Cluster Poll Results (tangent into OS choices) - options

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Mike Snitzer wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 31 2003 at 13:37,
> Wei Deng <weideng at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 02:44:59PM -0500, Vann H. Walke wrote:
> > > - OSCAR / Rocks / etc...  - generally installed on top of another
> > > distribution.  We still have to pick a base distribution.
> > 
> > From what I heard from Rocks mailing list, they will release 3.1.0 the 
> > next Month, which will be based on RHEL 3.0, compiled from source code 
> > that is publicly available, and free of charge.
> 
> Rebuilding RHEL3 into a freebie-ripoff version doesn't pass the smile-test
> for corporations trying to coexist and actually work with Red Hat.  Why
> not focus that questionable rebuilding effort on a more worthwhile task?
> E.g. porting Fedora Core to support amd64, ia64, etc; adding features to
> Fedora Core that are relevant to clustering, etc.

i think that any proprietory sw should be avoided if it requires $$$ and
licenses

unfortunately, sometimes, 3rd party sw is built and tested against things
like RH - AS and its permutations and derivatives .. so my feeling is to
avoid those 3rd party vendors too

- it's a choice of:
	- pay RH licenses ( cheaper than an inhouse $150K/yr linux guy ??)
	- get an in-house linux dude that can support all the GPL stuff
	and tweek it to your needs/requirements
	- buy/get a "free" distro that has most of the apps you need

- working on the lastest/breatest pre-release or beta/alpha release
  implies you have lots of in-house development expertise or the 
  ability to manipulate the vendors priorities to fix the bugs you find

- am thinking, ( naively ? )  why is it so hard to get a distro that does
  what one needs and avoid "license fees" 
	- what's so special ... 
	- in every instance that a 3rd party vendor required
	xx-linux-version-0.5 ... i've been able to make those apps work
	on the latest/greatest version of said vendor or other distro

	- reading the various sw licenses is also a full time job too :-)

- support should be done by in-house staff, or outsourced  to
  expensive "support outfits" like rh, ibm, and few
  others

	- doing support in house is best, if staff is available, in
	which case, the fact that redhat is not providing support for
	older distros is a non-issue ..


<big rant>
	- the fact that redhat and other distro wants to collect
	license fee or break something that used to work in prior releases
	is a big problem in my book, especially when 90%-99% of the
	apps that's running is all GPL'd

	- but, on the bright side, at least rh, is directly or indirectly
	doing and supporting a lot of development work that is released as
	gpl 
</rant>

have fun
alvin

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