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RedHat Starts "Open Source Now" Fund
celston23 writes "According to this article (near bottom), RedHat is intending to use their Open Source Now Fund to support open-source (GPL) developers who are sued for copyright infringement. Might be used during the SCO legal battle."
All ye kernel authors, instead of trying to fight SCO, just give them a deadline to license your kernel submissions, provide them a separate "binary only license" on top of the GPL license, and charge them $10 for every license they sell that includes your intellectual property. If they don't pay up, then cancel their license to use your part of the kernel.
meh
Open Source's greatest feature and worst flaw is that it's free and open. Because there's next to no profit in it, software authors have next to no protection from getting sued. So in order to protect things like Linux from SCO, there needs to be some kind of a fund like this. Again, unfortunate but true.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
probably reinvested in the fund.
Perhaps they could also use some of this fund, or another one, to start lobbying for less restrictive copyright laws? Even better, lobbying for legal recognition of the GPL would be a better goal. If the GPL is codified into law as an enforcable license, absurd lawsuits would carry far less weight in a court.
Of course, given the current makeup of the Congress, it would be more likely to see the GPL invalidated in national legislation than supported.
who keeps the interest earned from the fund?
Does it matter? Red Hat is sticking their neck out into a multi billion dollar lawsuit in the interest of their primary product (which is also a community of developers primary product) that substantial risk is very worthwhile additionally, they are using their clout and name recognition to attract donors. The use of corporate resources, image etc... is a service that even CHARITABLE organizations compensate.
"If there has been no infringement then logically there would be no need for this fund as, again logically, it could be demonstrated in every court that Linux doesn't contain any SCO material."
You still need $$$ to pay the lawyers so you can "demonstrate in every court."
Why is this necessary when we have the EFF?
The EFF is much more broad.
RedHat is only concerned with Linux and the GPL, plus they want the publicity.
The unofficial
You know, back in the day, when I first came to Slashdot, Open Source was all about the free, wild and woolly creation of software, about freedom from The Man, and doing stuff because it was a Nerd Mountain and by goddamn we were going to climb it. I'm never sure if I should be happy or sad that companies such as Red Hat and Oracle are essentially hijacking the popularity of Linux. At the end of the day, is it about being on everybody's desktop or server, or is it about having written good code without a boss? Coding just for the sake of coding, fixing problems without having to beg marketing to let you do it.
What do I say this? Well, I just can't bring myself to believe that Red Hat has the interests of the greater community at heart here. In my view, they are simply trying to protect their revenue stream. Without companies turning to Open Source, they simply don't have any customers.
Maybe that's obvious, but I think amongst all of the support that this fund will have, it's at least good to have it said.
20% is modest and truly "small" compared to welfare administration and every one of the charities that call you on the phone.
My god.. why the hell is it that no matter what kind of offer people make into the Open Source community, there has to be some nit-picking whiner trying to crap on the parade, or pick holes in it.
Put a sock in it.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Redhat doesn't HAVE to do this, and I'll wager it doesn't put "money in their pocket" as so many Redhat bashers seem to be obessed with mentioning. It's good PR, yes, but it's also good for the community.
Redhat makes IMHO the BEST out-of-the box distro. You want something that just works (tm)? 95% of the time, you're talking about Redhat. Is it perfect? No, not by a long shot, but it amazes me the sheer number of people who attack Redhat just because they are the market leader. Remember kids, if it's popular, it must be crap!
--Stupid Sig Here--
Can you tell the difference between these two?:
u rcenow
opensourcenow@redhat.com
www.redhat.com/openso
In the older articles the Open Source Now fund had been anounced, but it was just an email address that I bet has been banged pretty hard the past few days (I know I used it and got no response back).
Now we get the whole "Open Source Now" movement with complete web-site and instructions to participate, but since nobody here RTFA we get 100s of comments calling for a dupe.
Really, if anybody wants to help in this hole issue just click the link and donate something.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
You can't copyright names. They're covered by trademarks. And it is totally within the bounds of fair use to call something by its name. The canonical example: I don't have to call it "that long race we have in Boston on Patriots' Day every year" just because the Boston Athletic Association owns the trademark "Boston Marathon". Likewise, if SCO is actually referring to Linux, they can call it that.
/. so often that it occurs to me that I've probably just been trolled, hard. Oh well.
This is a good thing.
And this comes up on
With the FUD Microsoft and others spread about open source and the GPL being anti-american and bad for business, perhaps it isn't such a good idea for the site to look like it advocates socialism.
Just my $0.02.
Incidentally, it's also possible that IBM's countersuit is costing SCO money to defend. If Boies is doing that one on a contingency as well, then it has to be more than a little annoying for him because it includes patent infringement claims which will necessarily require additional lawyers to be put on the case because of the specialization in patent law required, and this will at the very least entail a substantial opportunity cost because those lawyers could be working for paying clients.
I say open the floodgates and bring on all the counter suits that can be mustered. Every single kernel contributor should be suing SCO right now for infringing their copyrights through illegal distribution of their code.
Bitter memories.
Recall TransGaming's Winex scam. They planned to offer their work back to Wine when they got a certain amount of supporters.
Well...they have that. Where's the releases?
And for that matter, they're not really following the GPL's spirit if they track down everyone who is giving out a compiled version of their stuff (such as Debian and Gentoo) and telling them not to - and being listened to.
People asking for free money are not always appreciative of it without contracts to ensure that they have to be.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!