[GLLUG] FReexian ELTS and Ubuntu Pro (Was Re: Ubuntu versus Debian)

[Andy Smith]

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 24, 2024 at 07:10:10PM +0100, Carles Pina i Estany via GLLUG wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 23, 2024 at 09:57:55AM +0000, Tim Woodall via GLLUG wrote:
> > > On Wed, 14 Aug 2024, Alan Pope via GLLUG wrote:
> > > > They then make that paid work available for free to the Ubuntu community if
> > > > they enable Ubuntu Pro.
> 
> To me, what was described would be Freexian LTS (not ELTS).

They both (LTS and ELTS) are providing security backports for Debian
packages past the end of the stable release by having sponsors pay
consultants to make the packages. The produced packages are
available for free to everyone in the world. LTS updates go into the
Debian archive; ELTS updates are only in Freexian's archives but are
still publicly available.

The Freexian LTS sponsors pay a quarterly or yearly fee on one of
several different tiers. The lowest tier, basic, is €255+VAT per
year. The highest tier, platinum, is €24,480 per year. Paying more
puts more person-hours into the pool and increases the priority of
your package list. At bronze level (€1,020 per year) or above you
get access to a private mailing list to ask the LTS people for
advice, and even higher tiers get to talk directly to the Freexian
consultants. They try to support the whole Debian archive for the
main architectures in priority order until the hours run out, but do
exclude some things. The support lasts for 2 more years beyond the
end of Debian stable.

All of these details and more are at:

    https://www.freexian.com/lts/debian/

Freexian ELTS is more limited. Instead of the whole archive it is
strictly packages that have been quoted for. It costs hugely more
than LTS sponsorship as discussed. This support lasts another 5
years.

The Freexian LTS consultants bill Freexian at €85/hour but it is
noted on https://www.freexian.com/lts/debian/details/ that this is
less than what Freexian charges sponsors, so each €255 paid covers
something less than 3 person-hours. I do not know if ELTS developers
are paid at the same rate.

> > > > They then make that paid work available for free to the Ubuntu community if
> > > > they enable Ubuntu Pro.
> 
> Above is similar to Freexian LTS ( https://www.freexian.com/lts/debian/ )

The topic of this sub thread is how it's NOT similar because you
have to pay for Ubuntu Pro if you want it for business use, and if
you want it free for personal use you have to sign up for an
account. Freexian's output is available for free without
registration. You (optionally) pay for the project to exist at all
and to secondarily have some minor influence on their priorities.

Also I suggest that Ubuntu Pro's support is probably more complete
over the more limited set of packages they cover (Ubuntu
main+universe is much smaller than Debian, but Freexian probably
don't manage to cover more packages than Ubuntu Pro do, and not for
as long). In short, you pay in some way for Ubuntu Pro and in
return get more certainty.

So I see more difference than commonality in these proposals.

Perhaps it could be possible to get figures for the total
person-hours paid for Freexian LTS and maybe compare it to what is
known of the number of full time engineers that Canonical is
employing for Ubuntu Pro.

Though even if Freexian stopped doing this I would still personally
prefer Debian at present.

Thanks,
Andy

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