Le 18/12/2020 à 20:03, Mike McGrath a écrit : > > > On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 11:12 AM Mark Mielke <mark.mielke at gmail.com > <mailto:mark.mielke at gmail.com>> wrote: > > On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 9:58 AM Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com > <mailto:mmcgrath at redhat.com>> wrote: > >> I wanted to pay Red Hat for the services we received. I could > justify > >> this. However, we were looking at a $2M USD RHEL expense for > the next > >> year, and $4M USD for the year after that. I could not justify > this, > >> when so many alternatives existed that provide what was > substantially > >> the same content and service. > > I just explained how Red Hat's subscription model and pricing forced > me to review if we could justify a Red Hat cost increase from $0.5M > USD annually to $4M USD annually for essentially no increase in > service levels, and I found it was not. We could fund a small army > with $4M USD annually, and build our own distribution. This is at > least 20 people worth of salaries. > > Mike McGrath's answer below was not "I see your point, I will look > into this and fix this" as it should have been. Instead, his point was > "I think you are ignorant and not aware of our value." > > This level of arrogance ("having or revealing an exaggerated sense of > one's own importance or abilities") meant I was forced to reduce our > contribution to Red Hat from a value we were willing to pay of $0.5M, > down to <$0.1M, and with this new CentOS choice, it will likely drop > to $0, by investing in alternatives. > > I want it to be perfectly clear that Red Hat management is making Red > Hat a difficult proposition for us to sell, even for proponents and > admirers of Red Hat, and these choices have direct consequences on the > Red Hat bottom line. Most other vendors we work with provide large > discounts to support cases such as ours, so that it is a win/win. Red > Hat provided no such option, and effectively priced itself out of the > market. 2 years later when they saw that we were not bluffing, they > offered a discount that only kicks in above $1M, and would still be > about 20% discount. These terms are unacceptable. > > Do you think I wanted to use my technical skills to rip out Red Hat > binaries from everywhere in our company in a short time period? I > didn't. But, I had no choice. After a year of discussions, Red Hat > gave me no choice. > > Let's dissect Mike McGrath's answer in a little more detail: > > > I have to assume you actually downloaded and installed RHEL. To > do so you would have used our CDN and a fairly extensive (and > audited and secured) supply chain. > > Any large deployment cannot use Red Hat servers to deploy RHEL, but > requires in-house CDN. Also, any large deployment requires > customization, which then involves overlaying RHEL packages with > non-RHEL packages including packages from external sources such as > EPEL, and in-house packages. The CDN cost is therefore *ours*, not > *yours*. > > > Over 1,000 people work on the actual RHEL bits *after* the > community has already worked on it and many more support those > efforts. We push all our code upstream before we release it so > presumably, you got some value out of RHEL or you would have just > used upstream. > > We have a team of in-house people providing front-end support for our > users. Red Hat did not eliminate the need for this team. If we > quadrupled our installs as was projected, the brunt of this cost would > have been borne by our in-house team, not by Red Hat. The Red Hat > subscription model is broken. The Red Hat proposition becomes > problematic with scale. > > Red Hat may have 1,000 people working on hardening RHEL, but the > global community has millions of people, and the global community > includes people such as myself who contribute back. Red Hat's > contribution here is significant, but it is not infinite. I have > contributed to several fixes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Red Hat > deploys components that I have worked on. It's great that you > contribute back - just as it is great that all companies who work on > F/OSS portions of Linux contribute back. Red Hat is one of many > companies who contribute back, and this means that the Red Hat value > proposition is not infinite. If Red Hat prices itself out of the > market, how will Red Hat support these 1,000 people? How is choosing > to force me to reduce our RHEL deployment from $0.5M USD annually to > $0.1M USD annually, because of unacceptable subscription terms, in the > greater interest of Red Hat? > > > We also have an extensive KBase and are working for more "in > your face" ways to let you know something is up with your servers > via services like insights so you can fix them before there's an > impact to the services you run. > > This paywall service is sometimes useful, but most of the time > problematic. Our users don't have access to it. I usually avoid using > it wherever possible, and recommend it be avoided. This information > should be publicly accessible. > > > We have subject matter experts and sometimes project leads those > critical upstream projects. If you've got a strange problem, or > need a feature implemented, we've got the people who can solve > it. The best in the industry (at least for those who need the > best, not everyone does). > > So does Oracle, or Google, or AWS, or hundreds of others. I > participate on the devel mailing lists, and I pay attention to who > contributes and who provides answers. Red Hat is definitely on this > list, but Red Hat is not alone - and for the most part, this service > is a "cost of doing business", and not directly tied to a > subscription. When I had an issue with Qemu and live migrations of > nested virtualization, it was Oracle that contributed the fixes for > live migration of nested virtualization. I don't want to reduce the > value of Red Hat here - I want to make it clear that Red Hat is one of > several important players. > > > And finally, while you are only calculating Red Hat value via > support tickets..... It sounds like you rarely needed it so on > behalf of the engineering and QE team I'd say... you're welcome. > > Especially the "you're welcome" at the end is arrogance. Actually, Red > Hat has plenty of bugs after "hardening", many of which I have had to > deal with, including getting fixes made upstream. But, I don't find > Red Hat support that useful for this. Too often, I have to figure out > for myself what is wrong, and I may as well describe the problem on > bugzilla.redhat.com <http://bugzilla.redhat.com> myself. I don't > need to open a support ticket and > go through somebody else to do this. > > I know you don't want to hear my story. You would prefer the story > that Red Hat is awesome, that Red Hat can set whatever price they wish > and it should be considered a bargain, and anybody who disagrees is > ignorant. But, you are talking about your customers here - including > customers showing good will and willingness to negotiate. You forced > me to substantially remove Red Hat from our systems, by refusing to > negotiate acceptable terms. You did this. I didn't do this. > > -- > Mark Mielke <mark.mielke at gmail.com <mailto:mark.mielke at gmail.com>> > > > Mark, I've heard responses like this for two weeks. You describe me > as arrogant, and not listening, and I can only assume that you think > we at Red Hat are fools who don't understand the enterprise. You've > used a lot of fairly charged language in your response and you and > many others have the "I'm going to show Red Hat" attitude. The > problem is, and I think too few people realize this: > > Red Hat isn't aiming for total global domination > > So when you say I forced you to go somewhere else. You have to > understand that in the open-source world, and in Red Hat's business > plan, we know alternatives exist. That's the whole point of it. If > you don't like the level of service you're getting. Go somewhere > else. But don't pretend that the RHEL bits don't matter and that > minimizing RHEL's contributions on a CentOS-devel mailing list will > teach us something. You posted that your relationship with Red Hat > boils down to cost per ticket - you did that, not me. I think if > we've learned anything in the last two weeks it's that the bits seem > to matter very much to people. They matter so much that people are > feverishly trying to recreate RHEL instead of going to one of those > many alternatives that already exist. > > Just know that I mean it when I say, for those of you that are moving > on. We wish you luck, we understand, and we'll see you around. > > -Mike It's sad to say, but CentOS-devel mailing list was more intersting without some Red Hat proud boys. Jean-Marc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/attachments/20201218/d168e248/attachment-0005.html>