[indymike]

> RHEL has 10 years of support, with the option of 13 years.

The problem here is that the people who need 13 years of support are perfectly OK with paying Red Hat for that. No one is saying that doesn't have great value if you need it... problem is you don't need it for an awful lot use cases.

[fragmede]

Red Hat didn't get to a billion dollar business on the back of not "needing it for an awful lot of use cases". We may not see it since we're developers reading HN, where it's all about the latest tech stack, but those 13 years if support are a huge money maker for Red Hat. They'd do 15 and 20 if their engineers wouldn't revolt. Outside of sexy tech is companies that want really really really stable, don't ever want to upgrade, and can afford to pay not to, until the very end. Hence that whole Y2K rush to update software.

There's a ton of Python 2 code still out there that won't get updated to 3 if it can be helped.

It doesn't look big, but it's like an iceberg. 9/10ths of it is invisible, and just sits there, raking in money.