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The Fedora-Red Hat Crisis

Posted by Soulskill on from the evidently-it-doesn't-start-at-the-top dept.

jammag writes "When Linux journalist Bruce Byfield tried to dig for details about the security breach in Fedora's servers, a Red Hat publicist told him the official statement — written in non-informative corporate-speak — was all he would get. In the wake of Red Hat's tight-lipped handling of the breach, even Fedora's board was unhappy, as Byfield details. He concludes: 'If Red Hat, one of the epitomes of a successful FOSS-based business, can ignore FOSS when to do so is corporately convenient, then what chance do we have that other companies — especially publicly-traded ones — will act any better?'"

3 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. welcome to the world by timmarhy · · Score: 0, Troll
    maybe when your a bare foot long haired hippy like stallman you can afford the luxury of disclosing everything to the world, but when your a company with peoples futures and jobs on the line often its not a good idea to expose all of the details.

    frankly anyone who can't see that has never been in a real business situation before

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  2. Re:The real world is a bit different than that. by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 0, Troll
    They harmed the FOSS community because they got in the way of the FOSS developers responding appropriately to their own security problem.

    They harmed their customers because a business with more than 50 people has SOx to deal with, and to pass their own audits must be able to assure their own security with more than just a "you're OK, we promise". Even if they didn't have SOx to deal with, it would be bad practice for any security officer to accept "just trust me".

    Bruce

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    Bruce Perens.
  3. Re:Consider Red Hat's response vs. Debian's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    So Open Source has ethics?
    Have you met RMS recently?