Red Hat's Max Spevack On Defending Linux Freedom

TRNick writes "How can developers who are working for free protect themselves and avoid getting exploited by business users of Linux? TechRadar has an interview with former Fedora project leader Max Spevack to find out how his new role as manager of the community architecture team is designed to help. Quoting: 'About two-thirds of the Fedora packages are maintained by community people, and if we didn't have that community, that chunk of work would either not get done, which would significantly harm Red Hat's entire value, or would have to made up by more [paid] engineers. The challenge on the flip side of that is to make sure that everyone in the Fedora community feels valued, that everyone who contributes can be proud of the way that Red Hat uses their code.'"

Comments

Re:Thank You Max For Reminding Everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

This this this, a thousand times this.

I am actually prohibited from using GPL software at work for this very reason. Not because we might unknowingly violate someone's license, but because of the negative PR if we make "too much" money without giving "enough" back to the community. We're running a web-based service on a razor-thin margin, we can't afford the risk.

Re:Ohh Fedora...have you improved?

[Intron]

OMG - you might have to download adobe, flash, quicktime or java plugins. Poor you. Your life really sucks as a result of wasting those 20 minutes. Maybe vendors should pay Fedora the same amount they have to pay MS to be "trusted apps" included with the OS.