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Red Hat Claims They Started The Open Source Revolution
thrillbert writes: "According to this article, Red Hat is claiming to be the starter of the open-source movement." The article talks about several companies in the area (include the one that owns this site). I don't have the heart to comment on this. I can't say I'm surprised, but I'd tend to think a lot of others might deserve more credit. RMS (sure he'd hate the term Open Source, but he deserves credit). ESR will just take the credit.(Update:Its a joke! I was kidding! Stop flaming!) But Linus isn't even mentioned. I mean, Michael Tiemann and Red Hat deserve lots of credit for helping make Linux mainstream, but starting it?
This may come as a shocker too...
But uh Al Gore created the Internet
And if you step this way I have a bridge I want to sell you...
"If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten."
-- George Carlin
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
We've both contributed. That's good enough for us -- and I'm quite willing to believe that his quote was truncated or mangled worse than mine.
>>esr>>
> yea that $0 really hurt me
Also, for those who pick up a box at Best Buy, Red Hat is back to selling a $29.95 edition, which is more in line with what the other distros have been doing. I think the more expensive boxes are just a differential in the amount of support you get.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
--
I'd moderate the parent up if I could.
>>esr>>
Duh. I'm trying to lose all my karma, nothing against you personally. :)
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
If there were ever two true things that could be said about the internet it's that Al Gore, "took the initiative to create the internet", and that Red Hat started the open source movement. Come on people this is common knowledge!
In fact it would be pretty improbable for any one company to start an open source revolution, because it IS open, OS started with individuals, they got in touch, more people joined...
There probably was no 'start' as such, an idea reaches its time (as all TP readers should know).
I'd really hope that this is just media flaimbait, cos well that is how they make a living after all...
Otherwise it is way beyond the ridiculous...
And to take things a bit further I can't believe that all these schisms are doing anyone any good, the more time we spend fighting about who did what at uncle Jeremiah's wedding the less that get's done.
If we want to get involoved in the sort of dumb infighting that goes on in politics shouldn't we be running for parliment/congress/etc
If Redhat fuck up in such a major way as is suggested then they are just cutting thier own throats, because we are the people supporting them, and we know all the alternative sites.
They aren't big enough to play the MS game.
Maybe they've just hired some new PR bunnies and they escaped before the training finished.
~ppppppppö
Your argument is equivalent to saying that the world's first prostitute invented sex.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
the bill that Al Gore sponsored in Congress created something very specific, with a particular name... now, what was that name?
/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html)
NSFNet. Gore's bill, the Supercomputer Network Act of 1986, established the NSFNet in 1986.
The Internet was born four years earlier, without Mr. Gore's assistance. (See http://www.isoc.org/gu est
Steven E. Ehrbar
- desi
> This is the problem that we face. We see it day in and day out. We criticize those people who subscribe to the fact that mainstream media is "fact", but sometimes lose sight of the quest for the real truth. Our postings on this article(for the most part) are heir apparent of this. We are all guilty of it.
That's the Joy of Slashdot. We get a link to a half-baked story along with a half-baked commentary from one of the Slashstaff, we all jump in and shoot our mouths off, and a (hopefully) better picture slowly emerges.
I can hardly stand to read the traditional news sources any more, since there aren't any curmudgeons and subject matter experts posting comments to cut through the crap and bring out the essence of what's going on.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The story makes it sound like you heard
the speech. If so, could you clarify whether
Michael Tiemann was speaking for himself,
for Cygnus or for entire RedHat? What was
the context?
That's beside the point. What we are upset about are the heinous claims that Red Hat started the Open Source movement. That is incredibly stupid, or this could just be some bad journalism on cnet's part. Tiemann could very well have been referencing the GNU project, and his quote could have been misconstrued.
>But when the leader gets arrogant and starts taking credit where credit is NOT due (a la microsoft), it might be time to take them out.
Then what about all the articles that are Pro-Linux and are written with a tone that, without Linux there would be no open source, or the only open source OS is linux, or calling companies to task when they call themselfs an Open Source Research Lab and the only thing the do is linux.
If you are unwilling to smack down the other wrong usage, don't be suprised when things like this happen.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
In high school in 1980, we were writing and trading source code written on Apple ]['s, and happy to be sharing our knowledge and learning from each other. So maybe it was Steve Wozniak who started open-source/free-software/whatever, because he made the conscious decision that Applesoft would be interpreted to encourage sharing of source code. He had a history of open technology, like with wiring diagrams in the old Homebrew Computer Club (?). True enough, RMS was espousing it around the same time.
Then again, they were just following in the age-old intellectual tradition of sharing knowledge, like how academia is supposed to be. Like what a civilized society does. It comes quite naturally to any cooperation-minded person.
But even before them I would call attention to guys like Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen, who embodied the ideals that open source aims at WAAAAYYYY back in the early 60's. (anyone care to guess who they were?). These were some of the orginal hackers. These guys were freely sharing code before virtually 99% of the people reading this were born. RMS, Cygnus, and RedHat are new kids on the block. All they did was take a philosphy and capitalize on it. The movement has been around for a long time, and it is only now that the rest of the world is noticing what a lot of us have been doing for decades.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
I'll admit it, I didn't read the article. And 1/2 of you probably didn't either. But are you angry at Redhat right now?
"We did start the open-source revolution," chief technology officer Michael Tiemann boasted at a WR Hambrecht conference on open-source companies. Tiemann also declared victory over Microsoft's effort to push into handheld computers and over Red Hat's Linux rivals in general.
This sounds like drunk talk to me. Just imagine Tieman with a yew 'Jaegies' in him talking to the ladies. He's overheard by the sneaky reporter hiding amongst the shadows.
That, or some creative quoting. Certainly wouldn't be the first time.
Matthew
orasoft.org
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
Wow, I'm really impressed, for once, with C|Net's reporting. Normally they'd just get down on their knees and bob their head enthusiastically if RedHat (or any other company) delcared something like this. I can't believe that author Stephen Shankland, whose name I don't recognize from the usual roster of news.com writers, would be so bold as to interview Bruce and ESR. Yay.
-Waldo
I like to drink
~ppppppppö
The trademark is still actually owned by Software in Public Interest
Insofar as the vacuum of space is owned by Software in Public Interest, that's an accurate statement.
You see, the USPTO denied the registration request by saying that "Open Source" is a "descriptive term" that cannot be registered. So in the U.S. at least, nobody owns it. (That is, nobody has any legally enforcable rights to the term.)
Steven E. Ehrbar
Wow, they were all Johnny Come Latelies. What about Berekely and Joy, Allman, and the rest of the BSD tradition? What about MIT and X? What about UMich and Maryland? And CMU? Wow, RMS, ESR, and Torvalds just jumped on the bandwagon.
They only quoted seven words from Tiemann:
"We did start the open-source revolution"
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it might have been taken out of context. Nowhere does it say that "we" == Red Hat, or that they didn't say "We did start the open-source revolution as far as big business is concerned," or anything else.
Seems a little presumptuous to base an entire article on seven words. How about some context?
(Of course, that said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Red Hat were getting a big head.)
If by "started" they mean "capitalized on" then I would tend to agree.
They've got it all wrong.
We all know that Al Gore started the Open Source movement.
----
Dharma
This is the problem that we face. We see it day in and day out. We criticize those people who subscribe to the fact that mainstream media is "fact", but sometimes lose sight of the quest for the real truth. Our postings on this article(for the most part) are heir apparent of this. We are all guilty of it.
ESR: Perhaps you could shed some insight on Tiemann's unabridged quote?
I've been using RedHat for quite a while now, and I'm more and more disappointed, both with the quality of their products and the direction and attitude of the company. This is the last straw for me; Debian is going on _tonight_... (screw that 8:00 am exam).
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"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
Well since Phil Hughes introduced linux to Bob Young I kinda find it hard to swallow that redhat started the opensource revolution. When thinking of early days I always think of the likes of Patrick V. (slackware fame) and all of the guys at SSC publications.
ReDHatSuCkS!!!! GPL is misguided!!! shoot, crap, hell, snot, farts, crap, aol, hot grits, bill gates, microsoft, windows, beowolf clusters, sun, sparks, blue screen, alpha, beta. (Flame this I'd like to know what the worst possible score is)
I'd say that has much more truth to it than you may realize.
________
No, silly! It was Hello World!
hello.c:
#include <stdio.h>
void main(void)
{
printf("Hello, world!");
}
Hey now, you don't know from his statement that he capitalized "internet." He could just have been talking about a little home LAN that he and Tipper wired up. Given all the smut out there and the danger of the Goregirls' (tm) learning to play the two-backed beast with *gasp* that Y-chromosome-endowed, I'm quite sure that he kept his home LAN from being hooked up to the real deal. He may just have been so excited at laying down all that CAT-5 cable that he felt compelled to brag a bit and toy with a trifle of inside humor to see if folks would bite....
Yeah right. It's about as likely as someone actually having read Ulysses cover to cover. "And monkeys might fly out of my butt." -- Wayne's World.
I'm not 100 percent sure what was meant by the statement by Tiemann:
"We did start the open-source revolution"
but there is defanately confusion about what words are used. Many keep pointing out that RedHat did not start the open source movement:
movement (mvmnt)
n. A series of actions and events taking place over a period of time and working to foster a principle or policy: a movement toward world peace. An organized effort by supporters of a common goal
revolution (rv-lshn) n. Abbr. rev.
A sudden or momentous change in a situation
Why does this matter?
I agree that RedHat did not start the open source movement, but they may very well have been the driving force behind the open source revolution. This of course being a matter of opinion.
SuSE and TurboLinux, which has a number of ex-SuSE employees, are the fastest growing Linux distributions. I wiped my Red Crap box at SuSE 5.3 and haven't looked back. I have been using Open and FreeBSD lately, though. I put SuSE 7.0 on 2 servers at work today, and I must say, they've outdone themselves again.
Well, that all depends.
I firmly and unequivocally disagree with this statement.
--
Even Tim Berners-Lee wasn't the only person to create the internet
Given that Tim Berners-Lee came along and invented http a good half-decade after Gore sponsored the creation of NSFNet, a decade after an entitiy called the Internet evolved, and two decades after ARPANet was formed...
Steven E. Ehrbar
A lot of us old-timers, yes. That and Debian. For those who started Linux in the last 3-4 years it was probably RHAT, Suse or one of the other "Store Brands".
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
The open source software existed before Cygnus. I guess the Homebrew Computer Club doesn't ring a bell to any of these folks.
> Of course, on the other hand, maybe Slashdot hasn't really changed that much.
I never actually counted, but it seems to me that they now post more stories per day, and that this has a bad effect because (a) they are less choosey about what they pick, and (b) the discussion threads don't go as deep as they used to, because people tend to post "fire and forget" comments and then rushe off to the next story.
> Perhaps those of us who've been around a long time are just growing up...
Shoulda gone the Tin Drum route while you had a chance.
I did.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The CTO of Red Hat claims to have invented the internet, with cofounder and Vice President Al Gore.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
They truncated my quotein an unhelpful way
Dontchya just hate it when they do that, makes it taste awfull...
~ppppppppö
I take a little umbrage at the whole Open Source movement being considered a 'new' movement. Once upon a time, when microcomputers were the domain of hobbyists, software was generally freely distributed. Albeit the source form was assembly, but it was there, and it was free for the manipulating.
Somewhere along the lines, it got profitable, and the money grubbing capitalists got involved. The Open Source movement, per se, is an attempt to break back out of that all-for-me kind of software design, and recapture the attention of mainstream computer users.
So, I don't think anyone, outside of our patron acronyms, RMS and ESR, could really have any kind of claim to 'starting the open source revolution.'
Weapons of Mass Analysis
And Al Gore invented the internet. Everyone knows that!
"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
I'm expecting soon to hear Linux people shouting "Opensource good! Closed source bad!" just like in the book *grin*
This is my sig, this is my gun. This one's for flaming, this one's for fun.
Of course Red Hat never said they invented open source either, as that quote was taken out of context, which just makes the Al Gore quote even more ironic and funny. "We did start the open-source revolution," chief technology officer Michael Tiemann boasted at a WR Hambrecht conference on open-source companies. Neither is Michael Tiemann Red Hat, nor does we necessarily mean Red Hat.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
FYI, there's a story at Salon about it here. I submitted it the slashdot bosses, but of course they rejected it, as it didn't have the word "Linux" in it.
--
> Sure, there where other OS's at the time of the PC era's inception (CP/M is the only one I can remember), but DOS spearheaded the PC breakout.
FWIW, I ran DOS on my Apple ][.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Dillinger: "Now, wait a minute, I wrote you!"
MCP: "I'VE GOTTEN 4,915 TIMES SMARTER SINCE THEN."and this:
Sarc: "Users wrote us. A user even wrote you!"
MCP: "No one user wrote me; I'm worth millions of their man years.""Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I believe Slackware was around b4 RedHat.
But please. Correct me if im wrong.
=====
Face it, folks. Red Hat is in it for the good of the community, but they also know that there is money to be had. Who would've thought a company could get rich from selling free software?
=====
You seem to have a feeble understanding of how free enterprise works. I really doubt if, for any publicly-traded company, making money is a secondary concern. Red Hat is in it to make money and the only reason they give back to the community is to keep that free software development coming. They can either pay X for a team of developers to develop the stuff, or they can give a fraction of X back to the "community" in some form and get the development at a bargain. It's the perfect formula to make oodles of money, it should come as no surprise, they have very low costs associated with the manufacture and development of what they sell.
Maru
> FWIW, I ran DOS on my Apple ][.
I should have added, "before the PC came out."
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
James
This appeared in Rolling Stone back in 1972. It's written by none other than Stewart Brand. Spacewar.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Al Gore was in school when ARPANet was created.
Try being precise for once, and you'll understand that the bill that Al Gore sponsored in Congress created something very specific, with a particular name... now, what was that name?
Perhaps RedHat are a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft corporation. It would make sense for them to:
a) get their fingers in as many pies as possible, while...
b) creating their own competition, so the DOJ won't be so hard on them. If I were MS, that's exactly what I would be doing.
If you can't beat 'em. Join 'em
VA Linux REALLY REALLY needs to get bought up by Dell... They'ed be a perfect fit, in my eyes...
Of course it's a troll. Al Gore never said he invented the internet.
In any case, open source is old, much older than most slashdot readers. It used to be S.O.P. for computer manufacturers to supply source code for their operating systems. The users (well, systems programmers, called sysadmins today) were encouraged to tweak it, modify it, fix bugs, add extensions, etc., and share their efforts with the rest of the user community for the cost of copying.
Of course, on the other hand, maybe Slashdot hasn't really changed that much. Maybe it's just as immature a news and social place as it's always been with the only difference being that there's a significant amount of money involved. Perhaps those of us who've been around a long time are just growing up...
Chuq
Read any good study of the open-source revolution and almost all will claim that Apache / SendMail were among the first few companies to have been successfull with this business model. I mean the model (as seen from an economic point of view) can be roughly -- very roughly -- explained as follows:
1. One of more developers come up with some software that they feel would be useful to have for whatever reason and put it up on the web for others to see/use.
2. Other Hackers in the tech. community check out what they have done, they like it and start using/adopting it. Making changes/contributions to the project as they go along.
3. The project IF it is successful becomes bigger and more popular will get acceptance of non-tech ppl. (or at least not just hackers!).
4. Thats when the business comes in, there is money to make selling T-Shirts, books, support... anything to piggy back on the OSS revolution.
RedHat sure did do a lot in this area, and credit needs to be given that they took it to the other companies with their strong business practices, BUT sendmail, apache and many other have been arround.
ALSO here is something that I find very annoying -- At today's open-source conference, Tiemann said Red Hat has won the "distribution" battle, the effort to sell Linux and associated software. "The Linux distribution game is over. Red Hat has won that game. Red Hat is the market leader in virtually every respect," he said. However, analysts have noted that Red Hat isn't the leader in Europe, where rival SuSE has greater share, or in Asia, where the leader is TurboLinux. Sure it has...since more ppl. in the US use it right. Well i guess Slackware and SUSE and Debian can just pack their bags and leave! Its all over for them i guess.. Hah... Slackware Rulez!!
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
A statement like this whether it is taken out of context or not is pretty typical from a CTO. I dont know about you but any CTO I have worked with had thier head stuck completely up thier ass. If RedHat is smart they will address anything that was taken out of context. Unless all of it was taken out of context the CTO should be fired or publicly repramanded. People need to think before opening thier mouth.
From the Slashdot Troll FAQ:
Fiddle de dee.-- the most controversial site on the Web
Speaking of 'most important object lesson', I think Cygnus has a better shot at that -- without their work on gcc, we'd all be fucked, but I do not think they have significantly reshaped the development model.
And of course, RMS (or GNU/RMS to give him his full name) is not one for the semantics.
Find funky gifts
ESR will just take the credit
At gunpoint, presumably.
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
To See A Naked Lady, Turn To Page 57. So began the first Open Source program I ever encountered. It was in a text book... probably in the 2nd grade. Granted, it was not well structured (usually it was just a series of GOTO statements) and practicly never executed properly.
However, it had many of the features of a modern Internet based Open Source project. First, it was collaboratively developed, as each new boy picked up on the idea and added additional features. Secondly, its primary purpose was to excite the curiousities of young boys, often in the direction of pr0n--much like the modern internet. Finally, it was frowned upon by the establishment and viewed as a threat to copyrighted material. There were even fines and punishments involved.
I saw this in the early 70s, but I suspect the practice predates me by many years. It probably predates RMS, ESR, and all the other 3-initial guys too.
The serious point here, if any, is that in order to find the first Open Source program, you must first define "program".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Gee, I didn't know Al Gore worked for Red Hat
Damnit, people! Don't you know that Al Gore started the open-source revolution?
[Offtopic, but my observation]
Has anyone noticed that this article contains posts from users with low (under #5000) Slashdot user ID's? And that the posts from users #5000 and less are all +4 and up? This article managed to dig up the Linux veterans and get them to do some serious, intelligent commenting. Notice that most troll posts occur above UID 100000, where the latest generation of trolls seem to be located.
I'm not flaming or trolling, it's just my observation. When I see a post from a low User ID, I tend to treat it with much more respect than the newer users'.
I think a number of the people mentioned in the article adopted open-source and took the concept a little further. Linux distributors did what Linux hackers were unable too, bring Linux to ordinary end-users.
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator
emacs? TeX? something else?
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
Cygnus was one of the first (and few) to build a profitable business on supporting open-source products; they certainly reshaped the model in that respect. I have something of a blind eye towards business model innovations, though -- they don't affect me as a source contributor, at least not directly.
In the beginnig, there was TeX. It was the first BIG and SERIOUS software whose source was open (and it was meant to be read, and revised). This was before RMS started the GNU project...
Just seems a bit irresponsible to me, that's all.
________
If Algore invented the internet, why couldn't Red Hat invent open source? Maybe they went to the same school.
Or, maybe the Red Hatter's are practicing to be politicians!
(oh, and you really shouldn't let yourself be trolled so outrageously. i understand the urge to defend yourself, but slashdot really is quite the cesspool. it's a great place for recreational trolling, but not much else.)
I have a very strong understanding about how free enterprise works. But, you're right. It's the perfect model for big profits.
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
GOBACK.
I wrote a gopher script once...
I guess that means I built the foundation for simplified search engine technology.
Who is responsible for the beginnings and ongoing support of the Open Source Revolution? We are! There is no organization, corporation, or otherwise powerful individual or group that can claim to do what the collective whole of the technology community did to build the Open Source 'Revolution.'
I do give my respect to those that planted the seeds and provided the nourishment, but there is no way to select just one individual or group that is not all-encompassing. Open Source needed more than the few [now] big names that often get [or take] the credit.
Oh, I also am responsible for the Apple Revolution... I once used an SE/30!
Power to the Public!
Totally off topic, but the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in October of 1917, 8 months after a previous revolution in February of that year. Also the Bolsheviks had a "unique" (for lack of a better term) interpretation of Marx's socialist idealism--they set up the Communist government as a transition between Czarist Russia and the eventual government by the worker. But when Stalin took power it basically became a fascist dictatorship.
It's all about the context. Just like with the statement Red Hat has made. Did they start an Open Source revolution? In the corporate sector, sure. Did they start the Open Source movement itself? No way in hell.
Brandt
I was using GNU gcc before I even heard of Red Hat, or Linux come to think about it. I'm sure a lot of you out there have this same experience.
Yes, Red Hat have made a big difference but they didn't start the open source revolution, Slackware probably have more rightful claim to this statement.
The whole thing was ready to errupt before Red Hat was even on the scene. I'm sure Linux would be big today if Red Hat hadn't existed.
Let's not forget FreeBSD too, and today the Debian distro heaps lead open source.
Note that open-source Red Hat have GPL software, yep, the `G' stands for GNU, not Red Hat.
While all of the milestones and breakthrus by various OSS leaders, companies, organizations were critical to today's OSS movement, I believe IBM used to ship its OS source code with the 7000s and 1400s in the 1950s and take fixes and enhancements from customers. I also believe CICS was created by a customer community. Not exactly OSS of today, but.....
Aide: Grant drinks too much to command an army. Lincoln: Find out what he drinks and give it to my other generals!
Using yacc doesn't count.
It is hard to write a compiler that generates code that runs at any decent speed.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
If you saw the debate last night, then you know Joe Lieberman, taking a page from Big Al's playbook, clarified who was the true visionary that started open source!
Aide: Grant drinks too much to command an army. Lincoln: Find out what he drinks and give it to my other generals!
I this it is fair to say that this is true for Redhat even if you don't count in Cygnus. Redhat was the company that pushed Linux and with it free software (incl. opensource) into the hands of a wider audience. Before Redhat the only people who used linux was students studying Computer Science and some developers.
You're flamebaiting, but I'll answer you (ya know, there is a Search field at the bootom of each page...use it).
Alan Cox, RMS (maybe?), Philip Greenspun are actual members of this (not just Slashdot, but the Internet) community.
Talk about rose-tinted glasses. Grow up.
I did say I was gushing... ;-)
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
but they're a public corporation now (symbol rhat IIRC), and lo and behold, they're starting to act like one. This is all just part of corporate chest thumping and back slapping....
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Frankly, I'm tired of the false dichotomies. There is no decision to be either Socialist or Capitalist. Left wing versus Right wing. The idea that politics is a line disturbs me. Life is not a series of EOR comparisons (on/off switches). DNA is not a binary number system.
To counter the previous post and all such false dichotomies, I'll drone on... You can certainly consider social liberty important, while at the same time maintaining a "conservative" (i.e. non-interfering) stance on finances, this is a bias against government interference in the private finances and activities of citizens (Libertarian view), which is distinct from the idea that government should interfere constantly on "moral" issues, but somehow manage to fund itself without excess financial interference with citizens (Republican view), which is distinct from the idea that government should freely interfere with private finances and personal issues of morality on a regular basis (Democratic view), which is distinct from the idea that government should feel free to tax citizens, but use the money to empower citizens so that they'll be able to enjoy their social liberty (Green view). Seen this way, politics is difficult to measure from left to right, and at best can be seen as a two dimensional matrix. And I've way oversimplified it and again created a false dichotomy by trying to make the two subjects (finance and morality) distinct and polar in and of them themselves.
I do not have a signature
You're right... 'Messiah' is definately not the right term, however it has been the vehicle by which OSS, as well as the The Cult of Unix, have finally reached the masses.
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to equate Linux with one of the more evangelical disciples, having spread The Word far and wide, and is, as a whole entirely responsible for an influx of life, work, interest and money into the whole OSS world.
Maybe, without Linux, we'd all be running *BSD, or The Hurd would be ready for prime time. However, it's equally likely that we'd all be bitching about MSFT without having any real alternatives; with Unix and OSS being left entirely in the realm of accademia, servers, and engineers' workstations.
Wipe thine ass with the GPL, and grin like a ninny at RMS.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Was that a misquote too? Or does he only "selectively" speak for redhat?
Is Red Hat now taking cues from Al Gore? Hehe.
Seriously, though... VOTE FOR ALGORE...RITHMS! Seriously, vote for Al Gore, as Shrub just can't hack it.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
your memory isn't deceiving you. SuSE had profits in the area of 5 million (if my memory isn't deceiving me, ;)) when this was all being discussed last year.
however, i don't think that they were the distributor who'd brought in the most revenue...that was red hat. but they were, ironically enough, still in the red, so to speak.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
Al Gore invented Open Source with his open-source campaign website. I think it happened shortly after he invented the internet...
Anyway, I hope it proved useful to him.
:wq
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
It may be that he meant 'we' as in himself (he -- Michael -- definately gets more credit from me than ESR does) and those individuals he has worked with throughout the years.
Feel free to ignore me if the exact quote (which I couldn't find in context) implies that RED HAT is truly the fountainhead of the Open Source movement.
Open Source is just a veiled term for communism. The Open Source advocates are mostly closet communists who enjoy writing propaganda. Red Had is a symbol of Red Russia, or the Mother Volga, both symbols of communism. Notice that if you turn your head sideways, the redhat logo looks like the sickle of the Communist Russian flag. This is not a coincidence to say the least. ESR is a proud supporter of the USCP and RMS is right behind him (in more ways than one). I feel that people should write software, release it, and if someone uses it in a way you don't like, you should kick their ass. Not go and get a lawyer kick their ass, but physically track them down and fight, even to death. This is the method of software licensing called Fighting Source, it has been successful for several products recently, but I don't know their names because I'd get my ass beat for mentioning them.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
You took the post seriously? Hint: Swift didn't really think eating Irish babies was a good idea, either.
Steven E. Ehrbar
i found the upside article slashdot posted last july...you can read it here.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
I can take Rh's view that they helped to popularise and bring open source into the wider world, but not invented it.
I think the marketing droids at RH are getting above themselves, and letting out such ill-informed tosh doesn't help them at all. In fact is gives more fuel to the RH is the M$ of Linux brigade.
Come on guys, if your heads get any bigger that Hat will no fit...
mod +1 Funny
"Invented Open Source"
Gee, does that sound a LOT like something Microsoft would say? (Or Al Gore (I invented the internet))
As companies have to make stock holders happy, it happens to all of them
Sigh
(Suse or Mandrake anyone?)
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
While there was commercial software, there was open source, too. I got my start in the mid '80s on a TI-99/4a. All my software came from printouts and MicroPendium (sp? It's been a long time) Magazine. Hell, I didn't even have a disk drive. All my "closed source" software was in cartridge form. We didn't have the term "open source" because it was inconceivable that you could get software without source code (And no, it wasn't all in BASIC. I had a bunch of assembly code too. It was harder to read, but still source.) And I started decades late, in terms of when free (in any sense) source code was common.
--
To go outside the mythos is to become insane...
Can you be a leader if you dont have anyone following... i think not.
Someone could say they thought of it first, but that idea had *very* little value untill many other people believed in it.
The main idea behind open source is sharing software, i dont think any person alive can claim to have invented sharing and i dont think applying the concept of sharing to software is revolutionary. Quite the opposite in fact, it was revolutionary that proprietry software evolved and people accepted for a time that sharing didnt apply to software.
That doesn't mean I created "free", "FORTRAN 77", or "compiler".
And yet, I bet I had more to do with creating g77 than Al Gore had to do with creating the Internet.
So what Gore said still strikes me as yet another unnecessary exaggeration.
That's why he, more than GWB, must be elected President of the USA. After all, he is much more personally desperate for that sort of recognition, else he wouldn't repeatedly resort to these strange sorts of "hey, look at me!" type exaggerations.
GWB doesn't have a crying need to be President, on the other hand. He can get along quite nicely without it. Used to be people would talk about how that's just what we need in a President. They seem to have quieted down since GWB came around.
(Seriously, I'm probably not going to vote for Gore, but if we want to just "make people happy" rather than elect someone mentally, emotionally, and intellectually prepared to be President, Gore's got the biggest need, right?)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
One minor objection -- Tiemann didn't use the word "movement", he used the word "revolution".
Revolutions are hard to define sometimes. When does a movement become a revolution? When people start to take notice? How many people? Which people? It's this fuzziness that allows folks to jockey for leadership positions.
Red Hat seems to have a strategy of putting itself forward as the leader of a revolution, not the leader of a movement. Bob Young's book isn't a history of a movement, after all. The movement has broader (and fuzzier) goals. The revolution (as defined by RH) is targetted not against Closed Software, but against Microsoft and their apologists.
-dwd-
I wrote this at almost the exact same time you did; hyperbole must be as important in winning the hearts of consumers as it is in...oh, wait a minute...
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Rob was joking. He told me so himself.
>>esr>>
RMS = GOD
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
I'm sure an apology or explanation is forthcoming. It's obviously an assinine statement, so I'm going to give RedHat the benefit of the doubt here.
The credit really should go to the countless programmers who have donated source code to the public since the invention of digital computers.
I mean, before there was commercial software, there was open source, pretty much.
(yeah ok, that's probably simplifying things, but I just mean that software was more free before it was more closed, secret government projects to win WWII notwithstanding)
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Kino think Ayla need less caffeine. Crono agrees.
If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
ESR keeps his politics separate from... what the hell? It would be intelligent if he had done, but he doesn't. He takes every opportunity to slam Socialism/Communism and promote Capitalism. Not quite sure where this irrational hatred comes from as he's quite left-wing on many social issues.
---
Linus released Linux in 1991. Berkeley had BSD code out there before 1980. Linus is a late starter to all this. comp.sources.unix was vibrant at that time, ipso facto, Linus was jumping on the bandwagon. ESR's little manifesto came out in mid-1997, 21 years after Bill Gates accused hobbyists of stealing and demanding a new distribution model for software: paying for it.
Open source is not new. And it predates Linux by a long shot.
Get with the program.
Andrew van der Stock
the many-developer approach (gee, seems to me I
remember writing something about this once upon
a time...).
Now I suggest you go think about "business model
or ideology" for a while. Consider the following
question: does a revolution start with a change
in action, or a chasnge in thought?
>>esr>>
Soft Landing System, IIRC.
When everything, including X, fitted on 30 floppies, and cdrom drives were just coming down from the 5-digit pricerange (SCSI-1 of course).
lol - obviously not a history buff. but hey. we thank you for buying into those coloring books your parents bought you featuring paul rever and thomas jefferson.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Also, when slashdotters (I'm not saying all) bash redhat, the people that stand up for redhat say "come on, they're not bad, it's human nature to try to take out the leader." But when the leader gets arrogant and starts taking credit where credit is NOT due (a la microsoft), it might be time to take them out.
How usable is woody as a desktop? I might have to switch....
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
...and what about Steve Woston?
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
"The seller of Linux software and support always has been ambitious, but the company grew a step bolder today, taking credit for launching the open-source programming movement that underlies Linux and several other software packages."
So, forget about the context. Red Hat made that claim. Plain and clear. Red Hat is a company, and company's purpose is to generate money to it's owners, not to "Serve the Linux and Open Source Communities". If they claim anything else as their purpose than money makin', it's marketing. Linux is free software. If you insist on paying for it, please make sure that those who actually did the work get the money, by buying from those places which only charge for the distribution costs. Red Hat invented nothing but rich IPOs on someone elses work. Oo, this mail is burningThis reminds me of Microsoft claiming they invented symbolic links. The problem is, is it very hard to define the who started a "revolution". Take the example, of, oh, the American revolution. There are a lot of people who helped, but no one person can step up and say "Americans all owe thanks to me! I started this country!" I like RedHat and all... But this makes me sick. It seems like they are getting too corperate. Whatever that means.
-The Tempest
It was bound to happen, high profile individual takes on big money. The Roswell aliens have started removing him from the newspeak.
While RMS may not want to take credit for "open
source", per se, there's no doubt that his
announcement of the GNU project (September 27, 1983) was a significant spark to the movement.
The distribution of Unix from Bell Labs in source
code form (albeit requiring a license) was also
a first: prior to that, production-quality operating systems were not available in
source code form. And the follow-on from
the Berkeley CSRG, i.e. their distribution of
BSD Unix in the same form, continued this.
There's no doubt that the tremendous strides
made in the 80's in the specific area of
production-quality Internet-connected systems
were driven by this: consider that Usenet news
(and NNTP), Kerberos, X, DNS, NFS, Perl, PGP,
IRC, SNMP, gopher, MIME, archie, etc.
were all invented on these systems.
Finally, in the days before connection to the
TCP/IP Arpanet was widespread, Usenet served
as the net's primary source distribution vehicle.
The newsgroups comp.sources.* and their archives
were, for the better part of a decade, the way
that developers released code and users got their
hands on it.
The United States was the first democratic nation and many others have followed since yet democracy was not invented by Americans. Should we be offended if someone attributes starting the American revolution to the Continental Congress instead of Rousseau? Should Marx roll over in his grave and shake his fist that he isn't given credit for overthrowing the Bolsheviks?
Redhat didn't invent Open Source but they did popularize it to the point where they might be considered as having started the revolution.
Give me a break, Taco.
First read the article, and who is saying what. Tiemann =/= RedHat.
Secondly, think about the article. They quoted all of about 2 sentences from him. Sounds like this CNET writer is trolling. How about printing the rest of the conversation so readers might have some context with it.
Peace out
He was babbling about this in the second half of the 1980s, essentially federal support for expansion of academic computer networks. It used the metaphor of the InterState Highway system that his father legislated. Lots of people thought his head was in the clouds at that time.
Being one of those nerds that installed my first slackware distro from 20 disks back in the old days, I have to say it is a completely differant community. Things have changed, people no longer use Linux because they want to add their own extensions for the kernel, they now use it because of it's stability and power. Look at Red Hat for example.. (watch this get moderated down for bashing redhat..) Their distribution seems to focus more on being user-friendly than allowing you to customize the box. The reasons for using Linux have changed, and so have the people using it. It sort of annoys me, but hey, us old schoolers make the best sysadmins so it isnt all bad :)
Actually, I think RHPro is $180 primarily because of markup on printing costs for manuals and stamping NINE CDs. (Still rather a lot, but think of what the equivalent Win2K package would cost...)
Even then, I still think it's overpriced, but you're getting a hell of a lot of what is at worst semi-decent shovelware. Aw, who am I kidding... I buy my Red Hat CDs from a couple of people who get their stock from Linux Central...
/Brian
Well, I never thought I hear Microsoft level claims coming from a Linux based company.
How naive was I? Red Hat(cygnus, whatever) may be the largest distributer of OSS (except maybe freshmeat) but I never expected this crap from Red Hat. Not only have they started Open Source, they're the only distribution that matters now. They've won the distribution wars.
I guess it's time I uninstalled Slackware and pledged my allegiance to the hat.
Or maybe we can just put Red Hat on the same level as Redmond in our thinking from now on.
Ugh, now my new patent on Open Source is going to fail.
;) ;)
Well I still have my Distributing Open Source Software Over The Internet patent.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Bold assertions aside, Red Hat is in a very strong position, said WR Hambrecht analyst Prakesh Patel. "It's by far the best-branded open-source company out there," and Patel predicted it would beat Linux computer maker VA Linux Systems in the race to attain profitability.
Is my memory playing tricks on me, or was SuSE already announcing profits way back around the time of Redhat's IPO? This will probably get me moderated down to flamebait, but I seem to recall Redhat's glowing reports of amazingly low losses, while SuSE was already annuncing profits.
Or has SuSE been going downhill lately?
RedHat? I think their one of those companies over in the user-friendly market. I don't see much of that.. I live in the "learns how it works inside out and backwards and hates bloat" market.. oh well..
But everyone has heard of Al Gore's contributions. After all, we introduce the freshman class to computers and algorithms simultaneously
Open source is about shareing code with LOTS of people. Trying to say ONE person or specific organisation started free/OS software shows a clear lack of understanding. It is a callaborative effort from everyone who beleives in it.
'Context?' was my first thought too.
Also: Is this "Red Hat" speaking, or just one employee shooting his mouth off?
The claim is ridiculous prima facie, but then there are always people/companies ready to stake out ridiculous claims.
So I'm curious who's being ridiculous here. Red Hat? Tiemann? Or just the reporter? (I don't suppose those answers are mutually exclusive!)
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
God knows why, but with all the anti-redhat propaganda being posted by editors here its pretty obvious whats going on.
Expect all the other VA web properties to join in the fun now.
Redhat has lost touch of what it is and what it does. We, the Linux/Unix programmers around the world, Linux, Alan Cox, Mr. Becker, and others have written code that they've earned money on. granted they have helped push Linux into the mainstream, but they didn't start open source. Stallman did, he deserves the credit! good old gnu.org! redhat is loosing sight of who they are and where they came from, the latest release from them was a bust! Why should all the other releases take a hit from them (damn media has no clue). Anaconda dies on most boxes, I made an image for my son so he can bring it and update the computers at his High School's computer club, Anaconda barfed, my son fired off an email, his reply is .. buy a copy! So I think we should
fire back an use mandrake, at least it's less
expensive, heck the way they've created additional
tools and packaged everything on the CD.. it's worth the 25.00, BUT to charge $75.00 and not yeild the money too all of us who write code late
at night, and then the balls they must have to
claim they started open source.
I saw we as a Linux Community should teach them a
lesson. Don'y buy any redhat tools, hell they
are not even mantaining the Alpha release anymore,
we have to switch to Suse or Debian or soon
mandrake on the DecAlpha.. or we do our own
cross compile.
Redhat has no clue. We made Redhat, we can
take them down. I am seriously rethinking about
the way i post code or fixes. Perhaps Redhat as
a mole working for them. They have beenm acting very microsftish! First they release a very buggy
release, second they claim they started open source. That sounds like a Microsoft statement.
well.. enough ranting. I know what I have to do.
Sell the Redhat stock, Sell! And only use
Suse, Debian and perhaps download iso images
off my cable modem, and burn my own. Perhaps
have my own jerryNormandSir release, and sell
for $5.00 shipped to the door!
enough of this $145.00 for Redhat.. Gee! enough
of this allready!
I'm steaming mad! I hope Stallman fires off one
of his emails...
You know Microsoft will NEVER say "We started the home computer revolution".
And why? Becouse they are ethica? Ha not even
Becouse they are honnest? Nope sorry
Becouse they know not to cross the line? Buzz wrong answer...
The reason is they'd never get away with it..
30 years ago and even now someone will stand up and say "Bull shit"... and they know it...
RedHat made some importent contrabutions but they didn't start anything and everyone knows it.
One of many...
Al Gore will never live down his "I invented the Internet" and RedHat will never live this down...
Screw RMS.. screw Linus.. screw the half a dosen companys that came before us.. we started it...
RedHat will never live this down...
I don't actually exist.
Let's be realistic. EVERY company wants to be microsoft. Why do you think monopoly laws exist? It's the natural goal of every company to maximize profit, which is much easier to do when that pesky competition is eliminated.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
That's true.
ESR has (intelligently) kept his personal politics completely seperate from his business life/advocacy.
That's not true. Definitely not.
See this discussion for an example of ESR keeping his personal politics closely tied to his advocacy:
demands of effective publicity will allow." LWN, yet another next week
(* What I find funny about ESR's signature: He claims that pro-gun people are convinced that they sexually more mature than anti-gun folks. Somehow I think this argument can shoot backwards...)
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You may like my a cappella music
thanks man, i agree 100%. taco seems to have a hard on for RH right now. am redhat user, will continue...
I mean if RedHat spearheaded Open Source they must obviously believe that Al Gore invented the Internet. I think it smells like a conspiracy!
Obviously I recognize RedHat's contribution to the Open Source movement, maybe some of their employees were instrumental in the furthering of Open Source, hell they beat the drum just as loud as anyone, but the comments and some of the moves they are making are getting just to predatory for me.
c'mon guys. We all know that if some low-level Microsluff at Microsoft stated that Microsoft had started the PC revolution, we'd be up in arms.
Regardless, even if it is only one man's comments, it is the nature of all corporations to do this. This is the kind of FUD that B2B buys. From a business perspective, I don't blame Tiemann one bit. Ethically...well that's different story.
And that is how a problem begins. Judge a comment by it's content instead of some gimmick. Too many people today are unwilling to think for themselves
For any single person or organization to say that they started the Open Source Revolution makes as much sense to me as to say that any single person or organization started the Renaissance.
I have a degree of sympathy towards Tiemann. Even if RedHat didn't start the oSR, it was in the thick of it. It's difficult to get a perspective on something when you're in the thick of it.
Cheers,
Richard
Yeah, just like Al Gore invented the internet! I can see Bush sitting there, getting some Unreachable Host error. "Dang nabit, I done think that Al Gore unplugged that Internet of his, damn fool probably tripped on the cord."
----
If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
Remember, some people thought Redhat dropped support for the Sparc architecture. Then someone from Redhat told is a Sparc version of 7.0 was coming out, just a bit later. Some people jump to conclusions entirely too fast
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
I don't have the heart to comment on this.
More like the money that pays for your meals differs with what you know is right.
I remember way back in the day when slashdot.org was a good site. Now its boiled down into a big bbs of pimple faced 15 year old trolls who think the only purpose of the GPL is for their asses who don't have jobs. Even the stories are weak. Unless its anything Linux, Star Wars or some Gadget it goes neglected.
I'm a newbie so take it easy on me but didn't Slackware get most of you guys goin?
BOSTON SUCKS!
Every revolution has a leader.. someone who is willing to lead the charg into battle... even if it's some nut running in his underware carrying a mop..
Free software dates back to... oh gezz 1950 at least.. when home computers existed as dreams as people attempted to build computers out of spare parts.. dead radios etc...
At that time the open source was the design logic everyone shared in hopes of getting a computer built.
But there was no real revolution before the 1980s. Before it was just a very loose nit community...
Then someone fed up with efforts to crush free software started the charg...
The community is old... the revolution isn't.. well 20 years is old.. but comparied to the community that dates back to the 1950s.. it's just a baby...
I don't actually exist.
-Al Gore
He said it. Truth hurts sometimes.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The more they stay the same. Looking at the vast majority of comments here, (not including those that give RH the benefit of the doubt, and that believe they may have been taken out of context.), you could take this article, and search/replace RedHat for Microsoft.
I guess it is going to be only a matter of time before zealots start knee-capping them for being succesful.
Note to RedHat: You're successful now. You're known, profitable and you're a big corporation. Everything you say can and will be used against you. Comes with the territory.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
...a member of the open source "community"?
Answer truthfully!!!!
It's too damned early and my head hurts...
Blech. Signatures.
Right after he finished inventing the tech industry's economic boom.
True. He said he took the initiative in creating the Internet. That's totally different. It's still wrong, stupid and arrogant, but different.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
What's worse than bad news? No news.
At least it seems to provoke a lot of controversy and a few intelligent posts (such as yours).
Damn, people! At least get your history straight if you're going to comment.
Michael Tiemann was one of the founding members of Cygnus. In case you've forgotten, Cygnus is the company that took gcc from being a second-rate compiler for a small number of architectures and turned it into a world-class system that is the standard for embedded systems development.
If anyone deserves to claim to have started the open-source movement, it's Cygnus. They're the ones who demonstrated that you could pay the bills while giving the source code away.
daniel
All I needed to know in life I learned from
In my mind the terms "Free Software" and "Open Source" are fundamentally synonymous. Free Software is just a specific type of Open Source.
Now as far as beginning the Open Source revolution, I don't really think Red Hat is responsible. I seem to recall that the Netscape release of Mozilla marked a significant turning point, a point that most people recognize as the beginning of a revolution. Until that point most of the Linux world was still shrouded in relative obscurity. When Mozilla was unleashed the world took note, and then things started to accelerate.
I think it's fair to say that Red Hat was a catalyst of the revolution, as was Slashdot, VA, Linux Journal, ALS, LinuxWorld.com, LinuxWorld Expo and others. Does it happen because of one of these? No. Does it happen if one of them is missing? Almost certainly.
I certainly don't think that any one company or entity can claim complete responsibility. Just like there are many contributors to the Linux kernel, there have been many contributors to the Linux revolution.
--Kit
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
It was a misunderstanding, yes. He meant to say that, "With the help of the algore, we took the initiative in inventing the open source movement."
:)
hawk, returning you to your regularly scheduled flamefest
Red Hat revered? You must be confused.
Like you say, it's certainly possible to be one orientation economically and another socially, mostly independently (though there is a certain interaction).
However, I was actually referring to how liberal he was (free speech, personal freedom etc; basically all about tolerance) and yet not recognising certain economic models as valid viewpoints. In fact he actually states that Socialism is 'evil' in one interview I read. You have to admit that, whilst having an opinion is fair enough, this does jar a bit with his social stance.
---
"Cygnus (Michael's company before Red Hat bought it) has a claim to have started the open-source revolution; so does Richard Stallman, and for that matter so do I. It all depends on what moment in the unfolding process you want to pick as "start", like designating the year zero on your calendar."
My point, of course, was that trying to pin down a single start of the movement would be foolish and false to history.
>>esr>>
Maybe it isn't far to say the Democratic view is to freely interfere with private finances but the interference on personal issues of morality is a very Republican viewpoint. Republicans want to take away a woman's right to control her own body (it's in the party platform) and Republicans don't want to let homosexuals enjoy the same privleges as heterosexuals (marriage, inheritance, etc.). Democrats, as a party, have the opposite views.
Nothing you said makes it difficults to view politics from left to right. It goes: (from left to right)
GREEN -> DEMOCRAT -> REPUBLICAN/REFORM
Libertarians sometimes act like democrats and sometimes like republicans. They can be independent thinkers. Independent thinkers I almost NEVER agree with... but that's another story.
That's a completely different quote. For all we know that was said 5 hours later.
Eric Raymond, author of the open-source manifesto "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," also sees room for others to get credit. "Cygnus (Tiemann's company before Red Hat bought it) has a claim to have started the open-source revolution; so does Richard Stallman; and for that matter so do I," he said.
It's interesting that Eric Raymond mentions Cygnus, but not Red Hat...
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
if this story is true, Redhat is going down hard. the Linux community doesn't go for that kind of shit at all.
Time for some major, major damage control.
ya, I know, bye bye karma.
________
You're living in the generative myth I created and you don't even know it. But that's OK with me. It means I succeeded at what I was trying to do. Go write some code, kid.
>>esr>>
How does it feel to have Microsoft type BS come from one your most revered companies?
Yes, well, the key here would be to note, in your own words, that this is just one of "our" companies - others do exist to which we can turn our business if we so choose. Microsoft on the other hand is the only Windows manufacturer. In short it doesn't invoke any real feeling in me, I've never been a large fan of RedHat's corporate outlook. Nothing about such feelings stops me from thoroughly enjoying using Linux, though. If RedHat digs themselves into a hole, so be it, Linux will certainly move on =)
"Try that in Windows!"
No, it doesn't go left to right. First of all, the idea that Democrats don't want to interfere with personal choice is hogwash. They are foremost in the battle against guns. They are quite comfortable assailing all manner of free speech (i.e. if you are not PC, please be aware that this is potentially a civil liability and/or a criminal activity). And both of the mentioned issues are not about personal control of one's own body/destiny, they are about interpretations of the right to privacy and at what point it breaks down. And the Reform party are not libertarians, the Libertarians are, and they do not fit neatly on the straight line scale.
I do not have a signature
Actually, RMS will be the first to tell you that he had nothing to do with the Open Source movement; he's staunchly behind the Free Software movement.
Of course, a lot of this is semantics, definitions, smoke and marketing anyhow.
Red Hat was probably one of the first "Open Source" companies that both used the words in their marketing material *and* fit the bill in real life.
Personally, I'd have to credit ESR as chief Open Source advocate, and Bruce Perens for the DFSG.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I just think that comments like this are sad. I would be naive to say that Redhat hasn't been a major part in mainstreaming Linux, and at least awakening people to the idea of OSS, but come on, there were a lot of players before hand. I believe in being humble, and giving credit where credit is due, and I don't think Redhat has been that way in this situation.
Instant Karma's gonna get you...
I find it to be for the most part accurate, although I'd have skipped the Freud quote--Freud thought everything was a sign of emotional and sexual immaturity, so his opinion on hoplophobia doesn't carry much weight.
.357 Magnum was a necessary prop, loaded up with blank cartridges for some gunplay in later scenes. I watched in horror as Trina melodramatically thumbed the hammer back for effect and put the gun to her temple in a dramatic scene. (No, she didn't pull the trigger, which was a good thing: at point blank range, a blank to the temple will cause the inside of your skull to spall off and lacerate your brain. A promising actor of the '80s, Jon-Erik Hexum, died in exactly that way.)
.357 blank at her temple, she was literally gambling with her life. Turns out that the director didn't bother to have a proper armorer (person who's responsible for teaching actors how to safely use weapons) for the production; they all just assumed that since only blanks were being used, the gun was harmless.
It is as irrational to fear a gun as it is to fear a hammer. What is often rational is to fear people with guns. Personally, I fear two kinds of people with guns: people with guns who are intent on hurting me, and people with guns who themselves fear guns.
In college, I once had a debate with a gun-control advocate named Trina. I disagreed with her calmly and on Constitutional grounds; her arguments were emotional and passionate about how guns were inherently tools of killing and thus ought to be outlawed. Okay, fine, a reasonable difference of opinion. The Constitution protects our right to have differences, and we were both mature enough not to let our difference of opinion devolve into personal hostility.
A couple of weeks later I went to a stage play in which Trina had a lead role. A
After the play was over I took Trina aside and explained to her that with the hammer back, her finger on the trigger and a
In their defense, once the risks were explained to them they changed the scene for the next night's performance. I've got to commend them for that.
If you don't like guns, that's just fine with me; I understand why many people don't like guns. But please don't fear guns--not only is it irrational, but it leads to ignorance about guns and gun safety, and that can get you killed.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
OK ... Al Gore claims to have started the Internet too.
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
What Red Hat did was take advantage of the GPL. You can sell free software, because free isn't supposed to be a reference to cost, but a reference to freedom. Maybe a better term for FS is "Software Libre", but English is funny that way. (It's probably the only European language without a distinctive term separating 'no cost' with 'ability to do without restraint'.) Open Source started in the days of yore with American Telegraph and Telephone creating Unix at Bell Labs. They let academics tweak the source so that their installations would work. These tweaks allowed early networking (AKA Darpanet) to occur. Unix source availability became an issue when SCO and BSD tried to release their own Unices. They were sued, and had to tweak it more. SCO became a corporate distro, while BSD kept something of an Open Source philosophy. (UC-Berkley had final say over edition control.) Then, in '91, came the Holy Grail Known As Linux.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is just another case of CNet writing bad or misleading articles. Although it does clearly outline how the Slashdot editors don't read the articles and how the commenters don't either ;)
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Re-read it yourself. Kahn and Cerf say "there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet."
Anyone who knew how important NSFNet was to the evolution of the Internet into the network that it is today couldn't disagree with it. The NSFNet was the major backbone of the Internet for six years, after all.
So if Gore said, "I was the primary Congressional backer of the Internet and played a major and irreplacable role in its development," that would have been absolutely true. But he said "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Gore was important to the evolution of the Internet, but he still didn't take "the initiative in creating the Internet."
Steven E. Ehrbar
Assuming this, do you believe that the freeware spirit is still strong in RedHat and its followers, or has this community already become something very different that the bunch of nerds that installed their first slackware distro from 20 disks back in the old days?
"Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet..." -- Newt Gingrich on C-SPAN at American Political Science Association colloquium
You certainly did write something about many-eyes(and thanks!), which is why I found your statement about Linus so startling.
Back to discussion: I'm afraid I cannot answer your chicken-and-egg problem. I would be happy to listen, though. Do you have an insight into your question?
Out of the 7 words quoted (and who knows how many ... were dropped out.) it should be noted that we is not defined. Mr Tiemann helped start Cygnus which in the late 80's started selling Free/Open source software way way before anyone else was.
Cygnus showed that OpenSource (or as those offices say rightly Free Software) could be commercially viable and profitable when people said that Stallman was a Communist quack with delusions of being Marx.
That part of the company is quite proud of that fact and rightly so. Red Hat (OS development) came much later in the game... and i dont know of anyone around Red Hat who would say otherwise.
Must be a slow week and time for sensationalism sells (CNET that is).
Ask many other people (RMS, ERS, Bruce Perens,Linus, etc) of how many times they have been quoted out of context and then used in a news article to make up/enhance rivalry. Bleach
-- SJS smooge at smoogespace dot com
Sorry Mr. Tiemann, but I had working installations of both Slackware and FreeBSD before I had ever heard of Redhat.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
When I saw this my first inclination was to post a link to a previous /. story. But then I actually went and read the CNet story. RedHat didn't claim to start the open-source movement. They only claimed to start the open-source revolution.
Not that their claim is justified, but there is a difference there.
-- dR.fuZZo
First the article on RH bugs ( which turned out to be mostly bogus ) and this report on seven words with no context ? You know , even the Debian folks have given RedHat some more room than this . Look I am going to start losing faith in RH when people like Alan Cox starting jumping ship . They have consistently reinvested in the community and people need to take another look at that before they start screaming foul . Your Squire Squireson
COBOL's right... in a manner of speaking. Why... Just the other day weren't you all jumping on the Red Hat Sucks bandwagon because Taco came out screaming about Red Hat 7 having "2500 bugs"? Almost immediately there were what, 100 + posts to the contrary saying that thre were only about 100 or so REAL bugs? and here, CNET truncates a quote, and what do you do? You buy it for fact, and once again take up your witch hunt. Come on people. Why dont you use a little common sense. You dont believe that Windows is better than Linux, even though so many "experts" may say so. You research it, and you prove that Linux is a better OS with FACTS. So why is it that every time something like THIS happens, you just take whatever is said at face value. If you did a little research, and maybe looked into things, and waited a little, you wouldn't all look like the stupid villagers shouting "WITCH!", but would instead look like a million INTELLIGENT FREE THINKING Open Source Advocates Shouting "POOR JOURNALISM!" at CNet for taking a quote like that so very far out of context. And you wonder why so many people still think that Open Source is a joke?
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
When Al Gore said he invented the internet, we all laughed, saying that no one person did create it. Even Tim Berners-Lee wasn't the only person to create the internet... this is the same thing. You just can't take credit for something like this. Why did Red Hat even bother? Didn't they know they'd get a ton of negative feedback after this? A lot of people already compare them to Micro$oft, and this kind of stuff only serves to hurt their reputation more.
Colin Winters
Redhat already lost my business long before this.
This is mostly due to the fact that thier install is kind of crappy, and what's worse is once you do get installed it's all scattered around like it was built by some kind of monkey. It ain't like SysV or BSD, what the hell is it? Garbage I suppose!
Although unfortunetly now that Redhat made this claim, when they go out of business everyone will assume Linux and Open Source is dead. Or even worse, that Open Source is a dead idea, not worth considering ever again. If Redhat flops it will probally lead to the end of commercial support of Open Source, so if it's important keep buying Redhat. To me it's not important, I liked it better when it was just a bunch of hackers toying with an OS better than DOS and Win95. And the most commercial support it took to "wow" you was walnut creek pushing out Slackware CDs :)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes, the Unix world has been filled with open-source software and free software as we know it for 15 years now. The internet, even in its academic pre-HTTP days, was built almost entirely out of open-source and Free software, though usually not free OSes.
And yeah, Linux was kicking around in a usable state for 3 years before RedHat debuted. And there were already commercial Linux distributions, too. But Red Hat was the first Linux--and Free Software--packager that was looking to do something other than make pizza money selling unsupported CD-ROMs (Slackware) or get consulting gigs (Yggdrasil). Redhat really did create the open-source business model out of thin air. Before them, your only choices for Linux support were Usenet and hiring a freelance consultant.
They didn't invent open source. Not by a long shot. But they did singlehandedly show everyone how to sell it into corporations and how to build a company around it.
"ESR is a proud supporter of the USCP" - Um, that's blatantly false. ESR has (intelligently) kept his personal politics completely seperate from his business life/advocacy. But anyone who has met him or has bothered to read his homepage (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/) will realize that he is NOT a communist, but is a strong supporter of the Libertarian party.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I wish that the issue that we focus on is not who deserves "credit" for the open source movement but on improving it and working towards it. Sure, we could spend our days arguing about who is Mr. Open Source or drooling over our god Linus, but none of that is productive. If you really care about the open source movement, then go code something fantastic and open its source - don't sit around bickering about who deserves credit for what.
Michael Tiemann was the first author of g++ (I think). He was involved in GNU and founded Cygnus. Thus he can say in his capacity as part of GNU that "we" (referring to the GNU/FSF community) started the movement. Common sense will show that he was not that off on the remark and he most probably did not refer to RedHat, the Linux distributor before buying Cygnus, as the founder of the Open Source movement. (And ESR will happily claim that title!)
Slashdot should be more responsible in its article. This kind of flame-type remarks will just play into the hands of (say) Microsoft who has an interest in dividing the Free Software/Open Source community. Slashdot really should not make a big deal out of a really non-issue.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
I think it's simply because you're the 10,000th person to mention something about AlGore saying he started the internet. Really I'm just putting that in the comment to see if there is a perl script aut-modding down anything having to do with Al and the "Info-Superhighway"(If there isn't there ought to be, Rob...thanks)
/. "hates them".
Anyway, I'm checking my watch right now and I'm betting there will be a retraction/clarification/apology made by RHAT and posted here by 12:30pm tommorrow, if that long. And for that matter I predict at least 1 person will post and state that their submission was not only 10 minutes ahead of the one that got posted, but was rejected because
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
They could reasonably be given credit for 'starting' the 'movement' of profiting from Open Source. I'm not saying they're the first, but they made everyone outside the Linux world wake up and see dollar signs. In my mind - that's quite an accopmlishment.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Yea. That's pretty good. Although the dolphinsex.org is way cooler than eating feces
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Whoever mod'ed me down for my comment must be a complete idiot. I was the 1st person to post this "redundant" comment. Am I supposed to control what everyone else posts after I do? I mean, sure, it may not be a funny joke to you, but obviously since it's "redundant" others must find the idea amusing. Goddamn.. what's the world coming to?
The linux movement, that is, the Wall Street linux movement was very much started by redhat. Unless someone did this before them (apologies for lack of research), they did really begin the corporate push for linux user friendlyness, or better described, not-so-steep learning curve.
Honestly, GNU Software in combo with linux is frighteningly easy to use once you have surpassed the learning curve. However, the majority of the population do not need applications that all have turing-complete scripting capabilities, well thought out hotkey combinations, regexps, and command line interoperability with literally everything else. It takes too much effort to get used to unless you need to complete nonstandard tasks on a regular basis.
Redhat, with their packaging systems, easy installations, etc brings the unix environment closer to the desktop idea of exchanging programmability for a more consumer electronic style interface. As an example, compare filters in outlook to procmail. You loose the ability to shell out and do literally anything with mail, but gain an interface that can be configured to do standard tasks with minimal learning. It is similar to comparing a Stereo or VCR interface to a command interpreter. Abstract functionality is compromised for ease of quick understanding.
In the sense of funding desktop projects, which is what the corps look at, redhat truly has done alot. I certainly believe a admin lacking knowledge and experience would have an easier time setting up a webserver on redhat than a more traditional distro like slackware.
It is in a sense the "new" open source movement is for quick learning (GNOME), but the software it is based around (UNIX) was based more designed for the natural abailty to interopt to complete any imaginable task, given proper knowledge. The newer open source software is slowly turning to a design of ease of quick understanding, like the interface of any piece of consumer electronics. Redhat is on the forefront of funding this endeavor, but is certainly not the only force (VA Linux).
It is a bloated claim, but as from the corporate funding take over the world viewpoint, they did alot.
Since I use linux for coding mathematical models using egcs and emacs, that viewpoint matters little to me. I save my thanks for RMS, Torvals, Cox, and all the kernel, cli utils, and compiler developers that have provided me with the OSS that I use every day. Given how easy that is for me now, I would say that the open source movement from the origional prospective is complete. I have my UNIX, and I never have to pay. Was that not the primary point of all of this?
Disappointed, but not suprised. Face it, Linux and it associated hangers-on and developers are big news. Mainstream in other words. And in the real world sound bytes ru13Z.
Whether this is taken out of context, or is a figment of RHAT's collective vision of Alice as she goes down the wormhole, I am heartily sick of the whole scene. I realize that when money gets into the game things get weird, but this kind of statement just doesn't parse.
I'm rambling now, but I'm disappointed mostly. I can remember when Yggdrasil and Slack where the de-facto distros and RHAT was a newcomer. What is going on is politics and when politics enter in the front door, I'm out the window....fast.
Previewing this, I realize that it might sound bitter and resigned, but parsing the article and the current zietgiest, I just want to down another beer and stare out the window. At least I know that the view there is real.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
OK, I know it may appear as flame bait. But sometimes I really get bummed about the decidedly one-sidedness of Slashdot's reporting about other distributions.
I think we, the geek crowd has realy given RH too many pats on the back and it's gone to their head. They arn't the most well integrated distro or smoothest and have consistantly released very buggy dot-Os.
The're should be equal treatment on /. for some of the distros that realy go the distance to produce high quality ie. Caldera and Suse, Green Frog 8^), etc. Many of the others mainly tend to be rip offs ot RH anyway. (Again, could be seen as FB...but I beleive it's true).
I do think that ESR is the first to submit detailed essays about Open Source, and I tout him as being one of the most influential people in regards to open source.
Bad move on Red Hat's part.
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"
Al Gore - March 9, 1999 in an interview with CNN
How the hell can this be taken out of context? Al Gore was in high school when the Internet was created!
it seems like this article is trying to insight a riot. I'm not going to bite.
;-)
I think the biggest thing is the difference between the open-source movement and the open-source revolution. I would have to say that RH has absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the open-source movement as it was well under way a VERY long time before RH was around. Indeed, the open-source movement even predates RMS's insane babblings about...well..whatever. It could be argued that the open-source movement started when computers did. (I have to take that stance).
Secondly....i don't think there is an open-source revolution. If you ask 100 people on the street if they even know what open-source is, 99 of them will stare at you blankly (this is assuming the other one is CmdrTaco
Even when the concept of open-source becomes an everyday word in (most?) households....can we say X started the revolution?
Let me answer this with a question....who started the american revolution?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
And, since Al Gore invented the Internet, he should get the credit!!
Seriously, Red Hat may have invented the Open Source Business Model, which woo-ed enough venture capital to make God blush. But they only took advantage of the opportunity OSS gave them. I guess to the PR people, cashing in on something is the same thing as inventing it.
-- Mid
Much as we can despise/dislike ESR and his style, he did (together with Bruce Perens) coin the term "Open Source". The trademark is still actually owned by Software in Public Interest - though ESR has challenged that.
This discussion is kindof like trying to decide who invented the computer. What is "the Open Source movement"? Published source code? AT&T Bell Labs did that with the original UNIX, in 1969. Freely available source code? Many will agree that the GNU project (1984) made software "Free" for the first time. And in the DOS days, of course there was "freeware" and "shareware", which sometimes came with source.
Back in the old days, we typically just made our programs available without any regard to licensing, rights of use, copyrights, etc. -- something that would make these programs unacceptable according to, for instance, the DFSG. Still, the source code was usually public, so they could still probably be called "open source" (although not Open Source(tm)).
The only thing that's for certain is that RedHat did not invent any of this, any more than Al Gore did. They company was busy creating CD-ROMs based on DOS shareware when they noticed this "Linux" phenomenon pop up, and the latched on to it. They made one of the first distributions (along with Slackware, Yggdrasil, and Debian), but very little of the actual development effort was theirs.
I like to eat.
Did they start the Open Source revolution before or after Al Gore invented the Internet?
good job Bob!!
I agree with your point.
being pro life doen't mean your no pro choice.
Turned out that the report on all those bugs was mostly bogus tracing back to one post that ( not even a bug report ) bashing RH7 that A Cox responded to .
.<br><br>
<br><br>
Now a seven word statement without any context in the article gets top light ? Well thanks for passing it on . I don't think that I am going to lose faith in a company that has consistenly reinvested in the community and open source until people like Alan Cox start jumping ship .
<br><br>Let's start taking a little less of a kneejerk at success
How about popping off for a formal response form someone at redhat before YOU post anything more about them . Might do you both some good <br><br>
Your Squire<br>
Squireson
If they (we?) are strictly referring to the idea of software being open source, then red hat definitely has a point, although taking the M$ or Al Gore standpoint of "I/we invented blah-blah-blah" is a bit goofy..
But if you think of the open source movement as simply the idea that information should be free, then red hat is full of it because that was around long before us long-haired pot smoking hippie freak computer geeks existed. If you think about it, that idea can be traced back through history... it gets more general as you go back before patents, but you can go clear back to monks.. they treasured information... copied and compiled it... if not for them we would know nothing about history before at least the renaissance, probably more!Anyway, my (sorta philosophical) point is that while the idea of the "open source movement" can be pretty specific, there are other ways of looking at it...
When the world ends, we'll be burnin' one
-- Dave Matthews Band
is it irrelevant that red hat is expensive as hell?
It's the community.
Yes, there are Trolls and Flamers and ... but there are also ESR, RMS, Alan Cox, Philip Greenspun, et cetera, participating.
OK, I'm done gushing.
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
As far as starting Open Source, many deserve credit, and the zero hour is impossible to pinpoint. Who started the Open Source 'Revolution' is another question.
Red Hat and their ilk brought Open Source to the forefront of the world's frontal lobe. Sad but true, the boss who kept asking me to move my Linux webserver to NT is now bragging to his boss about how long we've had Linux. (Since kernel 0.91)
I am now looking at an item that has lingered on my desk far too long... "Prime Time Freeware for UNIX"... it proudly boasts containing X11R6 and BSD 4.4 (altough X11 is still in beta). The 'gcc' version is 1.42, the 'perl' version is 4.036. Plan 9 weighs in at 1536 KB and is only the erly drafts. Amiga Mach and Condor OS'es are also included. Linux is not mentioned. (For a reason....)
The point is this, Open Source was around long before Linux... did you notice??
I think large scale corporate interest in Linux began the revolution, and this did not begin with Red Hat. Red Hat was a by product of other efforts like Ydgrassil Linux, Elf Linux, etc... Red Hat, the company, came into the game late in the first quarter, but did start.
~Hammy
"I don't know who started the revolution, but I'd sure recognize the bastard that cut off my head if I saw him again." -King Louis XVI
Every time a software company (and let's not forget that is what Red Hat is) is successful, zealots (like some of you) start bitching and whining about it when they take a little credit for it. You sit there and say, "Ya know, the last two versions really did start to kind of suck. RH is turning into Microsoft. I'm gonna use Debian from now on. Blah, Blah, Blah."
Red Hat was the first distribution that was really marketed to the general public. It was the first exposure to Linux I and my friends had and that was because we saw it sitting on the shelf at an electronics store three or four years ago. It was this kind of marketing that put Red Hat (and Linux) out there. That is how you become successful; you put what you have out there for sale. If it weren't for this kind of marketing, Linux would not be as far as it is today.
Just a summer ago, everyone here was sporting their collective woodies over Red Hat's IPO and everyone jumped on board singing the RH song. RH in turn supplied its own resources and money into making Linux and the tools that came with the kernel better. Granted, the tools they made were in their own distribution, but it's not like you couldn't get those very tools for free from any ftp site. Now, because they've been so successful and are taking the credit for it, some of you are shunning them.
Face it, folks. Red Hat is in it for the good of the community, but they also know that there is money to be had. Who would've thought a company could get rich from selling free software? Red Hat brought to Linux something that it needed to really get off of the ground: a brand. Brands bring with it success. If success comes at the price of the masses turning against you, then why would any distribution want to be successful? Some of you should really be ashamed of yourselves.
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
GOBACK.
...and obviously trolling, so I'll say nothing more.
>>esr>>
For those who disagree, can they please name an open source company before Cygnus(now Red Hat)?
Linus has done many wonderful things, but he actually has less claim on this mantle than Tiemann. Linus invented a kernel, not a business model or an ideology -- he supplied the movement's most important object lesson, but didn't invent the movement.
>>esr>>