Slashdot Mirror
An Open Letter From Bob Young
Subject: Freedom & personal responsibility good, serfdom & tyrannical control bad.
From: bob@redhat.com
Dear Slashdotter,
The wild and heated debate about Red Hat 7 in recent days has been interesting to follow. It demonstrates the strength of the open source model. By comparison (I'm not sure if anyone noticed this) Computerworld had a front page story a couple of weeks ago about how there were problems with Solaris on Sun's Enterprise systems, but that these bugs were not well known because Sun was making their customers sign NDA's (non-disclosure agreements) before helping them fix the problem.
Consider the contrast between a proprietary vendor's unwillingness to debate the merits of their technology with the open debate that Red Hat Linux enjoys.
This discussion is of such value to the users of Red Hat products that we feel little need to even attempt to comment. Informed readers can read all sides of the debate, download our products, test them, and decide for themselves whether our critics or supporters are correct. Of course the readers who post things like "well I haven't tried RH7 but I've heard..." aren't very helpful, but I trust most Slashdot readers to see through that kind of stuff.
There is one recurring comment that I could not resist addressing. Namely the regular habit of our critics of comparing Red Hat to Microsoft. I just don't get it.
There are many things for which we should be justifiably criticised (I have no idea what these might be, but I'm certain they exist ;-) but trying to act like Microsoft is not one of them. Red Hat's business is built on solving the problem thatMicrosoft's business model has imposed on the software user since Bill Gates disagreed with the members of the Homebrew computing club back in 1980.
The software industry that Microsoft has been the role model for is built on the premise that customers are not to be trusted with the technology that they are building their organizations on. The legacy software industry is built on the proprietary binary-only model where not only does the user not get the source code he needs to make changes, but worse he receives the product under a license that essentially says that if you make any improvements to the technology you are using, if you solve a bug that is causing your systems to crash, or add a feature that your users or customers desperately need the vendor can have you thrown in jail. (If you don't believe me, just read any shrinkwrapped software license). This kind of business model, where the customer is completely beholden to his supplier exists in no other industry in any free market that I know of. It harks back to the old feudal systems of 12th century Europe.
Red Hat's business success is owed to one simple benefit our products and services offer that our larger binary-only OS competitors do not. Namely that our commitment to publish the code that we write and distribute under open source licenses enable us to give our customers control over the technology they are using to build their systems. We cannot promise to deliver perfection. All we can promise is to acknowledge the problems immediately and work with you to fix them publicly and in real time. With control over their systems our users can simply build more stable and reliable systems than the binary-only model allows.
This is why the fear that Red Hat is somehow going to wake up one morning and abandon our commitment to open source is so mis-placed. Open source provides us with -the- competitive advantage that enables us to compete effectively against much larger competitors. To abandon open source is simply not in our customers interest and hence not in Red Hat's financial interest.
So if you want to criticise us for shipping gcc 2.96, you have every right to do so - you'd be wrong, but it is at least a legitimate debate and I'd respect your opinion. But to compare Red Hat to Microsoft indicates an ignorance of what is driving our success.
Remember that this debate was begun by someone going to Red Hat's public site and trying to add up all the registered bugs in Red Hat 7. When was the last time Microsoft (or any other legacy software vendor for that matter) gave you access to their complete bug registration system? Which software model do you really want to see succeed? One where you have to trust your vendor (who can and frequently restrict access to information you does need) or one where you are in control of the technology you are using?
We may be making mistakes - that up to you to decide. Some of them may be important to you and while I have no doubt you will point them out to us, you have control over the technology you are using. We work hard to build products that please most of our users most of the time. But if you don't like something about Red Hat Linux you don't have to use that feature or function. We simply are not pursing a business model that bears any resemblance to Microsoft's, so just quit it.
The next slashdotter who compares anything Red Hat does to Microsoft will be punished. The punishment will be to find the nearest blackboard and write "freedom & personal responsibility good, serfdom & tyrannical control bad" seven hundred times.
Cheers, Bob.
I have found that those who bash Red Hat the most are often newcomers to Linux who have maybe been part of the community for a year or perhaps even less. I am a bit confused about why they do this, perhaps they think Red Hat bashing is cool. I have been using Linux since 1994 and I think Red Hat is a great company! They pay people like Havoc Pennington to work fulltime on GTK 2.0, Alan Cox to hack on the kernel and many many other. Also, since when does Slashdot represent the community? Most people here don't contribute anything, the core community has always and still consists of the various mailing lists (the kernel, debian, mandrake, redhat and many other lists). Just MHO.
Welcome to leap before looking school. You have successfully leaped to a conclusion without looking at the surrounding facts. To help you better understand your position, here are some facts that you may have missed:
This is software intended to help online merchants interoperate with existing credit card clearing houses.
Red Hat (or more likely, the company they bought CCVS from) probably had to sign a lot of NDAs in order to get access to the specifications for those proprietary protocols.
Thus Red Hat has released the software with a license that complies with the legal requirements, but still allows merchants to build Linux solutions. This is a GOOD thing. For details see this.
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
It's always nice to see an open letter, and even nice to see that Red Hat are actually watching the flow of conversation on Slashdot.
When something goes wrong, it's so usual for someone to sit around and say 'not my fault', that it's nice for someone to sit down and honestly say 'We may have made a mistake, perhaps.. But we made decisions we believed to be right, and you're quite at liberty to disagree..', and actually take the time to read the arguments against, and weigh them up.
I guess there's no progression without controversy and dissent over the paths to follow, and somebody has to spark controversy.
Maybe I speak just for myself, maybe for many, but thanks Bob, for paying attention to what we have to say, and for letting us know that you are, indeed listening to our many voices.
Cheers,
Malk
Well, there is a lot here to digest, both in terms of what Mr. Young wrote, and in terms of the larger debate about RedHat. Personally though, I feel that there is, in fact, a lot of paranoia in the Open Source Community - and rightly so, for we effectively LOST our community back in the early 80's. So here we are, in fear of RedHat becoming another Microsoft, or at the very least, a Sun (which I find to be an infinitely more likely situation, and a totally different debate altogether). Well, I can say in all honesty that I have used RedHat's products before, and I have kept up with all the various claims against them - and as a Debian user, I can say that I believe RedHat has done NOTHING to deserve the kind of claims against them that people have levied against them.
Now, this issue is moot in my mind - Young, in effect, seems to be feeding the trolls more than anything else here. No one who had actually researched this debate would claim RedHat to be acting like Microsoft. Again, as a Debian user, I feel that there is a hell of a lot WRONG with RedHat's distro - for ME. This more of a personal taste though - and don't anyone dare tell me that Debian hasn't had it's share of crippling bugs.
In the end, this is all just incredibly silly for me, and I have finally made my decision about RedHat. RedHat is a company, like SuSE and the Turbolinux guys... they are selling a product. RedHat has supported it's product admirably, and though it isn't in my decision the product that I want to use, that doesn't mean that when something goes wrong we should all point our fingers and scream "REDHAT IS BECOMING MICROSOFT!!!" RedHat, as a company, had done a great deal of work for the Linux community and for the acceptance of Linux in places that in turn have made Linux a better OS (IBM, Dell, etc...). So I think we should back off and turn down our flamethrowers here - if you want to criticize RedHat, fine, but at least find a good reason.
Know ye not that ye are Gods???
Most of the criticism of RedHat seems to be coming from college students with a selective dislike for what they see as large, successful businesses. I say "selective" because these same critics also fawn all over corporately produced mass market products, like Mountain Dew, The Simpsons, and anything Star Wars related.
One great thing about Linux distributions is competition. Don't like RedHat? Buy SuSE or Turbo or Corel or Stampede or Debian or one of several others. If you want to jump on corporations, then there are some pharmaceutical companies and food processing companies that really need public vehement public criticism of their practices. But don't bother pointing the same kind of fire at RedHat.
You are missing that any large software development effort, if they are honest and have high standards, must admit that they have zillions of "bugs". Most don't make the product unusable or even bad; instead they are things that could be done better, or that some person doesn't like based on taste, or are just notes worth keeping around to think about. (This isn't even counting the many bogus, incomplete, and duplicate bug reports.) There is in fact good reason that most organizations call it an "issue" database instead of a "bug" database.
The 2000 (or whatever) "bugs" in RedHat's bugzilla is a meaningless number, and by itself is no cause for alarm (by users), shame (by RedHat), or criticism (by sanctimonious know-nothings). Go count the bug's in Debian's database. (Don't bother telling me when you get finished, because you won't.)
I think Bob was trying to say that counting the bugs is a silly response to the availability of RedHat's bug database. A more "enlightened" response is to appreciate the value that the mere existence of a public database gives you.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
From: bob@redhat.com
Dear Slashdotter,
"it appears that you're trying to write an Open Letter. Would you like some help in choosing defensive words and phrases?"
--
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I admit I'm not on the inside of the GCC steering commitee stuff. I don't know if anyone had any gag orders or not. However, even I new RedHat 7.0 was going to be shipping a "bogus" gcc 2.96. Even before the 7.0 beta release, I had upgraded my gcc from rawhide. This was back in early July. How much lead time did you want? Is three months not enough? BTW, I upgraded because directed me to in responce to bug #13547 (a problem with g++ and iostream). I don't see how anyone can criticize RedHat for not disclosing their plans. As soon as they start on the next release, they put the whole thing in rawhide. I don't see MS putting NT64 pre-releases up on the net. I don't see them putting their working copies of anything up on the net. I agree with Bob Y. You can't make legitimate comparisons between MS and RH. The only exception might be that RH is successful in the Linux world and MS is successful in their nitch.
Doug Alcorn