Open Source Not That Open?

mstansberry writes "At the Open Source Business Conference last week, Microsoft's Shared Source mouthpiece Jason Matusow argued the point that open source isn't really open. He said you can't just go changing code on supported Linux offerings without paying extra to companies like Red Hat or Novell. So as Linux is commercialized, it becomes less open. While Matusow made good points during his presentation, many in the open source community are skeptical of the idea at best."

Comments

Re:It all depends...

[Rei]

I can't tell what kind of argument he's trying to make. Is he trying to claim that you have to pay money to get patches or new programs added to the distro? Because if your changes are in the distro, RedHat will support it. Do you think MS will arbitrarily support you if you make random changes that don't have review?

If they think it's hard to get code in, that's pure nonsense. As a Fedora Extras contributor (fortune-firefly, and coming soon Nethack: Vulture's Eye/Claw) the process is relatively simple, and the people very supportive and responsive. Now, Fedora Extras is certainly less picky than RHEL, but I can't imagine it being too difficult to get code in. If it's not your own package, just simply a package carried by RedHat, you don't even have to deal with RedHat - you just deal with the developers of that package. If they take your patch, then your patch ends up in the distro.

If he's talking about "you make changes and then expect RedHat to immediately support your changes for you without merging it into the distro", however, that's a pretty preposterous thing to expect. That's not asking for a supportive vendor - that's asking for consultants.

Re:It all depends...

[dnoyeb]

The oddest part is that he is talking about 'open' as if being less open is somehow bad.

Red_Hat != Linux

[Foofoobar]

Here they go again, saying that Red Hat equals Linux. Hey I got one word for their comparison... CentOS. It's RedHat EL without all the trademarked stuff. And yes, they could make all the changes and offer it under CentOS if they wish. Their big point is that changes to Redhat's codebase isn't going to go back into Redhat's Final Product necessarilly.

So? Roll your own distro. Can you do that with Windows? No. Can I tweak XP and sell it as my own? No. Better yet, can I tweak the codebase for Windows Server 2003 so that I have a company wide distro for our internal systems? Hell no.

I'm sorry but this Microspin Doctor's argument looks to be in beta still. As per usual, I don't expect Microsoft's final argument to be worth anything until the third release.