Re: Ubuntu and CDDs
On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 12:57:23PM +0200, Miguel A. Ar?valo wrote:
> > El mar, 28-09-2004 a las 11:50 +0200, Sergio Talens-Oliag escribi?:
> > > El Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 09:35:40AM -0400, Benj. Mako Hill va escriure:
> Clearly, not everyone agrees with you. People like regular time-based
> releases. People (especially companies) like *predictable* release
> cycles. The fact Debian can't say when the next release will be is
> worse than the fact that it might be 3+ years away in the eyes of many
> people.
Actually, I disagree. Companies like *stable* OS', hardware, and
support contracts that ensure liability. Most of the ones I've worked
at didn't care about release schedules for their internal operations
work. Every enterprise computing environment that I've worked (from
Honeywell to AT&T Wireless, to Matsushita, etc.) that was a Solaris
shop did not run the latest and greatest Solaris, in fact it was often
difficult to justify installing patch updates (the argument typically
was, who needs security patches when we are behind multiple layers of
firewalls on completely private networks and patches require an
planned outage and typically bring about unexpected behavior?).
Solaris 2.8 was out for years before I ever used it because all the
companies that I did consulting for were perfectly content with 2.6.
Who maybe cared slightly about release schedules was Wall Street, if
Sun fell far behind in their schedule for Solaris (this was very
common, and still is) they might have seen a dip or two in their
valuation, but nothing serious.
What these places did absolutely drool over were the platnum support
contracts that gave a legal requirement for Sun to be ON-SITE with
parts if necessary within 4 hours of making the initial call. This
also meant 24-hour live support, and I am not talking no-duh support,
but level-1 support that knew how to use the command-line and knew
their unix really well. The key to this was you were transferred to
the right support department. The point being, companies liked having
a contract they signed with another company that gave them the safety
net, and the place to sue when things didn't go right.
Big companies care about stability in their operations, not the latest
and greatest Gnome, in fact most of them wouldn't even use any
graphical X installation. Stability for these companies tended to mean
rock solid hardware, and when it wasn't solid the support contract to
have them replace it, with no down time.
Micah
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