Red Hat pulls the plug on its 'free' Linux line

L33tdawg: This is major bad news for everyone concerned but worry not -- there's always BSD :)

RedHat came out yesterday with a mail to the registered users of RHN (RedHat
Network) stating the following:

Thank you for being a Red Hat Network customer.

This e-mail provides you with important information about the upcoming
discontinuation of Red Hat Linux, and resources to assist you with your
migration to another Red Hat solution.

As previously communicated, Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata
support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 as of December 31, 2003. Red
Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 9 as
of April 30, 2004. Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the
Red Hat Linux line.

With the recent announcement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3, you'll find
migrating to Enterprise Linux appealing. We understand that transitioning to
another Red Hat solution requires careful planning and implementation. We
have created a migration plan for Red Hat Network customers to help make the
transition as simple and seamless as possible. Details:

If you purchase Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS or ES Basic before February 28,
2004, you will receive 50% off the price for two years.[*] (That's two years
for the price of one.)

So basically they are abandoning the 'free' part of linux forever. If you
want to use their packaging of the free OS, you have to pay them. In fact,
linux seems to be free for them to take, but not free anymore for people to
use. Very interesting. We all knew it would have happened. It was in the
air. Even Novell has acquired Ximian in the hope of building his own
desktop. RedHat is going to serve only its paying customer. Suse does not
let you download the ISO images anymore. Also Mandrake is not so cheap
anymore...