Warnings to Red Hat about AOL Buyout

andyo from O'Reilly submitted linkage to a report he wrote over there where he urges Red Hat to think twice about letting AOL eat them. Talks about GNN, as well as Netscape. I'm sure this isn't the last word we'll hear on this subject either.

Comments

way to read the article

[Gerad]

good work.

first few lines:

Think Twice, Red Hat
by Andy Oram
Jan. 19, 2002

Re:way to read the article

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the first 10 words of the write-up would already have been enough:

andyo from O'Reily submitted linkage to a report he wrote

but that's really too much to ask if you need to get FIRSTISAJTP OOOSSST!!! (and first up-moderation because of stupid moderators who can't wait to spend their points) I guess ..

Re:i do agree

[Anonymous Coward]

"i have to admit that i myself have large reservations about capitalism as it is applied in North America"

I am sure you have no reservations about living in the richest country in the world.
Do you see any connections here ?

not a troll.

[Brightest Light]

if im getting labeled a troll for my sig file, you really should think about why i put that there. im not a troller, i am, however, concerned about how slashdot is quelling the voices of dissention. they dont even seem to care about the valid, ontopic posts (even the oracle related posts were bitchslapped)! i think if more people were to be made aware of this, and an open forum created to deal with this, a true feeling of free speech would be fostered.

Re:i do agree

[Transient0]

freedom is not a magic word. Should murderers be free to kill? Almost everyone agrees that murder cannot be tolerated. The debates arise when the issue is in how to deal with murderers. The United States has far from absolute freedom. Uncountable things which fall well under the blanket of personal liberties are disallowed(recreational drug use for example), yet corporations, which aren't even human entities, are allowed to cross all of the lines of reasonable behaviour which we tend to expect from other people. If everyone behaved in a reasonable manner at all times, there would be no reason to ever need to restrict the freedoms of any person or any corporation. I believe in absolute maximum freedom. This means that you limit only as much freedom as you have to to make sure that other people's freedoms aren't trampled. The murderer is not allowed to murder because that tramples the freedom of the person who wants to continue to live. Somehow, this fails to have been applied to corporations because the pursuit of the buck has been labelled a noble goal.

The Anti-Trust suit against Microsoft is an attempt to limit it's freedoms as a corporation. Is this a bad thing?

Freedom from responsibility

[Eric Green]

Yes, the freedom for the individuals within corporations to avoid responsibility for things like, e.g., poisoning our water and our air, is indeed a corporate freedom that is bad.

If I poison your water, I get sent to jail for attempted murder. If Motorola or Intel poisons your water, they get whacked lightly over the wrist with limp noodles and told "Don't do that again" (I lived over a Motorola flume for 18 months so know that first-hand) Does anybody else see anything wrong here?