[talk] So Netgate bails on FreeBSD

[Steve]

I happen to do a lot of Linux; and while Red Hat has benefited the Linux 
community, they have made a surprising number of blunders that were in 
all likelihood fomented by having to kowtow to their Fortune 1000 base:

1. They were invested in MySQL. When Oracle bought MySQL and Red Hat did 
not like where they saw things going, did they switch over to postgres?
Nah -"we'll make our own MySQL: MariaDB!" That has done nothing but put 
their database users on an isolated tropical island.

2. I once asked a Redhat employee why would they choose to go with the 
gnome desktop as a standard over KDE [KDE is much easier to customize, 
has a desktop that supports touch, and is more likely to win over former 
corporate Windows users...] He angrily responded that the KDE project 
had onerous license issues WHICH HAD SINCE BEEN LIFTED. So they have to 
throw good money after bad now, remaining committed to gnome when they 
don't have to??

3. I had a civic-oriented application running on Linux that I needed to 
make sure I had an option for corporate support. I asked Redhat if there 
was a straightforward kernel options to switch off the selinux with (and 
perhaps use App Armor instead...); or for that matter, where a repo was 
that had the kernel compiled without it. [When you tell some user 
audiences concerned about privacy issues that the software has been 
developed under the auspices of the NSA -they're not too crazy about 
that...] I was told it was an impossibility to get Redhat/CentoOS that way.

4. And without going into details (unless somebody from Redhat wants to 
inquire...): their community is kabuki open; it's a club for employees 
and corporate customers.

The reason why Redhat exists is contractors like me sometimes get 
harassed by high end customers who insist on the option of getting a 24 
hour driver hotline for any of their regional offices in the U.S. (even 
if they don't require it TODAY, they want an assurance that such a thing 
can be requisitioned in about six weeks...) With CentOS, I can say the 
upgrade path is trivial.

But for other customers nowadays: debian or BSD. I also find a lot of 
techs who don't want to get into the details of the OS tend to pick 
Ubuntu; but their differing architectures can cause a lot of confusion 
when you have to run down a problem. Debian has gotten their shit MUCH 
tighter than years ago. But right now I am having to drop an app on 
Ubuntu because "it's what they know..."

On 5/23/2018 7:21 AM, Mark Saad wrote:
> All
>   So in today’s netgate newsletter I read about their new platform 
> tnsr . Digging into it some more I stumbled on “installing centos” 
> section.
>
> https://www.netgate.com/docs/tnsr/
>
> We so long and thanks for the fish .
>
> ---
> Mark Saad | mark.saad at ymail.com <mailto:mark.saad at ymail.com>
>
>
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