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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."
This is awfully familiar, don't you think? (again, near the bottom)
Wow. So RedHat gets free karma for creating an ostensibly altruistic fund to defend developers who release GPL software, then they turn around and say "Well, we release GPL code. We'll be taking our money back now, KTHXBYE"
Very interesting...
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!
Why not just call it...
Save Open Source (SOS)?
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
Why is this necessary when we have the EFF?
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.
I may have missed this on the home page, but is OSN a 503C non-profit?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
But do Red Hat know something that possibly the greater community do not?
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.
I guess that this is not just for the SCO charges, but maybe for other similar charges from other companies who may, sometime in the future, level the same accusations.
Maybe I am well off track here, but surely it would be of better use to the community for SuSE, IBM etc to also put into the pot.... I guess the interest gained alone from such a pot would be huge if it is to protect people from charges similar to SCO which I will guess will end up costing millions.
I really hope this can be finally be put to rest sometime soon, as this kind of 'war chest building' does not inspire confidence. I have said before that whilst these charges, counter charges and now this warchest it is going to make those who are looking at migrating someway towards Linux a little concerned.
Though it's great that somebody is willing to step up and offer legal protection to Linux, the kind that Microsoft are readily willing for the lack thereof. How will this help?
Take a look at SCO. For the last couple of months they have been spouting nonsense, slander and let's be honest FUD. In fact, in the face of the current IBM countersuit, they have the gall (read: stupidity) to launch another claim.
Now, all this is quite illegal, as IBM's lawyers have pointed out, but has it stopped SCO? No, not until 2005, at least. Until that time, SCO can say and do as it more-or-less pleases, until an injunction anyways. They will nodoubt reep the rewards for there behaviour, but that doesn't stop the damage they're causing in the meantime, until the courts get around to dealing with it.
Reason, let alone a cadre of Open Source Funded lawyers won't stop SCO. That's just the way it is.
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.
I still don't see anywhere to donate money. The open source fund right now seems little more then redhat.
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!!"
Lest we forget that ANYONE who makes ANY money off of ANYTHING must be evil and their motives must be solely to continue to make more money.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
You mean there's a project to create bender? Sweet! That's much cooler than that weak-ass blender project!
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
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--
I feel like I've read that somewhere before.
In a related development, SCO has filed separae lawsuits against the government of Turkey and the Vienna Boys Choir for having employed eunuchs in the past.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...SCO executive stock sales.
The FSF, will say it should be SFS (Save Free Software), but you can use your orginal name as long as you put a GNU/ in front of it.
This seems different (though related) to the "Open Source Now Fund", which would specifically target legal threats against Linux and related things, like the FSF does for GNU.
I haven't been able to find any info on how to contribute to the fund. I spoke with many Red Hat people at Linux World about it, and they didn't know. I sent an email to opensourcenow@redhat.com, and they never replied. I've also been talking with Red Hat salesmen for the past week or two trying to put together a proposal, and they don't know either.
What's the hold up Red Hat? TAKE MY MONEY DAMMIT.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
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.
GPL is Free Software(R) -- Open source is a conciderably wider target than that. A quick look over the site doesn't show anything GPL-specific, just Linux-specific. BSDers need love too!
Open Source was never about freedom, it was and is about pitching the Open Source development methodology primarily to businesses: when businesses share source code they ostensibly get better programs developed with less expense because they can tap a large community of programmers who are willing to work on their project for no fee. Open Source talks about the practical outcome of sharing source code, not the freedoms that make those practical ends possible.
Freedom to share and modify programs was and is the message from the Free Software movement which started over a decade before the Open Source movement began. I recommend this essay for an instructive look at the differences between the two movements. It was the Free Software Foundation that brought us the GNU General Public License which secures the freedoms to share and modify and the community the Open Source movement has leveraged to spread their message. The FSF did these things well before the Open Source movement got started. I'm grateful the Open Source Movement is bringing users to Free Software and encouraging use of the GNU GPL (one of many Free Software licenses), but let's not overstate what the Open Source Initiative did--adding a license to a list of approved licenses cannot compare with writing and defending the license (links to parts one and two of Eben Moglen's essay).
SCO FUD aside, is Oracle interested in what's in the Linux kernel, or were you referring to the GNU/Linux operating system? I don't understand what you mean by "hijacking" here either--Red Hat has contributed a great deal to Linux and (as far as I know) all in accordance with the GPL. Everyone is free to study, share, and modify their contributions as well as the rest of the kernel.
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