Alan Cox to Leave if RH AOL Buyout Happens?

According to MartinG, Alan has posted to the LKML and said "Im insulted that anyone believes I would continue working for RH if aol/time warner owned them. " This of course refers to the Red Hat/AOL Buyout Rumors that we have been talking about all weekend.

Comments

If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good?

[FortKnox]

Linux out in the open, with big company backing?

Or, are we going to start up with the "elitest want Linux to stay small"?

Linux (even the RedHat distro) has the GPL protecting it. Even AOL/TW's big lawyers can't break it. Why is it such a bad thing??

Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good?

[sporty]

Its evil and good apparently. Let's take a look at the facts.

AOL
* provides free IM
* provides API (though not the nicer one) for writting your own client
* provides us with everything for OSS of Mozilla + opensourcing netscape

Evil
* overzealous marketing
* won't open up oscar
* "you've got mail" - the movie and the sound
* they are a big company, not like MS but not running around buying ISP's

I think people are taking the evil way out of hand.

Perhaps Alan wants to stay a home-spun, I don't need to wear a suit type of guy. That's good for him and all. Just wish people wouldn't assume that we all know what's in his head.

Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good?

[__past__]

Linux (even the RedHat distro) has the GPL protecting it. Even AOL/TW's big lawyers can't break it. Why is it such a bad thing??

Maybe because you're wrong.

First, nobody knows if lawyers (or judges, they still exists, you know) could "break" the GPL. Right now, we only know nobody tried it yet.

Furthermore, the important part of Red Hat are not protected by the GPL. Neither their name and credibility, nor their customer base is GPLed. (In fact, I don't even know if all their software is - AFAIK SuSEs Yast is closed source, e.g.)

nice words words Alan,

[sluggie]

but you forgot to give a reason.

AOL bought ICQ, AOL bought Winamp.
Did anyone notice that one of those products did really change to the worse (besides the ads in ICQ, which is ok I guess because they are not that annoying)?

No, no one noticed, because they didn't.

But what changed is that the coders of ICQ and Winamp got nice paychecks.

So, Alan where is your problem?
Don't like opensource OS coders who dare to make money?

This is a Good Thing(tm)

[dbretton]

If RH is acquired, then you better believe that AOL/TW would drive RH to become a company that supported the AOL/TW initiative (i.e. world domination by AOL/TW).

AOL/TW is an 800lb gorilla.
MS is an 800lb gorilla.

The RH acquisition would be like giving one of them a dart-gun: while it may hurt, it would stil only be a little weapon.

As a consequence, RH's gameplan would change from Red Hat Domination via Linux to AOL/TW world domination. Linux is dropped from the big picture, and only becomes a little piece of the puzzle.

Having Alan leave for a company that would support the World Domination thru Linux initiative (like Mandrake or SuSe, or Debian) would be a good thing for Linux.

Re:Good for him

[MartinG]

I get on very well with my boss.
I regularly grab a beer after work with him.
I also often tell him to fsck off if he gives me work I don't like.

It's a good thing and its based on honesty and mutual respect.

If you don't have that, then you have to realise that many bosses will do whatever they can to exploit you as far as possible, and that old bullshit "putting the food on the table" is one of the buggest reasons It keeps on happening. Can't you see that if people weren't such cowards as to cave in to the "but how am I gonna pay the bills" argument then bosses would be forced to do more of what made their employees happy. All you "food on the table" bods are part of the problem allowing companies to become greedy and exploitative in the first place.

If your employer knows that you fear leaving them, they are suddenly in an extremely powerful position over you.