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Red Hat's Open Source Assurance Program
scubacuda writes "ZDnet and others report that Red Hat now offers the 'Open Source Assurance Program' as protection for customers if they get hit with a copyright infringement case from the SCO Group. From their website: 'A key feature of the Open Source Assurance Program is an Intellectual Property Warranty. The warranty ensures, that in the event that an infringement issue is identified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code, Red Hat will replace the infringing code. Red Hat's warranty assures customers that they can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and related solutions without interruption. The warranty is available for all customers having a valid registered subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux or related solutions.'" Following close behind Novell and Hewlett-Packard, but it looks like Red Hat is not actually indemnifying their customers like Novell and HP, but rather is simply promising to fix any real copyright problems moving forward, which is something I think we would assume they would do in any case.
Throughly useless I think. You can replace the code, but you can't indemnify 3rd parties. So, because anybody can sue anyone for anything, you'll still end up in court if your pockets are deep enough.
Like trying to swat elephants with fly-swatters.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
So, they are promising, in case they are slapped with a cease-and-desist order, to cease and desist. Whatever next?
Seeing as SCO can prove just about diddly, I don't think the RedHat Legal Code Change team will have much to do. The cards are being called SCO. Bluff time is over.
So this doesn't indemnify? Sounds like they offer to fix the code and it will give you access to the pool of money to help out (which won't last long if the bad news comes.)
Am I missing something here?
I'm not sure having Red Hat indemnify me or my company would give me the warm fuzzies anyway...
for indemnification to be meaningful you have to assume that the pockets behind it are deep enough to be able to actually pay out and protect you when (god forbid) the time comes.
Red Hat doesn't have enough of a track record for their promise to protect me to mean too much to me.
Yeah, replacing the ostensibly offending code is nice, but it won't get me off the hook if I've already been using something that has been found to be infringing.
With all that said you have to really believe that there is a reasonable shot of SCO succeeding for any of this to be terribly meaningful to you...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
SCO has a plan to counter this. It is called the "Open Sores" program.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Its nice to see that even though this is something that they would fix anyways, they are saying it publicly. To many times coporations words and actions imply that they will do something, only to not follow through. Its nice to see a company take a stand and say out loud, what they are going to do.
It would appear to me that the strength of Linux is its history and stability. Take that way, and trouble's a comin'?
Warning: DNRA
Seems like a strange thing to offer. Here at work, once you get exposed to open source code, you can never go back to dealing with internal code merely due to the risks that algorithms you develop internally may accidentally be recreated in open source work.
How can RH say that they will replace your code with non-tainted code if the tainted code is the only way they've seen for approaching a problem. Seems like they need the equivalent of an optoisolator between their tainted developers and non-tainted developers. A white room approach with a description of the goal slid under the door.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Being that this is literally the least they could do, this situation is an example of what it means to maximize profits by minimizing costs :-)
IMHO, this is a MUCH better solution, while I dislike SCO and their tactics, there MAY be some validity to their point , afterall look at how many contributions have been made, its happened before in opensource where someone included copyrighted code (yes I know what they have thus far claimed cant be verified) BUT what happens if it does ?
Remove the code ! I trust RedHat to replace the code quickly and effectivley, RH has made tons of contributions to linux. The others offer to absolve financial IF there is infringing code, RH says hey dont worry well replace the code so those infringments dont apply.
I like this solution much better being a RedHat customer.
It seems to me that SCO's pathetic case is shifting away from copyright and into ideas. If a ruling comes down saying that, for example, nobody but SCO can use the methods involved in a critical feature of RHE, what happens then?
Managers and lawyers don't care about the facts unless those facts are in writing.
Of course they'd fix it going forward, but it gives manadrones and legal eagles a warm, fuzzy feeling to see documents that actually say that.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
This is, after all, first and foremost a bit of marketing. Red Hat is trying to get the message out to customers and would-be customers that the whole SCO thing does not create uncertainty or risk over the purchase or use of their product.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
I have lost all respect for RedHat. I can see it being the next SCO/windows. It's only purpose now is to sell a product they pay nothing for. With it's ever changeing style and ever growing bloatness. Makes me as a linux user sick. "UH HO i used redhat once i might be a target"
...because RedHat doesn't have the cash in the bank for that, unlike Novell and IBM.
libertarianswag.com
...now they disguise SCO stories as RedHat stories... MONTHS after we wanted sco.slashdot.org...
Will they never stop spreading their FUD?
Will we see SCO stories after SCO died? I think so... what would slashdot be without SCO...
To echo some earlier posters, yes it is legally useless, but my guess is that they feel they can offer it since they'll know they'll never need to follow through. As in ... "Sure, if God ever showed up on earth to judge you, I'd take the blame for your sins.".
How can this be possible? If there is a case where Red Hat software contains infringing code, and Red Hat cannot come to an agreement with the code's owner on continuing use, Red Hat is prepared to replace the infringing code immediately? I presume use without interruption means support without interruption.
If Red Hat has a complete code base in wings so that any arbitrary bits of code found to be infringing can be replaced, and Red Hat is more sure of its legal standing on the replacement code (since it is meant to be used in event an existing infringement is found), why not just release that code?
The warranty ensures, that in the event that an infringement issue is identified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code, Red Hat will replace the infringing code.
What use is that? When the SCO case really holds up, the issue is not to replace the code but to pay them their royalties. Those payments is what should be guaranteed, not the replacement of the code. Such a replacement will be just as free as the original code.
Funny, I thought that was RedHat swearing that they only use and provide open source software. Oh wait, that's not true either.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
doesn't the fact that the big businesses protecting Linux now means that when Linus decided against a traditional GNU licence and allowed businesses to make money with his work he has done the right thing and *that the GNU licence as it stands right now will always have some legal existence problems*?
The Linux Community has already offered to rip out the infringing code and replace it once it is identified. Red Hat has understood that the community is going to live to its word and has formalized this into an offer of "Intellectual Property Warrant." This formal offer on behalf of the community may be more acceptable to the business folks rather than the diffuse commitments of the Linux Community. I think that's all there is to it.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
The problem SCO is facing is this: they want to sell Linux "licenses" because their intellectual property is supposedly in there. And let's be clear -- it's not patent, trade secret, or trademark IP but copyright IP. But as soon as they say "we own this", the code can get yanked within days or weeks and re-written. So the licenses are worthless, which is why they're being so coy about pointing to the code (aside from silly claims on the ABI headers)
Of couse, they're suing IBM, alleging contract violations for letting their Super Special (and mysteriously Secret) stuff into Linux and claiming AIX, etc is a derivative of UNIX system V. And maybe there is a thin legal thread that might encumber AIX.
But who signed that contract on behalf of Linux? No one. Linux might have a few lines of copied code, but with no contract with SCO, there's no legal reason SCO gets to "own" Linux by calling it a derivative -- you'd need a contract for that.
So even if they're right, they're hosed. And I have my doubts about how right they are.
RedHat is saying to its customers "You can keep using our product without worry: We'll be right over to replace any part of your RedHat Linux solution which SCO can convince a judge they own."
RedHat has it right. They know SCO can't sue an end user for breach of contract if SCO doesn't have a contract with the end user.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Even though SCO's stock has had one hell of a run, and (overwhelming) majority of us believe that their campaign is a fluff, nasdaq's risk analysis tools rates it almost alongside Redhat's stock.
SCOX grade is at 369 and RHAT is at 356.
For reference, Nasdaq is 86 and S&P500 is 52
Higher the number, greater the risk.
SCOX Risk
RHAT Risk
So, either these analysts are smoking crack or maybe I am just a dumbass when it comes to stocks. The later is a likely possibility!
Free XBox, PS2
I grant that this is a valid "What if?" question, but the probability that the ruling will ultimately go their way is so remote it'll take the Hubble Space Telescope to read the first nonzero digit after the decimal point. Their case is really that bad.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
What if all the commercial linux componay have their assurance programs?
...or my eyes?
Does this means that anyone who uses Linux by downloading or compile the code would be vulnerable or risking to be sued by SCO?
Would this means that more people are going to use commercial instead of the free code/binary?
Would that implies that the linux distributions (such as Redhat/Suse/Mandrake/IBM, etc..) start to reallize that SCO is actually helping them right now? So, they will work behind the scence to aloow the litigation stretch on forever, so users will fear and buy commercial support?
What if the world is turned upside down?
Oh, I am sitting upside down right now?
Oh, it's just my mind.
It is official; The Register confirms: SCO is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SCO community when The Register confirmed that SCO market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent The Register survey which plainly states that SCO has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SCO is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SCO's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SCO faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SCO because SCO is dying. Things are looking very bad for SCO. As many of us are already aware, SCO continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
OpenLinux is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time SCO developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: SCO is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
SCO leader Darl McBride states that there are 7000 users of OpenUnix. How many users of SCOSource are there? Let's see. The number of OpenUnix versus SCOSource posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 SCOSource users. SCO/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of SCOSource posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of SCO/OS. A recent article put OpenLinux at about 80 percent of the SCO market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 OpenLinux users. This is consistent with the number of OpenLinux Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, OpenLinux went out of business and was taken over by Caldera who sell another troubled OS. Now Caldera is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that SCO has steadily declined in market share. SCO is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SCO is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. SCO continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SCO is dead.
Fact: SCO is dying
In the case you mention the court will normally allow a period to remove the infringing code, so as not to impose unneccerary hardship on innocent victims.
In addition the Copyright owner has a duty to mitigate damages, in case they want to be awarded Damages by the court. The latter by the way the latter is why SCO will never get anything from the Linux community in case hell freezes over and some code beloning to them is in Linux.
Help fight continental drift.
That's why they removed fortune cookie and mp3 support from their distro.
What else do you want them to say? "We verfied our baseline code against the vapourware provided by the SCO, have decided that the whole OS is built upon a house of SCO cards, and we're discarding Red Hat entirely..." What's the next OS going to be called then? Yellow Touque?
One of the 187.
You know what I think is actually going on with SCO? I think the lawfirms that work for some of the big companies that are being sued approached SCO in the first place. They offered SCO $50k to bring a suit against IBM, NOVELL, whoever, full well knowing that their client would require their services which could be billed into the millions.
Casca
The fact that code tested and running for months or years will be suddenly patched with new, rushed, quickly tested code somehow doesn't make me feel as good as this as it really should.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...that they'll still be supporting the software I buy today in a year or two. (Bah, three RH 8.0 servers and a 7.3 server.) Luckily I didn't put it on anything important.
What're you missing? Lets see. First of all the fact that you've tried 1 distro and think that its "Linux" causing the problem and not maybe all the bloated crap you installed with the distro? Perhaps the fact that you can compile from scratch every single part of the os you'd ever use if you really wanted a speed improvement? Maybe the fact that imbedded devices dont normally run KDE, Gnome, or the X-Windowing system just to show someone a heartbeat monitor! Only thing your really missing is a brain. Why don't you go find one now.
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
Here at work, once you get exposed to open source code, you can never go back to dealing with internal code merely due to the risks that algorithms you develop internally may accidentally be recreated in open source work.
Sorry, that just seems basakwards. There is no problem with "recreating algorithms" from open source software, since it is protected by copyrights, not by patents. Some licences (e.g. BSD) will even let you copy source code as long as you give credit where credit is due.
I'd say you or your company have either fallen for FUD or are trying to spread some.
-- MarkusQ
The thread scheduling code has been rewritten, repeatedly IIRC. I suspect if there were any problems there, Red Hat would just revert to a previous scheduler, and take any performance hit in exchange for the security of using an already-tested chunk of code.
If you look at the examples SCO has actually brought up as "copyright infringement", things get even better. Linux's SGI malloc had already been deleted for technical reasons by the time they pointed it out, Linux's BSD packet filter was an original reimplementation of code that wasn't SCO's to begin with, and Linux's ABI code, if it turns out to be copyrightable and copied (Linus says no) at all, could be mostly replaced by randomizing a list of numbers and recompiling everything.
SCO's big claim is that IBM-written code is somehow a SCO trade secret because it was once linked to System V, but even if they were to win that it would just mean a fine for IBM, not any sort of problem for those users of the code who don't have any contracts with SCO.
Realtime doesn't mean fast. It means deterministic. It means that you can determine, that without a doubt, that A will happen within X amount of time after B.
The (few) deterministic systems that I've seen have all been slower than their non-deterministic counterparts. Things have to managed very differently.
I'm not sure if this is normal, but I thought the weapon commonly referred to as a derringer held 2 shots. In "Gun Traffic," a song about a gun dealer and some naive fool trying to buy some protection from his beef, 50 Cent says, and I quote,
His other references to capacities in the song are accurate (ruger=16, glock=21, calico=100), so I see no other reason to think he would be wrong.
Other highly educational songs:
True story.
Red Hat contributed to the OSDL defense fund, so that means they're already putting their money where their mouth is and better yet doing it with everyone else in a way which covers us all, not just licensees of RH Enterprise. Anyone know what the fund is up to now?
You just found out that Liberman was a war-loving Republican, and worse, that you are too.
If Redhat sells me software that is found to infringe on SCO's copyrights, then that is a problem between Redhat and SCO. As the end user, I am not the infringer.
You don't see Eolas suing Microsoft users over their patent lawsuit. You don't see CD buyers being sued for buying a rap CD that has been found to have used sampled music without permission.
The "Open Source Assurance Program" is just PR.
I've been following this SCO trash since day 1.
.357 reasons to GTFO and STFU real quick.
I seriously do not understand... How, exactly, is it that SCO can charge a licensing fee for IP they have not proven belongs to them?
Is there NO protection for consumers?
This isn't just a case of SCO commiting liable, fraud, stock fraud, etc.... but this is also SCO blatently stealing from consumers.
This means, one day, someone like Microsoft could just barge in and say Linux code had stolen MS code in it - force companies to pay under the threat of a massive legal dispute - something 99% of the companies in this country would be defenseless against and would be forced to pay - much like what SCO is doing right now.
Where is our "Big Brother," you know - the one who will stick you in jail for 20 years for simply posessing the knowledge and the means to decrypt a satellite signal. (Ohh, how we love the DMCA.)
At what point are we going to have another postal situation, where some geek is going to go insane from being such a minority that said geek(s) will simply wreck havoc on government systems and end up a martyr.
God knows, I'm just about to the point where if an SCO rep knocks on my door - you can gurantee Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson will give them
This is unreal. I'm half American Indian - but I've never really felt like a minority because I suppose I 'appear' white. Now I really think I'm beginning to understand what Black people complain of. Look at what is happening to the OS community, we're the minority. WE'RE the Black people of technology.
Something needs to change. We need some political action, the average person needs to be aware of what is happening with technology. Linux is without question the only real potential OS to replace MS Windows. MS knows that, SCO [Obviously] knows that, but the average person just has no clue.
Being that Linux is unquestionably on the brink of becoming the replacement desktop - you would think this should be newsworthy and of great public interest.....
*sigh*
The company or person who put the [currently vapor] code there may be held liable. But not the end user who has been assured that the code is open source.
If someone contributed a short story to the NYT, and the NYT times printed it, a reader of the paper would certainly not owe royalties if the copyright turned out to be bogus.
If I'm right, this essentially has the effect of making RH the responsible party, therefore giving any of their customers who do not modify source at least a way to get their money back (sue RH, worst case) if they have to shell out any to SCO.
Right?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
"Linux" causing the problem and not maybe all the bloated crap you installed with the distro?
Since I didn't install much aside from a typical utility set and a windowing system, yes. The kernel doesn't change from distro to distro, nor does KDR or GNOME or what have you. Distros differ by what they include, but the compenents themselves stay the same.
Perhaps the fact that you can compile from scratch every single part of the os you'd ever use if you really wanted a speed improvement?
Unlike most of the screaming world of 15 year olds that Linux is, I have better things to do with my time like actually using my system. A workstation should spend cycles doing work, not metawork.
Maybe the fact that imbedded devices dont normally run KDE, Gnome, or the X-Windowing system just to show someone a heartbeat monitor!
QNX doesn't run these either, it runs its own GUI called Photon, thank you very much. Please try again. It's custom-built for QNX and isn't a slowdown at all. It runs in 43k of RAM. Try that with your beloved bloated windowing systems like KDE or GNOME.
Only thing your really missing is a brain. Why don't you go find one now.
Ad hominem attacks almost always mean that you've lost the argument or are about to lose any serious consideration to your argument. In this case, however, I think it means that you never had an argument to begin with. Thanks for playing, though.
So, even though a year or so ago, I went to Office Depot and bought RH8 Pro in a box, after only a year since this professionally packaged OS graced the shelves of a major retailer, RH not only does not support it anymore (where are the cries from ./ers that gave Microsoft all the heat with the 95 / 98 support death?), but we are not included in this warranty either
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
But on a 1 GHz system and a gig of RAM? Come on. Anything should be faster than Windows on a system like that.
Sun was one of the first to Idemnify Linux users, I remember their periodical presentation fall of last year the CEO saying that. Why does everyone point at HP first? I think it was Sun's idea... no?
Error: Id10t detected
Be that as it may, this is evidently RH calling SCO's bluff and, for all intents, giving them the finger and goatse all at once.
This sig no verb.
One of the principles of inadvertent commercial copyright infringement is that the copyright owner has to identify the infringing matter such that the infringer can takes steps to mitigate the damages. That is, before SCO can collect damages from anyone, they must identify the infringing code, show ownership of the copyright and give the infringer(s) a chance to replace the infringing code. Only if those infringing don't take effective steps to mitigate the infringement after SCO has identified the specific material that infringes can SCO get anything in the way of damages. Until SCO identifies specific code and shows ownership, no one has any liability and then they only have liability for damages if they don't replace the infringing code.
What Red Hat has basically done with this announcement is probably much more effective than any sort of indemnification. Red Hat has now made an formal public offer to remove any legitimately infringing code from Linux. That is, they are offering to mitigate any damages SCO might have incurred if only SCO would be so kind as to identify with specificity exactly where the infringing code lies and show clear copyright ownership for said code. Red Hat (and everyone else) knows that this isn't going to happen but it completely undercuts any claim SCO may have to damages from copyright infringement.
Since SCO has not made an actual copyright infringement claim (the 65 files were only given as examples and it is doubtful that the material can be copyrighted since they were almost all header files) and Red Hat has just said they will mitigate the damages from any proven infringement, SCO doesn't get a penny. The Linux copyright infringement lottery ticket isn't going to pay. Maybe SCO will have better luck fighting off the Nazgul of Armonk (also known as IBM's IP legal team)... but I wouldn't bet a wooden nickel on them.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Not if it's context switching continuously, working to make sure that all the deterministic stuff is getting it's slice of time.
Medical life-support equipment does very simple-minded things, and the people who write it's software can probably write very well-optimized code for the tasks that they need done, that need to be done immediately at time X.
"gui" performance is utterly irrelevant compared to making sure that everything that's scheduled to run, runs. Gui is fluff, the heart-monitor isn't.
At the very, very least (which this clearly is), this will make my COO feel better when this whole SCO idiocy crosses his radar screen and he asks about our recent move to RedHat. So it serves a very useful function for me, even if it is basically meaningless.
LINDON, Utah, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner of the UNIX(R) operating system and a leading provider of UNIX-based solutions, today filed suit against Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL - News) for its alleged bad faith effort to interfere with SCO's rights with respect to UNIX and UnixWare(R). Among the allegations in the suit:
* Novell has improperly filed copyright registrations in the United
States Copyright Office for UNIX technology covered by SCO's
copyrights.
* Novell has made false and misleading public claims that it, and not
SCO, owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights.
* Novell has made false statements with the intent to cause customers
and potential customers to not do business with SCO.
* Novell has attempted, in bad faith, to block SCO's ability to enforce
its copyrights.
* Novell's false and misleading representations that it owns the UNIX
and UnixWare copyrights has caused SCO irreparable harm to its
copyrights, its business, and its reputation.
The lawsuit, filed in Utah State court, in Salt Lake City, requests preliminary and permanent injunctive relief as well as damages. The injunction would require Novell to assign to SCO all copyrights that Novell has wrongfully registered, prevent Novell from representing any ownership interest in those copyrights, and require Novell to retract or withdraw all representations it has made regarding its purported ownership of those copyrights.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Also, what about patents? The "Assurance program" isn't limited to copyrights. If some program is found to infringe a patent, there may not be any way to reimplement the functionality without still infringing.
Thanks to KDict applet.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Indemnify
1. To save harmless; to secure against loss or damage; to insure.
"The states must at last engage to the merchants here that they will indemnify them from all that shallfall out."
--Sir W. Temple.
2. "To make restitution or compensation for, as for that whichis lost; to make whole; to reimburse; to compensate."
--Beattie.
If Redhat sells me software that is found to infringe on SCO's copyrights, then that is a problem between Redhat and SCO. As the end user, I am not the infringer.
There are two things to consider here. One, under the GPL Red Hat has granted you rights beyond that one copy - there are also the rights to redistribution and creating derivative works. If Red Hat's licence is void, then so is yours. This means they'll replace any such code. You might not think of this as an end-user issue, but it is. If you don't have a licence you can't make another copy for your new office branch any more than you can copy up your Windows CD.
The second part is that they presumably can't maintain "tainted" code. Say OpenSSH was tainted, but you continued using it. Then a security bug is discovered. Red Hat can't distribute a fixed version, as it would be a derivate of the tainted code. What does your company do now? Run an unsecure SSH box? This is a guarantee that they *will* fix that problem by delivering a non-tainted update to that box.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
On one point: that a company owns the algorithms you may create while in their employ. Not true... they probably own all your code, work product, etc. but algorithms are not protected by copyright. You have to go to the patent system to do that. And what you learn about your art while in someone's employ cannot be taken away from you. You may be enjoined from working in some area for a period of time in exchange for some monetary consideration from a company, but you've got a right to work (the exact definition of which varies from state to state). Now a given company may choose not to hire you to avoid any appearance of impropriety to stave off lawsuits. But you as a programmer usually need not be concerned about that.
Patents are a different issue, but it doesn't have anything to do with secrets. Patents are specifically not secrets. Just like open source code, it is possible to look at patents and tell whether you are infringing. And even if you are, you might go to court and prevail if there is good prior art. (That said algorithm/business model patents are Evil)
On unpublishing the code, that is an interesting issue in this whole IBM/SCO thing. My guess is that if it happened the parties responsible for the initial leak of the proprietary code are the only ones responsible, not end users in any reasonable view a court could take. In the worst case, which Red Hat seems to be covering here, is that the end user could be enjoined from using someone's code.
I'd like to see assurance that Red Hat will stay open source. With their recent inclusion of non-OSS licensed software and their not-so-recent attempted sidestepping of the GPL re: support licenses, I'm not so assured.
Being a developer, and the QNX distribution being a development platform, one would expect the developer's input and requests to be top priority. Maybe QNX should get its priorities straight, or at least have a different scheduling algorithm for the development version.
Really hurts coming from an anonymous coward.. wow. "Since I didn't install much aside from a typical utility set and a windowing system, yes." That's still more than "linux" as linux is only the kernel. And this is what your really missing here.
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~