Slashdot Mirror
Governments & Open Source
sydney-computer-support writes "The Greens in New Zealand who advocate the use of OSS are upset about a Novell contract because it doesn't support open source. The article mentions the greens spokeperson saying
the contract "cleared the path for government agencies to adopt and expand their use of non-proprietary software" -- failing to note that Novell is a company offering proprietary versions of OSS."
What makes Red Hat and SUSE proprietary Linux?
Red Hat was the a huge supporter of OSS and one of the last distros to always release a completely free version of their OS, now they only give it away to hobbiests and openly release all their developments before the paying customers get them.
Novel releases an OSS version of its OS and is also a big supporter of OSS, arguably bigger than SUSE who had taken a turn for the worse towards the end.
The only problem with Novell could be the use of their directory, but that is not a proprietary version of OSS, it is proprietary software that runs on OSS.
I think (as you seem to, this is not an attack on you, but on the greens) converting over to SUSE or Red Hat both fall into the category of "[clearing] the path for government agencies to adopt and expand their use of non-proprietary software"
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The /. lead-in completely misrepresents the article in question. Had the submitter actually read TFA, he would know that the Greens are actually very excited about the deal. The quotes from Gren spokespersons cover a lot of the standard ground for OSS advocacy. However, the article in question was written for the National Business review, and is primarily a "debunking" of OSS, and of the Greens' enthusiasm for open solutions.
I think you are less confused than Hemos and sydney-computer-support. C'mon, the headline for the linked article is "Open source in government: A delusional cheer from the Greens". The Greens *support* the contract. The article writer doesn't.
It's a pretty badly written article, but that much of it should be clear.
Sorry but you shouldn't believe everything you read.
The Red Hat Enterprise distribution includes some trademarks, logos and what not, but it is in no way proprietary. You can download all the source code directly from Red Hat's own ftp servers for free. And you can even create your own linux distribution based off the source, however, you must remove the trademark logos and what not before you distribute as you are not Red Hat.
If you don't believe then try checking out http://centos.org/
Or just peruse the Red Hat website and read their licensing agreements for their products.
It seems you've bought into FUD spread by both the anti-OSS crowd saying "...Red Hat is no different, its proprietary just like Windows..." and the Red Hat bashing linux elitists "...Red Hat is the next Microsoft, they took our linux and made it proprietary...". Its all BS.
burnin
People should use Gentoo Linux - truly open and fully configurable even down to the build level.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
but every byte of software that Red Hat produces is under the GPL
Not true at all. Much of their most useful software is under a closed source licence.
Their RHN Satellite product (which is the only reason my enterprise installation chose RH over Novell) used to be under a closed licence, but at least I had the code and I could send bug fixes back. Their newest release, 4.0 is java based, so I don't even get the source any more. Now I have to patch my installation up with CGIs that are called instead of the java stuff. It's a real PITA.
RH are moving further and further away from being a community based company - this becomes very apparent when you actually enter into support agreements with them. But having said that, so what ? They are a business and this is their choice. So they see Fedora as a dev lab and won't support it for more than 2 revs.. so what ? So they charge for Satellite and RHN Proxy and won't give me the code... So what ? As a publically trade company their only obligation is to make money for their shareholders. I can respect that, but I just won't be giving them any more free labour - I'll go and donate that where it is more likely to be reciprocated.
"How, "of course?""
It's "of course" because you can't just install the industry supported Red Hat Linux without a purchased license.
Sure, you can compile it yourself or go with all the other precompiled RH options out there. But for that you don't really have a contract with RH do you? In that sense it's technically "open" but that's not what companies are doing. They are going with the proprietary version that asks for licensing info when you install it.
RHEL is a proprietary, purchased license to use. You can't say "I'm going to run critical application X on Red Hat" unless you're going to purchase a Red Hat license.
My point is that proprietary, purchased, supported distributions are gateways to a more open approach. It would be a short step to go from RHEL to one of the precompiled versions and support it yourself, but companies will generally go the proprietary route first.
Dimitri Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada for writing software while in Russia which decoded e-books which were a form of Adobe PDFs.
Right, because he broke the trivial encryption on encrypted PDFs. He could just as easily be arrested for breaking encryption on text files. That does not make either PDF or TXT closed formats. Both are open, published, and have multiple implementations of readers and writers. .DOC, on the other hand, is not only closed, but also ever changing and intentionally obscured. Yup Adobe are a bunch of asshats and should be slapped around, but that has nothing to do with the PDF format which they created and in no way makes PDFs less open.
If you mean that Red Hat won't support you unless you purchase a Red Hat support contract, then I guess my response is, "well, DUH!"
If you mean that you can't install the bits that Cadence guarantees will work, you're flat wrong. Read the Red Hat LICENSES file. Sure, you can compile it yourself or go with all the other precompiled RH options out there. But for that you don't really have a contract with RH do you? In that sense it's technically "open" but that's not what companies are doing. They are going with the proprietary version that asks for licensing info when you install it.
Tautologically true -- if you don't have an RH support contract, you don't have RH support.
On the other hand, take the CDs for RHEL and they have instructions for doing an unsupported installation. Same RPMs, no need to compile your own, install from their CDs (but replace a couple of trademark files) and you're up and running. RHEL is a proprietary, purchased license to use. You can't say "I'm going to run critical application X on Red Hat" unless you're going to purchase a Red Hat license.
Male Bovine Excrement. I've installed any number of applications that even check for Red Hat revision level -- they run just fine on systems prepared precisely to Red Hat's specifications. Unless, of course, you're referring to the fact that "Red Hat" is a trademark and only applies if you have a contractual relationship with Red Hat -- which isn't a comment on Red Hat, it's a comment on trademark law.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This doesn't surprise me. Any time someone is criticized on Slashdot, even when the criticism is entirely baseless (the article summary is precisely the opposite of the truth about what is in the article), someone will chime in with "I've always said those folks were idiots/crooks/whatever".
So, now you've been told that the article summary is wrong, and the position of the Greens is the opposite of what it says, please say, "Hey, the Greens got it right for once!"
There is no complaint. The submitter is an idiot who has misrepresented what TFA is about.
Did anyone read this? It's just a badly done rant against the Green party and open source.
It's got nothing to do with the Greens being ticked off at Novell. In fact, I'm not sure how anyone could get that out of the article.
The article is really just a snarling howl against open-source, with some mindless praise for Microsoft and its software.
Steven