.  We wanted to purchase a few RHN accounts and ran into
similar problems that you did with the $2000 minimum purchase for POs
and we are not able to purchase with anything other than a PO.  I never
really got a reason as to why this is the case.  The only thing I could
think of is that maybe it costs Redhat a significant amount of overhead
to take POs and that they want to make sure that it is for a substantial
amount so they don't lose money when it goes to the paper pushers.

However the sales rep that I talked to said that they were trying to
change this policy, so let's hope that they do!

By the way, you mentioned APT for Debian, have you looked at
http://www.freshrpms.net ?  It's APT for Redhat.


Ryan



On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 19:24, David Tisdell wrote:
> Hi all,
> I don't know if this is an appropriate place to post
> this rant but I want to make sure Red Hat hears it as
> I am incredibly frustrated with them and they sponsor
> this list.
> As a company, what are peoples' experiences dealing
> with Red Hat?  I am seriously considering moving away
> from Red Hat because I find them so difficult to deal
> with. As a distribution I really like it and know it
> better than any of the others.I think the features of
> Res Hat network are very nice but when you try to
> purchase anything from Red Hat as an educational
> institution, they are incredibly unfriendly. In order
> to use a PO you must be buying at least $2000.00 worth
> of stuff. I deal with a lot of vendors and virtually
> all of them take school PO's without a problem no
> matter what the amount is. I run a few Linux servers;
> all but one on Red Hat and want to purchase Red Hat
> Network for them. They are making me jump through many
> hoops to get it since I am not buying $2000.00 worth.
> I am considering moving my servers to another
> distribution such as Debian. The updates you get
> through Apt-get are free and I don't have to fool
> around with a company that doesn't want to give me the
> time of day because I am not an 800 pound gorilla that
> is going to spend big bucks in one fell swoop. Red Hat
> has an opportunity to make real inroads into
> government and education and to take the posture they
> have seems quite ridiculous. It is a deterrent to
> schools and small municipalities. I am one of the only
> K12 open source advocates in my small state but there
> is a lot of interest in open source. I get queried by
> colleagues frequently on how to transition to Linux
> and open source apps. I find Red Hat pays a lot of lip
> service to doing things for education but their basic
> purchasing policy is anything but friendly. As my
> colleagues ask me for recommendations, I think I am
> going to start talking up other distros despite the
> fact that Red hat has one of the best organized
> support systems in the Linux world as they are so
> unfriendly to the little guys. What are other folks
> thoughts/experinces?
> Dave
> 
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-- 
Ryan Senior <rsenior cait org>