More Oracle Open Source Fallout

[Matthew Gillen]

On 10/17/2010 07:04 PM, Bill Horne wrote:
> I disagree: Red Hat did not "let" people do anything. They were required 
> to release the source because of the license they abused when they tried 
> (and, thank Ghod, failed) to repackage Linux as a proprietary operating 
> system.
> 
> Red Hat is, IMNSHO, a discredit to the open-source movement, to the 
> community of users (I was one) they conned into promoting their brand 
> name, and to the once-innocent cadre of coders who have seen their work 
> repackaged and hyped for commercial profit.
> 
> If I had my way, I'd change Red Hat's street address to "Manor Farm Road".

I sense that Redhat slighted you personally, but I have to strongly
disagree about the bigger picture.

You're right Redhat doesn't "let" CentOS, Whitebox, etc exist, in the
same way that Microshaft "lets" Mono exist with special patent
exemptions.  But there is a major difference in my perception of how
Redhat fits in.  Redhat got into the game both knowing the rules (that
the GPL would allow derivative products), and actively promoting them.

That's not the same as promoting CentOS, but you'll notice that they
haven't really thrown a fit about it either (at least not publicly; the
one exception being the removal of all RH logos and branding from
CentOS, which IMO is totally justified and the Apache foundation would
ask the same thing of someone deriving a product from one of their
projects).

Redhat contributes, AFAIK, more than any other commercial entity to the
kernel and scores of other core projects in the linux ecosystem.  Yes,
they are motivated by profit, but they actively push changes back to the
upstream projects (again, I realize they don't do it for charity, they
do it because it makes their own maintainance costs lower if they can
get upstream to support their patches, but the end result is that all
linux distros get better; they understand that they are helping their
competition and that doesn't keep them from doing it).

If there's a way to make money as a linux distributor, I don't see how
you could do it and be a better community member than Redhat is...

Matt

PS: I'm not a Redhat employee :-)