Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Backlash?
FolkWolf sent us a link
to CNET which as an article
on Red Hat Backlash
speculated on by the The Gartner Group. Basically
revolves around the recent investment announcements.
They talk about RH walking a line between
boasting their successes, and alienating themselves from
the community.
I agree that redhat is more free than some of the others. But redhat does ship non-free stuff on their cds. Netscape comes to mind. So debian is and probably always will be the most-free distribution there is. The Social Contract gaurantees that.
Uhh, I'm sorry, you mistakenly thought I cared. The point is, it is not "free" so therefore debian is more free than redhat.
Anonymous Coward (why am I not surprised) wrote:
Look. Red Hat is a threat. Pure and simple. Sure, Gnome is great. Thanks. But right now Red Hat is VERY CLOSE to becoming the new MS of Linux. Look at what IBM did-- it didn't want to settle on one company and crown it "CZAR of the PCs" like it did with MS in the 1980s.
This is FUD pure and simple. Saying "RedHat is a threat" over and over does not make it so. If it is a threat, tell us how it is a threat. Vague references to IBM granting the PC-DOS contract to Microsoft in the early eighties doesn't cut it. Not only is IBM's investment in RedHat completely different from granting a monopoly contract, but IBM is a completely different company now than it was then. If RedHat is a threat than you should be able to come up with a plausible chain of events from the current situation to a bad one. RedHat has bent over backwards to make sure there is no such chain.
As far as I'm concerned, it's Debian all the way, until Debian gets too corporate. And then it's off to some other model.
More FUD. How can Debian possibly get "too corporate"?!!? They're a non-profit organization based on volunteers with almost no cash flow.
They're welcome to contribute to the free source initiative all they want. (Hey, Red Hat, FUCKING JOIN IN ON STANDARDS, why doncha?) But I don't trust them just because they're kewl and sold Linux back in the old days.
What standards aren't they joining in on that they should? Again, vague accusations just make for FUD. They have a delegate to the LSB, their distribution is POSIX compliant, they ship an ICCCM compliant X Server, they follow the FHS better than most distributions. What do you want from them, Unix trademark compliance?
Stick to core principles: Trust no one but yourselves.
Finally, some wisdom. I'm certainly not going to trust an anonymous coward with anger but no information.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Actually, for a troll it was better than average. The responses had at least some thought put into them.
And no, I don't consider myself a sucker for replying to a Troll. My posts are more to get my viewpoint out there, either directly or in response to an opposing viewpoint. The troll's viewpoint here was one that is common enough that I thought it should be rebutted regardless of whether or not it was the person's real opinion. It all goes to show that, even if you think you're playing petty games, there's a valid place for some trolls.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Ignore it people...remember that this is a community, and anyone who recieves benefits, also benefits the community. As long as Red Hat stays a member of the Linux Community, we all benefit!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Personally, I don't think you talked to anyone. You read an interview with Patrick Volkerding, in which he stated that there was omce an agreement with SuSE that would prevent them from selling in the U.S.
I've been thinking about writing an open letter to Red Hat containing constructive criticism about its practices, business dealings etc. (Disclaimer: I use Red Hat, and I like it, but there are a few concerns I and many other users have) Anyone with any input (URLs of other letters, for example) feel free to email me (will try to respond, but have been occupied lately--no guarantee. Credit will be given if quoted).
Netscape is free as in beer, not speech (and it was one of the first "commercial" software to run in Linux).
I hope you know that Slackware is a commercial distribution (like Red Hat, unlike Debian).
They're nothing but a bunch of sellouts. Here in North Carolina, everybody who wants to be cool talks about how they're so into redhat. It's disgusting.
The UNC computer science club toured their building a couple of weeks ago and it was the worst tour in the galaxy!! They had some former airforce cowboy lead us around, showing us empty cubes and let us watch a bunch of software developers play video games for 10 minutes. When we asked for some of their free software, they told us to go to the store and buy it! And one of our guys just happened to be wearing a faded red cap (which has been around longer than that lousy company), and that cowboy insulted him, trying to pawn off some really cheap, scsi blazing-red baseball cap on him.
I've only been using linux for about a year now, and setting up and administering slackware 3.6 by hand was tons more fun and informative than setting up a red hat box.
And RedHat SparcLinux especially sucks!
Posted by stu vanderhoffenstoffen:
Coward, if it weren't for Slackware, there'd be no RedHat. Slackware is old, but I'd take it over selling out to RedHat any day. Have a little respect for the original innovators.
Posted by stu vanderhoffenstoffen:
And you're just an anonymous coward. I know about SLS. I also know that Slackware is what originally brought Linux to the masses. And that's a good thing. What's bad is when self-righteous cowards like yourself decide to insult the very people you want learning about Linux (Linux, not RedHat, Linux).
And while I may not be a math major, I do know that if SLS was ripped off by Slackware, and Slackware was ripped off by RedHat, then RedHat is no better a distribution than Slackware. So get off your high horse and lick me.
Posted by stu vanderhoffenstoffen:
You missed my point. The tour is indicative of how RedHat treats the people who actually use their software. They'll suckle Netscape's and Oracle's teets and roll out the red carpet to get money and corporate prestige, but when faced with a bunch of college kids with no money but an earnest love for computing, they show us where the documentation people sit, where the gnome people sit, give us the honor to watch that rasterman dude play video games, and then boot us right out of the office after 20 minutes. And I'm not going to even talk about the effort that went into getting the tour in the first place. They won't send someone to come speak at our meetings, but they'll send someone to the local LUG meeting the next night. And they put off the tour for an entire semester!
I'm sorry, but I was under the impression that it was the users who counted, not the big bad corporations. To hell with all this corporate acceptance bullshit. Why must Linux be validated on whether or not it's helping IBM exploit users?
There's always going to be turncoats who deride their once-favorite indie band that signs on with a major label. Debian & slackware will be the cool distros, and the tragically-hip can always roll their own, riding the unstable branch of whatever packages they care to, on top of freebsd even (if linux is just too mainstream for their tastes). World domination is still inevitable. ;-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I've heard the same rumblings here at /., but I have taken it to be a handful of anonymous trolls trying to start a flamewar. (Red Hat's GPL'd contributions to the source-pool are "proprietary"!? These trolls know not of what they speak, obviously.) True: if I were a Gartner Groupie hanging out on slashdot, I'd have written the same article, but that's only because if I were a Gartner Groupie I wouldn't have the sense to tell the difference between the pulse of the community and a few saber-rattling flame-mongers.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Red Hat is still favorite distro but one major
annoyance is that Red Hat sticks things in odd
directories -- they seem to totally ignore the
/usr/local directory and stick everything in
/usr instead.
Another RedHat-ism is this linuxconf tool --
I don't like the smell of it, so I disabled
it on all my boxes.
I hope Red Hat doesn't try to bully new "standards"
on Linux.
but it must really suck to be Caldera right now... :-|
TedC
Well, it's not that you have a bad distro, it's that people are showing a strong tendency to 'follow the herd', and Red Hat is getting most of the media attention. As Bob Young would say, they're good at marketing catsup. :-)
I happen to use OpenLinux as my main distro simply because it's stable and it came with KDE. I also use Red Hat 5.2, and I'm evaluating SuSE 6.0. I was disappointed with the 60 page getting started guide that came with 1.3; hopefully 2.0 will include a more extensive manual, and more than 30 days of installation support. I tentatively plan to buy OpenLinux 2.0 to get the 2.2 kernel and KDE 1.1.
I don't have any real complaints with Red Hat; they have a good product and market it well. But I am concerned that the LSB is going to get run over in this sudden Red Hat lovefest.
TedC
I use RH, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to see what Linux is about. It's a way in for newbies - fella at work installed 5.0 last night on his 98 machine (dual-boot), and was excited as hell about it. Thing is, once anyone who is using RH starts playing around and then participates in the community, he/she/it will realize there are always more choices. Don't like RH, roll yr own! Try Suse, Debian, Slack, Mandrake, Caldera, PacHiTech, Trinux, MkLinux, LinuxPPC, did I leave anyone out? Is Yggdrasil still around? Anyway, RH is leading the way for the exposure of Linux to alot of folks. Get 'em in the door; that's the first step. Once inside, they can figure out what's best for thier uses - this includes corps w/ IT depts that are slow to move. Hell, once folks realize they have control over their boxen, they might even realize that they are basically smart people who can figure things out for themselves - unlike what a certain large-but-unnamed-here company on the west coast would have them believe.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Michael Johnson, a Red Hat developer, came and gave a speech to my LUG as soon as Red Hat heard about us -- one of their marketing people, Lisa, apparently searches the LUG databases and contacts their founders. Well, she wrote me, said she and Michael were coming to Minneapolis, and would we like to hear him give a talk? And what's your address so we can send you 100 free Power Tools CD sets?
In his talk, Michael stressed numerous times that everything coded at Red Hat is released under the GPL, and that they are committed to free software. Red Hat Linux is a quality product that is free-as-in-speech. That's all that matters, and I wish them well.
And the Power Tools CDs? Into the hands of more than a few people who had never heard of Linux before. I defy any of you to say that introducing people to free software is a bad thing.
Infact I've been witness to it already, and am part of it. I began with Slackware, then switched to RH and used it for a considerable amount of time, but now I'm moving to Stampede. Other than RPM being a terrible package format, my primary reasons are that it feels like RH is getting branded with Linux. They can make all the money they want, but these days it seems like I can't visit a Linux/OSS related site without being hit by several mentions of the company (not to mention VA Research banners being everywhere as well, which I'm also quite sick of. Every site is hosted by VAR now.)
Every GNU/Linux "review" now is really just a review of what RH has done lately, and how it compares to NT this week. Maybe if you're lucky you'll see SuSE or Debian mentioned, or a reference to slackware being "the true hacker's" distribution, but that's rare. They're definitely starting to alienate people, and they better start paying attention to that, otherwise they *will* be the next slackware.
Apparently lots of people are misunderstanding what debian is all about. It's not about only GPL, it's about DFSG free software (In other words, the stuff that gets OpenSource [tm] branding).
... I've been using Linux for 3 years, so I guess I would be old, or at least middle aged. I don't find GUI all-in-one-place config tools to make things any easier, though. If I'm doing system administration remotely (which is usually), those are a distinct hinderance. I forward the notion that debian makes it easier for those 'old' users, by providing a well-tested stable distribution, by setting up sane defaults (rotating log files nightly, for instance), by gearing itself toward administration-from-anywhere, and by providing an all-encompassing upgrade between distributions.
... Part of it stems from each package being responsible for any special cases that might occur between releases, and part from the fact that there *are* so many packages, that everything most people would have installed is packaged. And, the only time I've needed a reboot as part of an upgrade was when the utmp format changed between libc5 and libc6 in the Debian 1.3 -> 2.0 upgrade.
And, wrt to 'ease', I saw someone mention SuSE as making things easier for the 'old user'
So far, nothing else I've seen has been as easily upgradable as debian
To put my comments in perspective, I've used Slackware and Redhat, and still use Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Solaris.
Mail might otherwise go in /var/spool/mail
or directly to the user's home directory.
I find that hard to believe... were you born with all the knowledge you have now?
Bob Young owned a bookstore, and was on the Slackware mailing list. At some point he bought a CD burner, started selling slackware disks at a cheaper price, and spammed everyone on the Slackware list about it. He then included glibc as a way to make other distros incompatible.
(btw, I learned the info in the first paragraph of this post from someone closely involved in Slackware whom I met at LinuxWorld; any innacuracies are my fault.)
Uh huh. Tell me another one. I'm sorry, but I've been in the Linux community for a very long time (since Slackware 1.0 in fall of '93), and I remember nothing of the sort.
Red Hat's been its own distribution as long as it's been around; it was never based on Slackware. (Anybody else remember *.rpp files?) Red Hat's package management scheme has always been better than the rather lame way Slackware handles things. The glibc claim is ludicrous, given that that's the direction the libc architects (including H.J. Lu) are encouraging people to go.
Your acquaintance may be horribly misremembering how Slackware got started. Slackware was originally a set of patches for the SLS distribution, which was the very first commercial Linux distro on floppy and CDROM ('92-'93). Everything in SLS was freely available, but the media was extremely pricey, even for the time. Pat Volkerding made Slackware originally as a patched version of SLS, but then the SLS guy (whose name escapes me) threatened to sue Pat for using the SLS install scripts, which the SLS guy saw as his proprietary property. This was widely seen (or at least seen by me) as an attempt to keep Slackware from cutting into SLS sales, but it failed miserably. Pat wrote his own install scripts and SLS died a slow death over the following year or so. By mid-'94, Slackware was in the position that Red Hat is in now in terms of percentage mindshare.
Care to name your source? Didn't think so.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Look, email Pat V., or find the old Slackware mailing list archives (if they're still around), either one of these would either verify what I was told.
You made the claim. It's your responsibility to back it up.
I was there, and I remember nothing of the sort. Slackware doesn't maintain any sort of mail archive that I can find. A Deja News power search for "bob young slackware" in comp.os.linux.* over 1/1/1994 - 1/1/1996 confirms my memory, as it turns up zero hits.
As far as the libc thing, Slackware still carries libc instead of glibc.
So? This proves what, other than the fact that Slackware's libc is horribly dated, not thread-safe, and no longer maintained by the libc developers? Debian ships with glibc too, ya know.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Chris DiBona
VA Research Linux Outreach Guy
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Humm, I use ee on my Debian 1.3 system. Guess I am just special.
/mill
Red Hat's rise to Linux power is a perfect example of modern day Darwinian Selection. Eventually one
distribution *has* to win. Just as Microsoft Windows won the DOS/OS2/Mac/Amiga race of the
80's/90's, Red Hat is winning the Linux race of today. One team comes up with a solution that's better
than the rest, and then everyone start standardizing on them, and then anyone who doesn't is left up the
creek without a paddle. Is this a bad thing?
Yes. I don't want to be forced to use something that I consider to be technically inferior. If Red Hat abuses its power (which it hasn't yet) we could very well see other distros being forced to adopt their way of doing things. I already have enough trouble with stuff that's only distributed in RPM form (alien helps, but it can only do so much)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Debian uses glibc. :-)
Daniel
[ neither Gnome nor KDE is the 'official' Debian 'desktop environment' AFAIK. I suspect Potato will have a choice between them in installation if a kosher version of Qt is released by then. But what do I know..? ]
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Personally, I love all the distributions. I myself chose Debian, and I'm planning on sending them a big fat donation in SCSI adapters and cash. However, I think the Linux movement is the coolest thing to happen in the computer industry since porn. Anyone who is contribution in any way, however minor, is my friend. Red Hat hasn't bitten us yet, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt. If they betray the community, well, we have ways of dealing with traitors. If they don't, then we haven't alienated anyone now have we?
--Defiler.
Wait a second, on all my RedHat 5.1 and 5.2 boxes it _is_ /var/spool/mail . In fact, I think it has been since 4.0 (I would have to check to find out).
If there is one thing that ticks me off about KDE, it is the Harmony project. Geez, you would think that after all this time the Free Software Community would get it through their heads that they needed a widget set of their own. The Harmony Project will almost assuredly end up like Lesstif perpetually close but not done. GTK, on the other hand, is clearly Free Software. It can't be co-opted, embraced and extended, and it doesn't have to spend eternity trying to mimic some other toolkit's bugs.
This is not to say that KDE isn't good software. I was impressed, and I am sure that Harmony has some talented people working on it as well. It just pains me to see talent being wasted on a toolkit when it could just as easily be used on a widget set that it already free software. The fact of the matter is that GTK development (and Gnome development as well) is moving along at a frightening pace. Troll Tech had better look lively if they don't want to get completely outmaneuvered.
In the world of computers (especially in Unix) the most open standards tend to win out, and there is no more open standard than GTK.
--
As far as I can see, Red Hat has always been a Pro Linux anti-proprietary type of company. As long as whatever they produce is still GPL people will back them. OF COURSE this could be a low power scare tactic for suits. (beware!)
... Help Them!
Don't shun Red Hat
Have any suggestions on how they could make Linux better, easier, cooler? Write them!
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
The others are full of proprietary crap, including shareware and half-assed Open Source. If you want to write an open letter of complaint, try SuSE, Slackware, EasyLinux, or Mandrake. All of those are far worse behaved than Red Hat is.
Disclaimer: I may be considered a bit biased. But whatever.
Explain thyself? How is Slackware, for instance, worse than a distro (Red Hat) that renames their libraries and kernels so that they appear to be full releases when in actuality they're pre-releases? How is it worse than a distro whose install often ignores the user's wishes, and which actively presents and promotes itself as the Linux? How is it worse than a distro that is far, far more marketing and hype than QA and careful testing?
This is a wee bit inaccurate, save for the title.
And no, I do not care to elaborate.
Apache, like pretty much everything else in Slackware, is installed according to the author's defaults.
The problem with this is mainly on the corporate side. As companies begin to develop on and invest in Linux, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that a distribution does not grab all the support and run away with it. Think about it: for many people, the sole reason for not running Linux right now is that certain programs are not supported. Now suppose the current trend of "Red Hat as corporate Linux" continues, accelerated by their presence in the corporate world and the support of commercial software companies. Now suppose they decide to rename some pre-release library, and badness ensues. Do people say "Red Hat fooked up on me?" or do they say "Linux fooked up on me?"
Maybe it sounds paranoid, but then again maybe it deserves some consideration. Because the first half of that scenario is already occurring, and the second half (based on observations of Red Hat's past behavior) seems not at all unlikely.
Slackware, besides being obsolete shit, is not completely free software. Worse yet, there are no plans to change this. Slackware does nothing to help develop Linux. Slackware is a parasite.
What in Slackware is not "completely free"? Patrick Volkerding himself has written a fair amount of Linux software, some of it without credit, and provided us with a traditional unix-like distribution at the same time. How can you say Slackware contributes nothing?
Kernels must be renamed because some of the tools can't tell them apart otherwise. I think the modules stuff has problems.
Kernel packages do not need to be renamed, under any circumstances. I am not talking about your vmlinuz image, I'm talking about the actual package it originally comes in. If you download and install a tarball named 2.2.3, it damn well should be a 2.2.3 kernel, and not a 2.2.3-pre2 or some such thing. (Note: this is an example. I am not accusing Red Hat of distributing 2.2.3-pre2 and passing it off as 2.2.3, specifically.) Such practices have also been noted in the realm of libraries.
Marketing is good. Excessive QA lets the software get obsolete. Red Hat generally ships with the most recent kernel they can find, and then some.
Marketing is all well and good, yes. But your point about "excessive QA" puzzles me. You would rather have a system slapped together the day before yesterday from whatever was lying around than one that was put together and tested over a period of the last couple of months? There's a reason it's called "bleeding edge."
You've made an unsafe assumption when you say that applications will "of course" run on all distributions. This is not so. Because Red Hat is sometimes a bit funky with the placement of directories, any application which hard-codes a filesystem structure may only work on Red Hat. Of course, applications shouldn't do that, but they do and they will continue to do so for some time.
The single biggest problem with the dominance and commercial acceptance of Red Hat is that support deals are only being announced for Red Hat installations. There may be exceptions, but in most cases these new support contracts don't cover Debian at all, so from that point of view Red Hat will become the de facto Linux standard.
Whilst I wish Red Hat all the luck in the world, and acknowledge that they've done a huge amount for the Linux scene, this recent turn of events is dangerous.
Reminds me of the type of economy that exists with the cigarette makers (I wish my friend who told me about this had remembered what it's called): Many vendors competing, not on price or features, but mostly on "imaginary differences in quality."
Of course I won't say the differences between, say, Redhat and Debian, are imaginary, like say the difference between Marlboro and Camel (if that were the case, I wouldn't have recently switched from RedHat to Debian on both of my boxes), but from the average corporation (or even software developer) point of view, all of your software should work on any distro anyway, so they might as well be imaginary differences.
Don't worry if RedHat becomes the preferred distro of PHB's, you'll always be free to choose what works for you.
-Jake
--
Jake
As long as Red Hat uses their power for good, I don't begrudge them their success.
IIRC, redhat can be credited for:
The first Alpha distrubution (no longer the only one)
Championing E and Gnome (And employing Carsten the Rasterman)
RPM (though I like dpkg and apt better)
Kind of a swank set of installation systems that have been adopted by several other distro's.
Once they stop creating and start leeching, then I will have good cause to hate them.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Anyone can make a pair of jeans. They're not frightfully hard to reverse-engineer, so people buy them based on looks and by brand name.
Redhat may end up the "Levis" of Linux, but how many different profitalbe brands of jeans can you name?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
i also have beefs with redhat's installation procedures and also alot of the defaults suck but i still think they're good for the linux "industry". i think they will be the "for dummies" version of linux while people like us move to suse, debian, stampede or tom's.
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
Red Hat's IS.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
>They're nothing but a bunch of sellouts.
Making $$==selling out? If you've ever written code for money, then I guess you sold out too. If you haven't, then maybe no one would hire you?
>Here in North Carolina, everybody who wants
>to be cool talks about how they're so into >redhat. It's disgusting.
So being popular means it "sucks". By that logic, you yourself are either "popular and suck", or are "unpopular and don't suck". Wonder which it is.
> The UNC computer science club toured their
> building a couple of weeks ago a
> was the worst tour in the galaxy!!
Well hell! I would NEVER use a product from a company that gives BAD TOURS!!
> I've only been using linux for about a year now,
> and setting up and administering
> slackware 3.6 by hand was tons more fun and
> informative than setting up a red hat box.
I think thats great that you use and enjoy slackware. I did at one time too. Please don't dog on us who use red hat now, though. To each their own, I say.
- They don't GPL or LGPL everything they write
[...] Only Debian has a perfect record.You sound like a case of "more catholic than the pope".
Perhaps you should read the Debian Social Contract and the Debian Free Software Guidelines it contains.
There are more free licenses than GPL and LGPL. (And if you refer to e.g. BSD-licensed code as "half-assed Open Source", you should include LGPL in that as it could encourage development of non-GPL-ed software).
In my book, there are valid reasons to use a different DFSG-free license than (L)GPL:
I happily put changes I made to public domain crypto code in the public domain and happily used the BSD license for a manpage I contributed to a BSD-licensed project, because that was the way in which I could improve that free software (more so than GPL-ing my modifications, and cutting them of from many in the development community involved. I used the FSF documentation notice (which is not GPL) for manpages I contributed to a GPLed project.
I use (L)GPL on new code I write myself, as I don't want to encourage proprietary software development too much.
I believe in respecting the license an author chooses for her code. When I believe an author should have chosen another license (e.g. because of lack of sufficient understanding of licensing issues (as is often the case with "non-commercial use only" licenses)), I don't think she should die, I try to reason with her.
If you don't like the license an author chose for his code, reason with him. It's going to get you much further than telling them to die. And if he doesn't change the license, you still have the freedom not to use his code.
The only other distribution that is as free as Red Hat, Debian, is unable to really support Linux.
Would you care to explain what you mean by "support Linux"?
If you're referring to support Linux users, I'd strongly suggest you check out Debian's support options. If you're referring to having an unsurpressable urge to pay for support, check out the Debian consultants page.
If you're referring to supporting the development of Linux, I'd ask you to reflect on what a fellow Debian developer said: Debian supports free software development the old-fashioned way, by writing it. And of course there's the license lobbying/politics that got ncftp free, got Rocks'n'Diamonds free etc. And let's not forget
where the first donation to GNOME development came from.
QPL 1.0, the license under which Troll Tech will release Qt Free Edition 2.0, is a DFSG-free license.
But the problem with KDE's licensing is more subtle than that. Debian can't at the moment distribute KDE at all (not even as part of "contrib"), because Qt's license isn't GPL-compatible. (See the news item for details)
Even when we have a DFSG-free Qt, there is still the issue whether its license is GPL-compatible. If it is (I haven't seen an analysis of QPL 1.0's GPL-compatibility status, so I really don't know), KDE can be included in Debian's main. If it isn't, the licensing issue continues until KDE's licensing changes (e.g. by an explicit exception clause to the GPL allowing redistribution of KDE binaries linked against a QPLed Qt [1]), or the QPL is made GPL-compatible.
[1] A similar exception clause for non-free Qt would have made KDE suitable for contrib. Unfortunately, the KDE project refused to take the licensing issue seriously, and did not chose to fix it this way, unlike for instance the LyX developers. With LyX, there was a similar situation of GPL-ed software linked against a GPL-incompatibly licensed (binary-only non-system) library (xforms). The LyX developers explicitly added an exception to the GPL's requirements wrt. libraries, making it possible for Debian to distribute it in "contrib".
I can't speak for all of us, but in my case, I'd strongly doubt I'd have learned anywhere near as much about UN*X systems and free software development if I hadn't become involved in Debian development.
Cosider Alan Cox. He would have to work at a normal place if Red Hat didn't support him. His free time to hack would be more limited. Were he with Debian, he could only do half as much as he does now.
Being employed by a Linux distributor that's dedicated to free software is hardly the only way to spend a large amount of your work time developing free software. Consider Linus' position at TransMeta, independent free software consultants like Jim Pick, people working for companies like Cygnus, Cyclic and Signum, sysadmins and programmers in certain university and ISP environments etc.
Working for a commercial Linux distributor is but one way to pay a free software developer's bills.
Discussing the differences between distributions is difficult enough, without getting into which is better (or even if "better" means something in general).
In any case, if you're genuinely interested, there's a lot of material from debian users' perspective(s) in one of this months threads on the debian-user@lists.debian.org mailing list; see the archives.
Debian's dedication to free software, the openness of it's development model, the responsiveness of the developers, the flexibility of the package management system, the stability and integratedness of releases, the finishing touches (automatic menu updates for all window managers, automatic mailcap updates, handling of the slight incompatibilities between some Athena-using binaries and the various enhanced Athena libraries (e.g. neXtaw) through xaw-wrappers) etc. are what make it the right distribution for me to use and to work on, but choice of distribution is a case of YMMV.
Debian 2.1 ships GNOME (albeit a prerelease, as there was no release available before the start of the code freeze); Red Hat does so too (GNOME is in RH 5.2, right?).
It is very important to provide an unquestionably free desktop NOW. There is no time to waste. We have a parisitic company to fight. If they get control of critical libraries, Linux users will have lost their freedom.
I've been critical of Troll in the past, and I've been extremely annoyed by their dismissal of the importance of freedom. But since then, Troll have made what I think is a sincere effort at improvement in this area. They've worked on a DFSG-free license to be used for the forthcoming Qt 2.0, the QPL 1.0, and they've been quite responsive with regard to the input they've received from Debian's Joseph Carter.
Whatever Troll's failings in the past, in my opinion they deserve at least the benefit of the doubt for this change.
Let's worry over the remaining issue wrt KDE: is QPL 1.0 GPL-compatible, and if not, how do we get KDE to take licensing issues seriously, and get them to put in an exemption clause in their license to allow binaries of their code linked against Qt 2 to be redistributed (similar to how the LyX folks fixed the LyX license.
Do you tell an artist who has spent months of his or her life engaged in the creation of a work of art that he cannot sell his work to a museum without losing the artistic dignity and pride? Certainly not. The artist is offering a valuable service to the community by creating beauty and enlightenment through hours of hard work. As long as the money does not dictate the art, then the artistic integrity is maintained.
And so with RedHat. While what they do is not necessarily art, there is still the respect of the community at stake in this discussion. While they may not have completely designed and coded Linux, they do a valuable service to the community by promoting, supporting, and distributing Linux, and if they can get paid for it, more power to them. As long as they don't attempt to change Linux in an attempt to take control of it, or in any other way violate the agreements which our community is founded around, then they are right to make a living selling Linux.
Listen, as a developer in an ever changing software world, I am glad to see that the open source community has a place for people like me to survive. I don't want to have to develop Windows software to do what I love- and I don't want to do what I love for free! I have to pay my rent and so do the people at RedHat. If there is such a problem, then don't buy RedHat. If Caldera is struggling because of RedHat's support, then Caldera needs to get on the ball and get some support of it's own.
Just make sure that RedHat doesn't get like Microsoft (especially with licensing deals). Other than that- leave them alone!
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I agree. I don't understand why people get their undies in a wad over a particular distro. I primarily used OS/2 for 6 years because it did cool stuff for me. Now I use Linux for many of the same reasons. I also have more control over the Linux machine.
Too many people define their computing need as "I need to use Word 97" instead of "I need a word processor." Darnit, define a need and select a good tool. If you select RedHat as a Linux distro then fine. If you don't then fine too. Bitching about a Linux distro is a waste of time. At least you are free to select another distro.
Sweeping comments like that don't alienate me from Red Hat... Just the Gartner Group.
Sorry no dice, success dosn't automaticly make someone suck.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
The Debian project is part of the Software in the Public Interest (SPI). SPI participates in several projects including:
Berlin
Debian
GNOME
LSB
Open Source
Open Hardware
These volunteers are supporting Linux and related software by donating the time to organizing projects to write software and writing said software.
Have you ever heard the saying, "Time is Money". You don't think all the time these people have spent in contributing time counts for nothing, do you?
Please think before you type.
Troy
Would some of the anti-Redhat types please explain your concerns? As I see it, a product that by legal license cannot be owned by Redhat is in no danger of being co-opted by them. It can't be embraced and extended, patented, claimed to be theirs, etc. All they can do is package a version, support it and make the source of that version freely available. Is this about dislike of corporate power in general (certainly understandable, given history), or is there some more direct reason for worry?
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
Sooner or later, the IT industry will realize that this firm produces more fluff than anything else. Take a look at their stock and earnings the past two years? You get the picture. They are a bloated and arrogant organization and rarely publish anything of deep substance. They are still regarded as tops in the industry, but (hopefully) that will change. As in most IT consulting firms (I work for one, whose boss has Gartner envy ever since they fired him 15 years ago...), there's more mental masturbation going on than anything. Funny thing is, people pay a lot for it....
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No serious professional uses Linux. Sure, a bunch of dorky students in LUGS install it, but they dont matter.
Serious, professional, users choose NT. The use it because its better than anything else.
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I hope you can see now why your "argument" is pretty worthless.
:: It is indeed an old argument. Good arguments live forever and crappy ones die out.
Go spend a few months on alt.atheism or talk.origins and you'll see just how wrong you are. The crappiest arguments are not only the longest-lived, they're also the ones most often cited.
Don't worry about the LSB, Red Hat is a participant and I'm sure they'll try to abide by it. Red Hat is actually one of the most FSSTND/FHS compliant distributions which is why they rebuild packages to install in what some people consider "the wrong place" (which in their opinion is anywhere other than where a package's make install shoves stuff). Basically, some people get pissed off whatever you do...
I think Linux really does "level the playing field" in the OS realm. I suspect that Caldera will do just fine.
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Sorry, I don't buy it - Redhat is still pretty cool. And with the GPL, there's simply NO WAY they can ever "dominate" linux. they might be the de facto standard, even have majority market share - but unless they invent some proprietary "redhat-only" software, they can't ever have a monopoly.
And to redhat: If I see anything "redhat-only".. your distribution will go the way of the dodo.. and I'll rm -fr / faster than you can say "what was your username again?".
--
As far as I can see, Red Hat has always been a Pro Linux anti-proprietary type of company.
Hmph. Never saw source code for the Red Baron browser. Would sure like to see more openness in Applixware, for instance.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
People need to live, ok?
right. But I was calling foul to the
argument that RH is "ANTI-proprietary"
That's Debian's role.
RH has bundled more proprietary stuff
with their distro than anybody. Not that's
a bad thing, just not deserving of "anti-proprietary" appellations.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You should understand that trademark law forces them to act that way. If you don't enforce your trademarks, they get declared public domain and you lose them.
Also, by putting Red Hat's name on the box you may damage their reputation if you screw up. Why should they put up with that?
SuSE actually does GPL the tools they develop, like SaX, which is a really neat program. And their distribution is based on rpm's too.
YaST - SuSE's installer - is just a powerful frontend for rpm and other things. You don't have to use it when you are running SuSE Linux.
Gee, sounds kinda like what's happening to poor 'ole KDE.
Speakinsawhich, I'm installing Linux Mandrake 5.3 tonight, all of the bonuses of RedHat, none of the problems.(No KDE, no x11amp, no xemacs)
I am presently using RH5.2 and have downloded and installed all of the above, but lets face it, that's a pain.
Honestly, with distros like SuSE, I'm supprised that RedHat has the share it does.
Ben
Well, every package in SuSE 5.3 worked, which can't be said by RedHat (Try tkmc)
SuSE has more WindowManagers (FVWM, KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, CDEsim (FVWM, I know) and a whole slew of others like TWM)
SuSE is easier for the new user
(YaST, SaX, easy WM selection, easy PPPsetup, you name it...)
SuSE doesn't "Look" like a cheap Win95 out of the box, like RedHat 5.2 does (I know you can change it, but you have to admit that redhat is ugly by default)
SuSE has More (5CD's with everything under the sun, like JDK, XEmacs, WINE, x11amp, StarOffice, jx, xcdroast, vnc, and all those other programs we all download)
Now, what RedHat has going for it is its leanness and marketshare. Everything comes out for RedHat first, that's why I use it.
If Linux is about choice, then I think that RedHat limits that choice.
Ben
In any market where the products are very similar, two products eventually domintate the market, with other getting only a small percentage. It may take three or four years for it to shake out, but it eventually will happen.
First they said Linux would never enter the Fortune 1000 space BECAUSE it had no support from top software vendors.
Now they are saying Linux inroads into Fortune 1000 space will backslash BECAUSE of the top software vendors support.
The problem is that Fortune 1000 PHBs really listen to these guys (they listen because Gartner reports are very expensive, so they must be true).
not that I really blame them for it, it's a specialized thing and it takes 10 minutes to rebuild an Apache w/ mod_perl once you've done it once and written down the config options.
eggs-actly! that's why it's called "local", duh. distros should put their stuff under /usr. and why the fsck do some packages get special treatment and go into /opt? it's not because Sun came up with a dumb idea that Linux actually needs to copy it...
There are alot of things about RedHat that should be applauded. They have greatly advanced the development of GNOME with RHAD labs, and they have brought corporate support to Linux by way of a company to back up the free software. However, some things about their distribution could be changed. For instance, their implementation of X (in the form of AnotherLevel) is rather byzantine, and alot of things they do come close to breaking the Linux File System Standard. However, they do put out pretty solid code. I'm not a RedHat user (I'm partial to Debian, being a developer myself) but I do believe that they are remaining true to the Free Software model. Otherwise, the community will turn against them faster than you can say restrictive license.
-Andrew
Actually, Debian filters bug reports, packages software for distribution, contributes fixes back upstream. It supports free software the old fashion way, it writes it, debugs it, and distributes it.
Debian: We do free software the old-fashioned way, we write it.
craig
i had a video card that didn't work with redhat so they told me to use suse instead.
could you imagine microshaft doing that?
if it weren't for redhat, linux would have half the users it has now, if that.
Red Hat's rise to Linux power is a perfect example of modern day Darwinian Selection. Eventually one distribution *has* to win. Just as Microsoft Windows won the DOS/OS2/Mac/Amiga race of the 80's/90's, Red Hat is winning the Linux race of today. One team comes up with a solution that's better than the rest, and then everyone start standardizing on them, and then anyone who doesn't is left up the creek without a paddle. Is this a bad thing? Maybe. But it's something that we have to accept if we want Linux in the corporate/commercial arena.
I've already been experiencing "Red Hat Monopoly Syndrome", albeit minor, when a very large program (that I'm not willing to compile on my slow computer) is distributed only in Redhat binary packages, and for some reason or other the rpm's won't install under any other distribution except Red Hat. I'm pretty sure all the packages on Red Hat's CD's were purposely built this way to discourage installing them in other distributions.
Red Hat also appears to be using it's weight to kill KDE. We all know the Qt story. Redhat wants to control the desktop. And they will no doubt encourage/force (whichever is your choice of words) its users to use Gnome and Enlightenment (the stuff it's putting money/time into) by making all of it's proprietory software Gnome compliant. And since most people will probably standardize on whatever Red Hat uses we will be stuck in a world full of mostly Gnome and E. Not to speak harshly about Gnome or E though, they're kinda cool. I can live with that but I don't want KDE, WindowMaker and others to shrivel up and die.
These issues should concern us. We can learn what not to do by observing Microsoft. They have a monopoly, and eventually all monoplies must come crashing down. We can already see the walls holding up Microsoft starting to buckle. And I certainly don't want RedHat to become the next Microsoft.
Well propriety wasn't what I meant - rather the software that it produced. Yes any GPL'd software is open source and such. But by using it for all their software, we'll have to install Gnome and such to take advantage of RedHat's software (I like linuxconf/netcfg etc, which were by RedHat were they not?). It's just a simple example of how a big company can influence everyone. Good thing for the GPL though it will help moderate this influence.
Could you please elaborate a bit? What practices (business or otherwise) are you concerned about - everything RedHat does is GPL'ed, this is a very very good thing. In fact, RedHat is a wonderful example of how corporations should make money off of OSS, they give their software away and sell the services (sure, a CD from them is US$50, but it's legal to copy that CD as many times you wish). I for one am tired of people complaining about RedHat. So I ask again, give me a good reason to fear or dislike RedHat and I'll shut-up. So far, all the complaints I've heard seem to be from those that think RH is getting too popular (and the popularity of Linux is a *bad* thing?) or from those that feel RH is making Linux too easy to use and thus they don't feel elite enough - to these people I say get a life. I use RH and I *really* appreciate what they have done for Linux. I used to use Slackware, Power Linux, and FreeBSD. They all worked great, but it took so much longer to set them up than my RH box and the RH installer is so much easier to use. So unless someone can present some very convincing arguments I will continue to believe that RH bashers are working against the open source movement.
BTW - I've heard LT say, more than once, that he is pleased with what RH is doing for Linux.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
What the hell's wrong with xemacs?
Let's say that you've convinced your skeptical IS manager to put some boxes on Linux, but only if you have a support contract, just so everyone feels better.
Here's your options:
(1) SuSe (Who?)
(2) Some local consultant that will vouch for Debian or Slackware (Right.)
(3) Red Hat (evil)
(4) Caldera (more evil)
(5) All of the above (bzzz. Not an option.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Red hat putting out 5.2 and a bunch of patches the same day. 5.1 was worse and should never have been released. The fact that many older apps will not compile under red-hat but will fine under slackware. Red-hat is great for the home user.. Slackware is best for Servers and deban rules all the way around.
Red-hat is fine for a newbie, I give redhat copies out to newbies all the time. It's just that Slackware has more "compatability".
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Did you folks notice a couple of blatant lies. Like the fact that R00tH4t is the only Alpha distributions (what about Debian then...)
I do not like this... Seeing is believing... And I see what actually a lot of people see:
I see that all BIG GUYS are trying to team behind a single distribution in order to tame us.
And I strongly dislike this...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Read debian site. I am getting tired of people that do not read. Supported are:
x86, Sparc, Alpha, m68k.
In between I am buring the Sparc CD's at the moment...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
My thoughts, exactly!
How can people here that should know better pay any heed to that sort of "report"?
The message thses people are trying to convey is that the Linux community is intrinsically anti-business and will shy away from any commercial effort involving Linux.
If you scream loud enough, you will just prove them right.
I am all for free software, and Redhat has done nothing so far to spoil their image of a free software supporter. That is good enough for me?
Is it good enough for you?
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Anyone else notice how news.com / C|Net, etc are all jumping on the Linux bandwagon? There seems to be article after article coming out of these places that have either nothing important to say or are totaly wrong but mention Linux once or twice. I think these news mags are just trying to take some of Slashdot's many hits.. I imagine that a fair amount of regular readers to those older "tech" sites now check here far more often (or exclusively). They probably are starting to see some ad revenue losses and they want them back. So, what do they do? They pump out a ton of articles on Linux so that they might get posted on Slashdot (or other community sites) so they can make more money. Seems fishy to me.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Really? He included glibc in slackware to make it incompatible w/ other dists? Funny up until 5.0 I think it was RedHat used libc5. glibc2 was released sometime around 4.xx, RedHat simply migrated as soon as it had stabalized because glibc2 is better than libc5, and many other dists did the same thing. Get a clue.
-matt
I figured out the RH install program my first time through in no time at all. Solaris x86, I had to install about 5 times before I gave up and half of the questions made no sense, or I just had no clue what the answer. RH is really nice for easy installs. Also, w/ autorpm it makes upgrading beyond simple. I just have my box check every day at 2am for any new updates. It automatically installes updated rpms and sends me an email about new rpms. Not a bad trick. It's really nice to read an email about a new security hole only to find out that your system updated itself 3 days ago.
I personally can't find any problems with RH's bussiness practises. They have a dist that's almost 100% GPL (Netscape and xv are the only exceptions I can think of off hand). They are paying people to code stuff for linux which is being released as GPL. I like redhat.
-matt
This will probally change once mozilla has staballized. I think the final goal is to have a free mozilla, and a non-free netscape w/ code that they aren't allowed to release. It's still not gonna be GPL, but it's pretty damned good.
-matt
He said "excessive Q and A"
not Q and A.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
IMO, both of you need grow the fuck up.
Sometimes using a other distro to help boost your production speed is not a bad thing.
While RH might (i donno) have ripped from slack, RH is not a clone of slack.
Mandrake is an example of a distro clone.
Be nice to each other.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
I definitely agree, Mr. Wookie. I think that Redhat still has the confidence of the community, and if it can do things right, will maintain that trust.
But Redhat is enterint a new relationship -- a relationship with businesses -- that both parties have to adapt to. I think there are some good people at the helm, and so I'm not worried.
Thanks to the FSF, we don't lose out on the success of a brand name Linux distribution company.
-- Duane
The unwillingness to join the LSG has me more than a bit concerned. It appears that RH is taking the "...we don't need to adhere to any standards..." mantra that is so deeply rooted in the MS mentality.
I'm not sure about that. The critical standards are things like Posix, X11, the various RFCs, the FSSTND, things like that that are already there and RedHat seems to follow those either deliberately or by default. The LSB seems to be going in the direction of "This is the standard window manager and desktop, this is the standard X11 widget set, and so on.", and RedHat seems to be saying that that's not useful. I agree with Redhat: there should not be a standard window manager as such. There should be one like twm that you can expect to have on all distros, but you select the window managers, widget sets and such depending on what software you want and what it needs and then select a distro based on which one provides what you need with the least fuss. And if you like the rest of Redhat but want KDE, you just buy RedHat and install KDE, confident that RedHat follows all the standards KDE needs it to follow.
So what about that software and the distribution would lock you in to a particular distribution? What precisely is it that would be incompatible between distributions? Maybe this would help clarify what the problem is that needs solved.
I admit I was a little surprised to see that Novell had invested in RedHat, not Caldera. Even if they're your future investors, this doesn't look too good since you add the most integration for them.
Anyway, I bought the retail (big $$) 1.3 distro for the Netware integration and was more than a bit disappointed. No glibc, netware utils keeping me at 2.0.35, and all mostly oldversions of software and rather useless documention. Trying to upgrade any of the pieces (such as netatalk to a recent asun version) led to total dependency hell.
I ended up reinstalling my Cheap Bytes CD from #1. Sure, I'm back to using ncpfs and no admin utils--but at least I'm happy now.
I sure hope the next distro is better....I will say, though, that it was well done (lisa is nice; the OpenDos Dosemu was great--and everything worked unlike the average redhat install); it just seemed to be a year out-of-date.
Why are we talking this crap? RedHat may not be your favorite distro but come on.
I can't help but think that because of RedHat's presence, Linux is closer to becoming a Windoze killer. Before RedHat we didn't even have a package manager (tgz were it), now we have several, but Redhat was first. RedHat was the first to shrink wrap Linux and put it on the store shelves across the country. But most of all, Redhat has put a face on Linux, a presence. Did they write Linux, no and I don't think they are saying that. All they are doing is packaging Linux in a way that is more useful to the consumer. I can't help but think that if it weren't for Redhat pushing Linux, Linux wouldn't be nearly as far as it is. Maybe someone else would have stepped up.
Also commercial vendors like IBM, Oracle, Sybase, etc want a "corporation" to work with. Right now it's Redhat, next year it may be Caldera, who knows. You can't expect Linux to succeed at gaining massive market share without it, I'm sure some do.
-dubbs
I think it needs to be remembered that Redhat is trying to bridge the gap b/n Commercial and Open Source software. We all know Redhat is only as strong as the users of its distro, but I think they're simply selling it to the suits, which _can_ be a good thing.
/. http://www.ci.vista.ca.us
Help me
So nice to hear from someone who's never been a newbie...
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
Even though I don't agree with a lot of what RMS says, I have a great deal of repect for him, and am glad that he (end extremists like him) are out there. Thoughtful extremists contribute new ideas, encourage debate, and keep the movement from becoming stagnant. I do, however, get tired of the "RMS said it, I believe it, that settles it" types who are more interested in fanning the flames than contributing anything new.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
I run RedHat on my boxes and if I install it for someone else I install RedHat. Why? One concern with Slack is libc, it's dated...lets move. Also, I like RedHat, back when I installed 4 I had no problems so I saw no reason to switch. I have a few CDs of other dists but I dont need them.
I think we've all been scared with what happened with Microsloth. I'll admit that once in a while I get a little worried about RedHat, but then I realize that there is always rm -rf /
If there ever escapes a line of code that is RedHat *ONLY* I think that the Linux community will unite to fight the problem. Who cares if one distribution is hitting it big. Remember, if it gets it into the corporate/education/goverment world who cares? It's still Linus's kernel, it's still all GPL, it's still Donald Beckers ethernet driver and it's still every other hacker that has contributed's distribution. Whether or not there are 100 RedHat boxes and 10 other.
My 2 cents, sorry for wasting your time.
RMS may have an extreme view, but he's basically right (if not pragmatic). What he says, needs to be said. To remind us all that there are things more important than working code (ie. freedom).
---
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both."
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
It gives me the warm fuzzies to know that whatever happens with my Software job, and even if I sustain major brain damage in a car accident, or playing Rugby. I can always go to work for the Gartner Group.
This guy SO doesn't get the difference between the GNU/Linux/Open Source community and the software industry at large, and he clearly doesn't have any understanding of the Linux community.
G
Let's get things clear.
I don't care what Bob Young did.
If it means more apps, more hardware compatibility, more support, more Linux hardware vendors, then it's ok with me!
On the other hand, RedHat CANNOT be Microsoft!
Everything RedHat ever released is GPL.
Damn it man, you can ven buy a RedHat CD for 1.89$ at Linux Mall, try to do that with a WIN95 CD.
You would get sued and put in jail faster than you could say DUH.
So stop that crazy whining about RedHat supposed monopoly. Stop being afraid of big time. GET OUT OF THAT RAT HOLE you are living in.
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
This is bad people. I know RedHat only. I have never tried any other distribution because I have been satisfied.
On the other hand, I believe Linux before any dist is good.
I think Debian, Slackware, SuSe, etc... are all trying in different ways to give good Linux stuff to their users.
Attacks and flames against ANY Linux distribution is ridiculous and will only help Microsoft against us.
It's big time for us now. I want a world full of Linux, but not only Linux. If we start flaming each other just for the sake of it or because of some paranoia, then we are helping MScrap.
Like it or not, there isn't anyone out there except them to give consistent stuff. Yes it's crappy but consistent.
If we start doing stupid we will have excellent but inconsistent stuff.
Now RedHat is GPL, probably others are too! Each has a niche, and each has a goal. Some commercial other technical, and yet other elitist. It's ok with me because we need them all.
If RedHat is going to be #1 in US consumer Linux market. OK with me!
If Average Joe consumer is going to think Linux is RedHat. So be it. After a year at most Joe would discover any other distribution.
The goal of Linux should be to become the OS of people the OS that teaches real power. After that, believe me, they will poke at Debian, Slack, or anything else.
KEEP THEM COMPATIBLE. Linux MUST WIN!
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
All software can't be open source man!
It's a good thing OSes are for now like Linux.
People need to live, ok?
Now Applix is not RedHat, and you can still use emacs right?
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
So far, everything redhat offers is GPL'ed, even the linuxconf tool. The source can be found on the CD. That means anybody can use it.
.rpm where those files go, not redhat.
Also, if you think redhat has some weird directory defaults, try slackware. Apache is spread from hell to breakfast! (BTW I like slackware much better then rh)
Anyway, if all you're doing is RPMing stuff onto your machine, it's the decision of the people that made the
I can't see how the "disasters" of GNOME was the result of rpms. You're talking about lib conflicts, which would occur even if you'd compiled every tarball yourself. Besides, those conflicts were in versions 1.0, and that sort of thing is to be expected. I say that getting software to work properly with libs is part of the debug process, which GNOME has now fixed.
perl ate the &...; code for my less then character; forgot to post as html
I see RedHat's "portal" strategy as evidence that RedHat is outclassed - it has an outdated distro, SuSe and even Debian are much better.
--
Until you start citing reasons why Red Hat isn't as good as SuSe or Debian, I'll continue thinking that you are an idiot.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
couldn't agree more!
I tend to think that you are an idiot.
Redhat has domstraited a willingness to support open source software and principals.
They pay for development of Open Source software that benefits the community and they use their reputation and position to garner Linux support from other companies. This may not pay off in terms of open source code immediately, but often, it will in time.
The way I see it, a rising tide floats all boats. There will be more options in Linux and open source software with Redhat, or someone like them, than there will be without them.
Give us all a break... Their stuff is GPL'd and they are paying programmers to do it... I can't think of anything better... We need to show that GPL and Open Source do not mean poverty, and Red Hat is doing exactly that, and more. IBM will now start supplying drivers for Netfinity servers... because of a couple of odd hackers? No way. Because of companies like Red Hat.
Stop stressing, take their code, and code yourself if you are too worried. But you'll find you don't have the resources to move as quickly as they have on so many fronts...
Haven't we heard enough sour grapes from the Gartner Group? Can someone please just go smack them?
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Many of the big names in the computing world have poured a LOT of money into RedHat. Now this isn't like they gave big donations to the Debian project. No, they are expecting to get this money back and then some. So now what does RedHat have to do? Go out and make a whole pile of money before their investors start getting worried. So now they have a lot of pressure to perform. Not only do they have to succeed as a company with free software ideals, but as a company that can bring in some good profits.
Remember that a lot of these investors probably aren't thrilled with RedHat's business model. They just don't get free software. However they want horse in the race, just in case Linux takes off in a huge way. RedHat is making money, and is the leader in tangible things like brand recognition. So the heavy hitters wrote some big checks, and proudly handed out press releases.
RedHat is in a bind. They have an aging distro that needs to be replaced. However they cant afford to put out a buggy mess. The free software community is looking at the money pouring in and expressing rumblings of distrust. Not only is RedHat starting to piss off their major market, but also the people who wrote a lot of the software. They need to benefit from the growth of the Linux market, but that brings them into greater competiton with the fountain of FUD: Microsoft. Place yourself in the role of a RedHat exec. What would you do now?
With this set of circumstances I have a bit of compassion for RedHat. Its sort of like they have a wife and a mistress. Each one wants to hear about different things, and its up to RedHat to keep them straight. Complicating matters is that a lot of this communication is done in the press, so everybody gets to read the love letters. Even worse is that the promises that RedHat makes to one can't damage their relationship with the other. Talk about a fine line to walk.
I think that it is an important time for the free software community to be a good 'wife' to RedHat. Cheer them on in their successes, help them through failures, and kill them if they run away with their mistress.
well. I'm no fan of RedHat, but they've built a system, which, at this moment in time, is the closest thing to an Operating System that an ordinary user can install and use the Linux kernel.
For this, I take my Slackware Hat off to them.
I don't think there will be a backlash, I don't entirely like RedHat, but it has a place in the Linux community, specifically as an entry point.
I think that a healthy core of users will install other distributions and move away from RedHat once they know their way round Linux. Some will also be happy with RedHat as is.
We also have to ask what motivates the other distributions to continue, they emerged from the dark ages of Linux where there were only a few users per distribution and they have had their piece of cake and growth.
Again these distributions are esentially free, sure some make money through packaging and documentation, but the system itself is essentially free, I just can't see how RedHat can position themselves into a monopoly given this fact. There is no direct analogy with corporations such as Microsoft in this respect.
Every once in a while, I'll hear the accusation that RedHat is too much like Windows, and that one should use a 'true' Linux like *** or ***. It always makes me laugh.
Take a linux box, any linux box. Without the tell-tale messages or logs, how would anyone know what distro they're using? It's very hard, and the differences they'd find as clues are very minor.
What it comes down to is Linux is Linux is Linux. If RedHat wins, all win.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
About time somebody realised these people are absolute frauds. Now, if only we could tell the moron managers driving trucks of money up to their doorstep.
I think I shall write a report on the amount of money that can be made from pulling statistics out of my arse.
Hey I agree with the first AC. Grow up.
I don't think all Linux developers are elitist jerks, you shouldn't assume all Windows developers glorify the "proprietary" wary of programming.
Since when did Linux/Unix/BeOS etc corner the market on Open Source software? Just because I don't have access to the Win32/95/98/NT source code doesn't mean I don't like to write free (as in speech, not neccesarily beer) software. Even the great and glorious GIMP is Open source on Win32! I write Windows because I have to (its my job) - I write Linux because I LIKE to. I may like Linux as a better operating system but programming is programming - if you're good at it, it doesn't take long to learn a new system...
Unless of course some elitist jerk doesn't want to teach me. I which case I'll stick with Windows...Not as good an operating system but the people are a lot friendlier (be honest, for most people it's not even that bad an operating system ("CAST!!!!"))
Here's a wacky idea - if Linux gets popular enough, MS may have no choice but to move to Open Source as well and we'll all finally get to see the source for those undocumented APIs..Ah, I can dream can't I?
Now before you flame me, think back to when you were learning...who was that guy/girl that finally made you realize what a pointer was and how to use it? What if they had your attitude? You could be working at McDonalds right now...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
The community should applaud companies that are successful and making money from Linux.
While applauding, the community needs to serve as a watchdog to make sure they follow the goals of the open source and open linux enhancements.
But be nice about it. Disparaging a successful company serves no purpose whatsoever.
We should all look for ways to make money on Linux. Why? Because the number one thing preventing Linux development from going balistic and totally leaping years ahead of Microsoft's technology is that the smartest people can't work on it full time. And why can't we? Because we don't have a business model (yet) that will allow us to.
But imagine a world where we are all working full time enhancing Linux and getting paid. That is a good world, and the Linux community should try to create ideas that enhance the possibility of doing this. Red Hat is successful. Let's help other companies to be successful. Let's help other people to create very strong Linux brands.
Other distributors are doing a great job at this.
The community should be a friendly watchdog. Companies should want to turn to the community for advice on things.
The community should not alienate the business stars of the Linux movement. What the community should do is help create many business stars.
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The thing that is cool about Linux, is we can always switch distributions.
It needs to be ingrained in every executives mind that if you fail the community, you will fail as a company. If you help the community, you will be spectacularly successful. Red Hat has been doing this to date, and is successful. Let us make clear to RH that if they keep supporting the community in good faith, they will have the community behind them. And we all know that this is very valuable.
The cost of failing the community needs to be so prohibitively high that no business would dare risk losing the communities support or risk damaging the relationship.
The power center needs to be the community.
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Which Library does each Distributions use? KDE, Gnome, or something else?
Red Hat - Gnome right?
Debian - Gnome?
Mandrake - KDE?
Slackware - ?
Open Linux - ?
Stampede - ?
SuSE - ?
Corel - ?
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I quite agree, a strangehold isn't possible. And any real backlash against one would come in a very simple form - ${OTHER_DISTRIBUTION}'s ftp site would be under siege, as vital stuff is backed up and the boot floppies come out.
:-)
I guess CNET don't quite understand that monopolising and open source don't mix very well
Hello? Alienating the community?
As far as I see it, the investments in RedHat are only going to bring greater attention to Linux as a viable alternative to Winblows... sure, RedHat are a commercial company. Sure, they charge $50 to get the product on CD. But in the last decade-and-a-bit, who else has managed to bring such attention to Linux?
This kind of petty crap is exactly what counts against the Linux community, because it's perceived by the rest of the world as geeks trying to keep something inside their own little world.
Truth is, if IBM et al are jumping on the Linux bandwagon, that's about the best thing that could happen. The reason that they're jumping on RedHat's flavour of the bandwagon is that RedHat present a viable business model. It's only monopolies can afford to give software away and still expect to make a profit.
I think that Red hat's just going with the flow. As long as RedHat's staying with the GPL their not going against the community, and even if IBM only wants to boost profit the worst thing that could happen is it being a one time thing.
And if RedHat decides to be stupid by going all comercial then they'll fail because they won't have the communities trust anymore.
The only reason that crap companies like microsoft succeed, is because the average Joe Shmoe doesn't know any better, so they confide in the "leading brand".
TeeN GeeK
It is true that GPL'd projects makes it difficult for any single organization to control the project. However, with the Gnome project, Red Hat is showing how to do it.
Here's how to do it:
o Hire as many of the project leaders as possible
o Control the code repository
While these measures don't make it theoretically impossible to take the project over, the size of the Gnome project makes it practically impossible for most people or organizations.
As long as the power isn't used inappropriately there isn't a problem. However, here are a few places where non-technical or technically poor decisions were made for the benefit of Red Hat:
o It should be clear to everyone that Gnome was not 1.0 material. Why release it so soon? Was the fact that the release was made during LinuxWorld just a coincidence? Nope.
o The reasons for starting another ORB project are weak. The only technical reason was that MICO took too much memory to compile and marshalling was a bit too slow. I don't know what the complaints were with OmniORB. It is obvious that improving an existing ORB would have been a better technical desicion that creating a new probject.
o The reasons for not using KDE as the default environment for the Red Hat distribution before Gnome is ready aren't consistent with other decisions they make. The argument is that QT is not GPL'd and that they couldn't track every different license. Have they looked at the Sendmail, BIND, or Pine licenses? QT's previous license was no more restrictive than these licenses the current QT license is much better than these.
Ah, this makes a little more sense. Thanks for the clarification!
Look,
If it was not for RedHat, do you honestly think that the Big Players,eg..Oracle,HP,Compaq, would have invested in Slackware ot Caldera. Please!!
If it were not for REDHAT there would ne more shareware and less Inovation in Linux and we would ALL be using Slackware and still be using OPENLOOK or FVWM
WAKE UP
Yeah and lets all follow that loser Steve Jobs who gives false hope of putting OSX server out for Intel boxes and then changes his mind at the End because he thinks he can sell more G3 boxes.
He deserves to get it from behind again from the Intel users world.
LINUX RULES
Well said
Good Luck with your LUG
BUT Alpha support only came out with 2.1, which only came out on the 9th. The same day this was published.
So at the time of writing they were not an Alpha Linux distributor.
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men"