On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 13:04, Chuck Wolber wrote: Let us be really careful how we use the word "support". Maintenance for all existing RHL products (Maintenance is defined as bugfix, security fix, and enhancement packages) is set on a timetable for each release. The timetable for maintenance for a release is "at least twelve months", with no guarantees beyond that. So, lets look at the RHL products that still exist: Red Hat Linux 9 (Shrike) April 30, 2004 Red Hat Linux 8.0 (Psyche) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Valhalla) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.2 (Enigma) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.1 (Seawolf) December 31, 2003 (pulled from http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/) All older RHL products have been End-Of-Lifed. RHEL has a longer maintenance life-cycle. RHEL products have maintenance "for a period of 5 years from initial release", with no guarantees beyond that. This means that RHEL 2.1 has maintenance until May 31, 2007 (happy birthday to me). Lots more details about RHEL's maintenance policy at: http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/rhlas_errata_policy.html Now Support (note that I've capitalized it), in the sense of being able to file a trouble ticket (by phone, email, or web) with Red Hat Global Support Services (GSS) is only available for RHEL. So, there is currently no Support for RHL products (7.1-9). In the past, we were Supporting the RHL 7.* series for RHEL customers who planned to migrate, but that offer has expired. You can still file Bugzilla reports on products that are not end-of-lifed (actually, i think you can file them on eol'd products too, we're just not going to do much about them), and Red Hat still encourages this, but there is no SLA (Service Level Agreement) around the resolution of RHL bugs. Now, how does all of this affect RHLP? Not much. If you want guaranteed errata from Red Hat for more than a year or Support, RHEL is where you need to be looking. RHLP serves to meet the needs of Linux users who do not need a long-life-cycle product with guaranteed Support & Maintenance. We're just taking RHL from a product to a project (with scheduled point releases). Does that help to clear it up? ~spot --- Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> SAIR LCA, RHCE Red Hat Enterprise Architect :: http://www.redhat.com Project Leader for Aurora Sparc Linux :: http://auroralinux.org GPG: D786 8B22 D9DB 1F8B 4AB7 448E 3C5E 99AD 9305 4260 The words and opinions reflected in this message do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, Red Hat, and belong solely to me. "Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal." --- T. S. Eliot