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On Red Hat Bashing...
The following was written by GNOME Guy, Slashdot Reader and pure energy beam, Miguel de Icaza
Recently many people have criticized Red Hat from many points of view, and during the construction of their arguments, they have ignored a lot of the work that Red Hat has given back to the community. Having personal friends at Red Hat and having talked to them in the past has given me a wider perspective on what actually is going on at Red Hat than most people who only have heard about them.
The importance of Free Software (as in Open Source).
People have complained that some ISV companies are targeting a specific GNU/Linux distribution, and that this alienates the users of other distributions. I do believe that people are looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. Many ISVs are not only targetting some particular version of GNU/Linux, they are also targetting a specific platform of GNU/Linux. They are not allowing the end user to make a choice of kernel, the choice of a distribution, or the choice of a platform.
Let me explain: people who write proprietary software are interested in marketing a software product as a piece of intellectual property that they own and that comes with a price tag, which does not provide the end users with any of the freedoms that the GNU project has identified as important for software. Without these freedoms you are not only potentially locked to a particular distribution: you are locked to a particular kernel, and you are definely locked into a particular platform. You will not get proprietary software to work on your favorite port of the operating system. Forget about the SPARC, the Alpha, the PowerPC, the Motorola, and the StrongARM architectures if you go the proprietary way.
Red Hat and Freedomware (as in OpenSource, Free Software)
So far, Red Hat is the only major visible commercial distribution that distributes all of their development under a free license (LGPL or GPL for their new work, or under the proper compatible license for packages they do not maintain). And they also manage to make money during this process.
Now, making money by giving away your intelectual property is a hard problem. Some people have just given up. Various distributions include proprietary code in their distribution to add a value to their product. The result is of course, a non-free product: you as an end user are forbidden from making copies of it entirely, you might not even get the source code in some cases, and you are definetly forbidden from making changes and redistributing modified versions of it. It comes to mind, the proprietary graphical install programs being shipped these days.
Red Hat standing for Freedomware
When the KDE desktop project started to take off, the licensing problem of Qt became obvious to many people: If we allowed this important component to be non free in a GNU/Linux system, then it would have been impossible to have a completely free (in the sense of freedom) desktop system that people could use, distribute, modify, and redistribute.
Many distributions chose to ship the non-free KDE/Qt combo as part of their systems, as it gave them a competitive advantage on the market. Concerns about a free system came in second place. Red Hat instead of going for the easy money, actually devoted a growing team of programmers to help build a completely free desktop: I am sure they lost sales while preparing for this free system to be built, and I am sure it costed them money to pay their GNOME programmers.
Still, Red Hat stood up for the free software community. To them it was more important to have a full open source desktop than making a quick sell. Given that the Qt toolkit will soon be released with an open-source license this is not an issue anymore. I am presenting this exclusively as an historical data point.
XXXX
Red Hat and Debian are my favorite Linux-based distributions. Actually, they are the best designed and open distributions of Unix from my point of view: they do ship all of their code under a free license.
This, from my point of view is very appealing. Various of my friends are involved in deploying free systems based on GNU and Linux in Mexico in a number of very different setups.
They did require modified versions of the installation program, and modified versions of the packages they use. Not all, but some of them. So the distribution is pretty much Red Hat Linux with some added features that they need for their vertical application. This is something that can be done legally thanks to the fact that the Red Hat distribution does not include "special cases".
Doing something
If you want to see commercial-grade applications on the free systems and have users have total control of the code, the platform, the operating system and the distribution, promote free software: help free software developers, contribute code, contribute proof-reading time, contribute documentation or help other people understand why free software is important.
Disclaimer
These are just my personal opinions. I am not speaking for any project I am involved with in this mail nor am I speaking for any organization I belong to. These are strictly my personal opinions.
I do not work for Red Hat and I have not worked for Red Hat in the past. I have just contributed and worked with their hackers in the past.
Miguel de Icaza.
miguel@nuclecu.unam.mx
OK, so you devote the time that you spend on a computer to volunteer work. Good for you! Volunteerism is a good thing. However, I noticed that while you're bashing on people who write software for pay, you don't bother to ask what (if anything) they do for free in their off hours.
Consider the following people:
(a) A carpenter who volunteers in a soup kitchen on weeknights.
(b) A waiter who volunteers for Habitat for Humanity on weekends.
Is one of these people better than the other? Should Carpenter chastise Waiter, simply because Waiter charges people for food? Should Waiter chastise Carpenter, simply because Carpenter charges people to build houses? Of course not.
Of course, if Waiter started building houses for the rich, then I wouldn't be surprised if Carpenter got mad. Similarly, if the Carpenter started giving away gourmet food in the lobby of Merrill-Lynch at lunchtime, I wouldn't be surprised if Waiter got mad.
Now, consider this one:
(c) You, who does X for a living, and volunteers to write software.
(d) Someone else, who writes software for pay, and does X in his spare time for free.
I bet you can do the math. You have no call to criticize Software Boy for writing software, just as he has no call to criticize you for doing X. If anything, HE may be able to criticize YOU for providing free software to people who can pay for it. That one goes the other way, of course, but I don't know what X is.
I think that I've made my point, but I'm going to go a (controversial) step further, while I'm on the ol' soapbox.
For all of you out there who think that you're doing the Lord's work by writing free software, guess what? Free software is not the ultimate in altruism. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's pretty low on the altruism totem pole, compared to, say, youth outreach, helping illiterates learn how to read, most kinds of work with the poor, and a LOT of other things. Now, hey, if that's where your particular skill lies, and you really enjoy it, then go for it, it IS appreciated. But don't get high-n-mighty about it. Frankly, I'd rather see you spending your time teaching underprivileged children the basics of computing.
And maybe the person that you criticized does just that. Maybe not, but you didn't bother to ask.
This sort of article is the type of crap I get sick of. It's not a straightforward RH bashing, but it's nevertheless plays into that mentality.
but RH is a business run by businessmen.
So what? I've heard this argument again and again and again in the Linux community, and it makes no sense.
It's a business. That in itself is not evil. It makes it different...or are you just admitting you are scared of something that is "different"? Do you really need to be reminded that *many* businesses promote research and extend technologies everyday, ranging from computer technologies, engineering, and basic science research? We buy from them as consumers _all the time_. If they're bad, we've been buying from them for ages and are implicated in their longevity.
Really--I think it's because of the threat of a "business mentality" calls up all sorts of bad images. But frankly, we view the worse and forget the best and average that businesses produce. A different mentality in the Linux community isn't going to kill us, and if we can't handle it, Linux deserves to be splintered for their incapacity of staying together.
However, should this get taken too far, Debian is right there.
And? Are people so caught up against Red Hat that they've forgotten the basic principles behind Open Source? It's been like this ever since someone modified Open Source source code. You have a choice to use it or not. You have a choice to modify it.
Not to mention, this "Debian is right there" approaches more of a _business_ attitude: there is competition. You know what? Good. I like that. Better code is written, more products are released, programs and distros improve.
All this RH bashing is simply like-MS sentiment brought into the Linux community. People use what they will and what they want. They have the right to be stupid. But, as the MetroWerks article a few days ago showed, there are people that have created RH FUD. MetroWerks NEVER had an exclusive agreement, and RH NEVER forced them to. But people here still insist, without evidence, that RH is evil because of a product's packaging. If you don't want it shrink wrapped, don't buy it.
Yes, I develop closed source applications. I support AIX 4.x, Solaris 2.5 and up, HP-UX 10.2 and up, and Red Hat Linux 5.2 and up.
No, not Linux 2.x, but Red Hat. Why? Because with 3 other platforms to develop on I don't want to take the time to see what, if any, differences I might find on Debian, Slackware, or any of the others. By supporting Red Hat, I can cover Intel, Sparc, and Alpha in a fairly straight forward fashion. Why did I choose Red Hat? It was an easy choice, I already had it and so did the customer.
You want people like me to open the code? Not going to happen. You want me to support all versions of Linux? Pay me more money. Does that make me just another developer whore? I'll let you decide.
If you have worked in a Help Desk/Support environment, you'll know the importance of having a similar environment in which all your users (that you support) are working in. It is much easier to train techs to know what problems might pop up between your applications and one distribution of Linux that between your applications and all/any distribution.
At this point, it is enough of a stretch for many of these vendors to train their techs on one distribution of Linux and we should be happy with it. As Linux becomes more and more mainstream, it will become more cost-effective for these vendors to support their apps on multiple distributions and they will.
For now, be happy with what you can get.
(I speak for myself, and only myself.)
vgesgis wrote:
Red Hat convinced TrollTech? When and in with regard to what?
You misunderstood what I wrote. I said Red Hat actively tried to convince Troll Tech to Free their source, not that they convinced them.
I have no knowledge of whether or not there were direct meetings between Red Hat employees and Troll Tech employees, but there were a few public announcements from Red Hat saying in effect "We think Troll Tech should consider changing their licensing". At the same time, many other individuals and organizations were also trying to convince Troll Tech to do the same.
Since then, Troll Tech has produced the QPL, and released some beta software under it. Nobody can legitimately say "Red Hat convinced them", since that implies they deserve all the credit, which they don't. On the other hand, Troll Tech was convinced, and Red Hat was part of the group convincing them.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Anonymous Coward asks:
what is it that they do? put together a linux installation? i can do this too, you can do this;
Yes, but neither of us can do it as well as Red Hat did. Hell, I'd have trouble doing it as well as Slackware did.
why did rasterman leave them? he obviously thought there's smth wrong with them. (i can't see using anything but e)
I do not know why he decided to leave, I would think that he felt the working environment was wrong for him. Rasterman has always seemed to have more of an Artist's temperament than a Programmer's, and they put him in RHAD Labs with a bunch of hardcore programmers.
All I know is what I've observed, and I've observed a couple of design arguments on public mailing lists between him and other RHAD developers. It seemed like they had good ideas, and he had good ideas, but they just weren't speaking the same language. If he can get the backing (and I think he could) Raster would do well to start his own company.
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Open mind, insert foot.
RinkRat asks:
How does the recent announcement(s) of software that is supported under "RH only" work into this? Is there something added/mangled by RH to enforce this or are the companies only going to offer support if you say that you have an RH release. (Purchased or dl'ed? Will there be a difference?)
There is nothing added by Red Hat to Linux to enforce "Red Hat Only" software. When you see proprietary Linux software labeled "For Red Hat Linux", all it means is that they only bothered to test it on Red Hat (and probably only a specific version of Red Hat). If you try to use it on anything else, they won't support you. This is not Red Hat's doing, it is lazy commercial developers.
And who decides these things? The software companies?
Yes.
Or RH? "We'll give you $X if you only support RH..."
To my knowledge Red Hat has never done this; not even with developers they have had special agreements with (such as TriTeal and Applix). In fact, Red Hat has actively tried to convince several companies to Free their source code (eg. Intel, TrollTech).
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Open mind, insert foot.
However, should this get taken too far, Debian is right there. It will run the software in most cases, is IMHO higher quality, and while it has its own problems (nothing is perfect) it is basically immune to the kind of corporate wheeling and dealing people are so afraid of. Don't think Red Hat isn't aware that if they make a big stumble Debian is right there to pick up the pieces. This will go a long way toward 'keeping them honest'.
As an interesting aside (to me anyway), I talked to an engineer a while back from a company who shall remain nameless ;) that ships a "Red Hat Linux" supported product. He said that all their development is done on Debian. Go figure.
Previous RedHat releases had a value-add to the $49 version by including proprietary software. Metro-X, Real Server, BRU backup, and a few other programs (Netscape at the time) come to mind.
The result of that being that you could only install one RedHat per physical CD (again, this is for the $49 and not the power tools release).
The 6.0 release has none of these restrictions, since there doesn't appear to be any commercial software (except for on the Application CD, and each app has their own license). This then makes no difference between the FTP, CheapBytes, and $80 version, except the $80 has printed manuals and 30 days of phone support. And you can buy it in a store.
I've been a RH user since the 2.0 days, and it's an excellent distro. RPM far surpasses other package management systems. The technical support (what I've needed) has been excellent. Updates are quick, upgrading systems is easy, installation is pretty much painless. I'm not sure if the Official 6.0 is worth $80, but I paid it to show my support.
(Disclaimer: I'm writing a book on administration of RedHat-based machines - hopefully to be published late this summer)
I've used Slackware for the better part of 4 years, I think since they had kernel version 1.2.13 on it, before that I used a roll-your-own
.deb packages, rpm packages, slackware packages, own compiled stuff, and yes, it takes time to make everything work flawlessly, but that's what I like. I like the challenge of making things work, and I really don't give a rats ass what distribution is the best, or which one has the c00lest and 3l33t toys, I just want Linux. And I want it to work. I want it to do what I want it to do, and if that means having to put up with RH signing exclusive deals, then so be it, I'm still using Linux, and I'm still making it work.
distro I made with some friends.
Recently I bought a RedHat 6.0 CD. I figured it was worth a try and I wondered why everyone was
always constantly bashing RedHat.
Granted, I don't particularly *like* the new way of things, but once you look at the way it's done and read some documentation, it's actually very easy to configure your system from the shell prompt.
The breaking up of say, the entire network init in a few directories with separate scripts for each interface makes my life a whole lot easier. I just have to edit one file instead of diving into rc.inet1 or rc.inet2, finding what needs changing
and changing that.
And okay, RH 6 came with GNOME. I like GNOME. I used to hate it, but I've come to like the flexibility it gives me.
On the MetroWerks issue; who prevents you from downloading alien, and turning it into a slackware package? I've done it often enough and sure, sometimes it's symlink city to make things work,
but aren't we forgetting that Linux=Linux=Linux no matter who distributes it? I've worked with RedHat, Slackware, Debian and SuSE, and they're all Linux. All distro's have ls, gcc, etc. -- they just have a different way of packaging things, and a different way of administrating things.
So far on my RH box, the only time I did use the control panel is when I wanted to find out what files were changed when you change the settings on your Ethernet interfaces. After that I did every change by hand, on the shell prompt.
Why do we (the Linux/OpenSource) community have to war over distributions when there is so much to be learned from the different ways these people have chosen to create the distro?
Wasn't the idea behind Linux 'free for all'?
Then why bother with the trivialities of exclusive
deals made by companies? What prevents you from going out, buying the RH CD with CodeWarrior on it and installing it on your Slackware box?
Before my RH 6 installation my system resembled the product of an orgy between Slack, Debian and RH. I used
Moral of the story: Everyone STFU about the petty little distribution wars, and let's kick some ass and make Linux grow.
(Yes, I am wearing my asbestos outfit, and yes, if you bring up that RH signing exclusive deals isn't helping Linux grow, then I won't bother responding. It's time to think people...)
There is no sig...
As far as Code Warrior is concerned, there are next to no problems running it on another distribution. Right now, I'm running a flawless commercial copy of Code Warrior on my Stampede GNU/Linux 0.89 machine. I don't use RPM, but alien solved that problem. Also, Code Warrior includes it's own libraries, so library incompatibilities are not an issue.
Let's be honest, Redhat is not a solid distribution. It is flaky. It's probably the last distribution I would consider. However, it is the biggest name, arguably the most popular, and for Metrowerks to support them is not unusual. They can't expect to figure out how their product works on every distribution on the planet, and they probably won't be releasing their killer product as Open Source. So they had to pick a distribution. So what.
Bottom line: Redhat is nearly the standard, as are RPMs. It's too bad, but it's not RedHat's fault. They're successful, and it would be silly to expect them to apologize for it.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I have no problem with the business practices of Red Hat. I think that a commercial linux is a good thing. I do, however, feel that the version of 6.0 released (and sold!) was immature, and not ready for commericial distribution. If PHB's are going to be swayed by a commercial distribution of linux, it should be rock solid. I have had many persistent and perplexing problems with 6.0.
.14 version. It is a shame that development and integration of Enlightenment will no longer be a part of Red Hat.
On the flip side, the distribution is feature filled, including many great packages like Gimp, Gnome and Enlightenment. Which, by the way, has matured vastly since the
A distribution with a de facto window manager is important, and Enlightenment is not only visually attractive, but powerful as well.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
A small, vocal minority of the community is worried about Red Hat suddenly becoming an evil, "bad guy" company that will take over Linux and ruin it for everyone. I think this is a joke. Let's take a look at the facts, shall we???
* Red Hat releases all software they write under the GPL, period.
* Since their distro-specific software is GPL'd, Red Hat relies on their brand name to drive sales. The only thing keeping their customers from switching to another Linux distro is our satisfaction with their product. The last thing a company in this position wants to do is to piss off their clientele! They will continue to do what their users' request, or they will go out of business.
* Success has not corrupted Red Hat. They continue to produce useful, GPL'd software. Their distro is still available for free FTP download.
I guess in this case, some believe that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc, it must be The New Microsoft. Maybe some people will never let the facts get in the way of severe paranoia.
Instead of speculating what Red Hat *might* do, let's instead look at what their trackrecord is extrapolate the future from there.
I don't use Redhat's distro, NONE of my servers are Redhat,
I use Debian, but I will NOT bash redhat for three very simple reasons.
Alan Cox
David Miller
Stephen Tweedie
They Make LINUX better every Day and Every way,
I as a Linux USER benefit directly from their work.
If they thought that Red Hat was Evil in any way, these people wold not WORK for Redhat.
Redhat is a company, even great company's make mistakes, or do things that I do not agree with.
Oh and one other thing, Redhat has contributed SOURCE over and over again, how many people can claim that?
As a Debian user I use software that redhat helped develop, it makes my system MORE secure and easier
to use, the software? PAM.
This is just another example, of Redhat ability to produce source that I use every day and benefit.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
First: edit your /root/.bashrc to change this.
Second: If you didn't know this already, then you are exactly the person that this "are you really sure?" safety net is designed for. Remove it at your own risk.
Likewise, the point is not whether CodeWarrior will work with other Linux distributions or not. The problem is that it is being marketed as exclusively Red Hat. Other major binary Linux product releases have not been marketed this way.
Let's look at the facts.
Why specifically put for Red Hat in the name of the product when that will only result in undercutting the sales to all the other distributions, especially in a market where the number of customers could be significant?
I'm not trying to bash Red Hat but this makes absolutely no sense. More important, it divides the community. And, it's not the way things have been done--until now.
The rules have changed. I want to know why. Don't you?
Everybody likes to diss the guy on top. I run redhat 6.0 and I like it. When my Mandrake CD get here I'll probably run that, but that's built on top of redhat anyway, so yea!
Redhat has a great install process. Better than the others, excluding OpenLinux 2.2. OL 2.2 hasn't installed on most of my machines, so I quit it for RH 6.0.
As for CodeWarrier being RH only, so what. Use GNU C you wimp! And installing tar files IS harder than RPM's. Yes, I can install anything, but I'd rather waste my time playing with it after the install, thank you.
As for them making tons of money, great! They're a business. And they're building a great distro. They're also helping to convert NT admins that have better things to do than twist thier minds into UNIX-space. That's a good thing.
And (and, and, and) they GPL thier $80 distro. I get mine from linuxcentral.com for $1.95. Great! More power to them.
I'm gonna buy a bunch of thier stock, too. So nyah!
-=nft=-
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -Gandhi
However you say it, there's one big important point missing. :).
Red Hat bashing *IS* a fad.
Linux is finishing the first of what will probably be several stages of bandwagon jumping. In the last two years, an enourmous ammount of technically-oriented people have jumped on the Linux bandwagon. Whenever these "surges" take place, many people, generally the type that jump off after using it for a short period of time, declare themselves as experts and throw thier opinions around as if they were the next messiah. This is especially evident in the case of GNOME -vs- KDE, where tempers and passion were high but the meaningful dialouge was amazingly hard to find. I dare say that most of those flamers and trendsetters have moved on to other "K-rad" things
examples of other Flamable Fads:
vi vs emacs
"Internet Time"
GNOME vs KDE
RMS vs ESR
Jon Katz bashing (he's meant to be insightful, not a God)
most recent joke: Raster vs Red Hat
Face it, Red Hat bashing is a fad. It probably started as meaningful insights from prominent members of the community intended to fix what was broken and improve the not-quite-perfect, but now the sentiments have degraded to the stuff flames are made of.
I'd rather spend my time writing code than spewing out meaningless, energy-wasting flame. I'd like to see most of ya'll doing the same.
Codewarrior was initially announced as being targeted to RedHat. A bit more research tells us that, in fact, the initial release will be a RedHat-centric product, followed by releases supporting other distributions.
Who do you blame here? If the programmers who wrote Codewarrior felt the need to target a specific distribution, that means that there must be a difference in distributions that one release could not address. If that's the case, then let's distribute the blame evenly, not just at RedHat's door.
But somehow, I feel that there is not such a substantial difference. I believe that the issue here is that a distribution had to be selected to test against and RedHat won out by virtue of its popularity and large installation base. Nothing sinister, here!
I would much rather have Red Hat getting most of the focus from commercial companies, since they are very insistant on the GPL. Red Hat is dedicated to the GPL, and open source. They do not release any of their software as proprietary. In fact, their installation utilities are GPL, unlike others. That is why you see so many small distros that are based around Red Hat. You can't do that with Caldera and a few other Distros. Basically, Debian and Red Hat work to ensure that the GPL is followed. Many other distrobutions seem to feel that the GPL is a hinderance, and that they need to make their money off of proprietary parts of their distrobution. I don't worry too much about Red Hat's strength in this market, I just hope MS never gets controlling shares of their stock, now that would suck.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
It's really funny. Nearly everybody seems to be bashing Redhat.
Here in Germany it's SuSE, not Red Hat.
Don't know why, perhaps every distribution that dominates a market (SuSE in Germany, Red Hat in the US) is suspected to do something evil.
Red Hat and SuSE both want to earn money, but both give the Open Source Community something back(e.g. the SuSE X-Server or Red Hat and Gnome). Both sides gain something.
Here in Germany I tell friends who want to try Linux to start with SuSE (better ISDN Support and the german language), but personally I don't like it so much and use Debian.
Just my opinion,
KeefR
It's certainly true that RH 6.0 as released has its share of problems, but take a look at the historical patterns here: both RH4.0 and RH5.0 were equally unstable, to the point that I know people who avoid RedHat's major revision releases and wait for the x.1 releases to come out before they upgrade.
/is/ still free, and it's a distro that I find very useful, both at home and at work. I certainly keep my eye on them to see what direction they're headed, but all the accusations of dirty dealing and over-commercialization have not convinced me that Red Hat is hurting the Free Software community.
Truth be told, I've found RH6.0 to be the most stable release of RH that I've used to date. And by this I mean that I consider it very stable, although I have a cache of my own update rpms nearby that I add immediately to all new installs.
Despite the bad reputation Red Hat is acquiring within the community, their distro
I think many people forget, in their eagerness to criticize anyone making a profit, that the concept of open source software is more widely accepted now than at any previous moment in history, and that Red Hat is actively gaining us even more mindshare through their commercially viable distribution. They are a business, yes, and like all businesses their ultimate goal is to make money. But we as a community have much to gain from being cautiously optimistic about Red Hat's role in the grand scheme.
It makes sense to mention KDE because his whole point is that RedHat stood up for free software by refusing to include KDE while there were serious issues with its license. It is clear that this is no longer an issue; his last paragraph in this section says so clearly. It is only relevant to his article because it represents RedHat's stance on free software in the past, which is important to evaluate RedHat's stance on free software in the present.
About Netscape, BRU, and RealVideo: these are very different from KDE. They are not core system components. RedHat is not against commercial software being used on Linux; after all, they used to sell Applixware, they are making deals with commercial distributors, and they still include an "Applications CD" with the $80 RedHat 6.0 that includes many commercial apps.
The difference is that you can have as many commercial apps on top of the OS, and that's not a problem. The real problem is if any core component of Linux is not free... then it becomes possible for an external entity to take control or subvert Linux in some way.
Again, this is apparently no longer an issue with KDE, but the point is that KDE is fundamentally different from typical applications, which is why it's not hypocritical or wrong in any way of RedHat to have discriminated against a non-free KDE/Qt while being kosher with other commercial apps. Yes, we all understand that from a very technical standpoint, KDE, GNOME and the window manager (even X) can be considered to be just other applications on top of the kernel. But they are critical enough to the overall use of the system that they can be considered a more integral part of Linux as a whole than Netscape or other "standard" apps.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
I was in some computer stores recently, and I saw the official Red Hat 6.0 (nice box!) and next to it the MacMillan (I think it was them) boxed version of RH6.0. Now I have nothing against places like cheapbytes or linuxmall selling ~$3 versions of Red Hat, but that made me kind of mad that someone was selling for $35 what the original packagers had selling for $70 and which could be had for $3. Of course, they're in their rights to do this, but it seems kind of lame. Is there any license like GPL but not quite that would allow things like Mandrake to continue but not cheap knock-offs like MacMillan? I guess not, but it just seems like such a shame.
Sorry about that. It seems like a stupid idea which could cause much more trouble than it's worth. I need to spend more time working and less time here.
Is it just me or did anyone else notice that Miguel managed to say NOTHING in about a two page essay? He seems like a nice guy...but dammit, he needs to have a point to his essays.
Just my opinion.
-David
- The notion that everyone runs Red Hat, or that everyone has rpm (or knows where to get rpm, or what rpm will do to his system, or what installing random upgrades from some other distro will do to his system) is false and annoying.
- The notion that you fix problems by slapping in one upgrade after another until something works is both dangerous and esthetically offensive. I want to understand the problem and fix it, not just throw a rug over it. "Run the wizard and be happy" is the MS way, not my way.
Whatever you want to make of it, the fact is that RH has garnered a large share of the distro market. Whenever that happens, some people will just give up thinking and assume that vendor=market. I hope that RH does nothing to foster this view, but some will take it anyway and that is what bugs me.One of the services ISVs such as Red Hat provide is quality assurance. When you purchase a production distribution, you expect to have some assurance that all of the packages provided at least play well together. As anyone who has tried to upgrade software packages can well understand, getting all the dependencies to work well can be non-trivial. Since no two distributions have the same versions of all the packages, and as most software, commercial or non, relies on multiple packages, one can well imagine the benefits of targeting only one distribution, if you are involved in non-bazaar-style development, and especially if you are are developing closed, binary only software. Targetting multiple distributions causes at least a linear increase in QA and support effort, and the increase can be exponential (imagine 2 or 3 tier client/server products, where client 1 + server 1 may test differently from client 1 + server 2, etc.)
If you have to choose one distribution, you choose the most popular.... The "supports Red Hat" line is generally an indication that it was only tested on Red Hat, and that the support and maintenance staff only have Red Hat installed to reproduce reported bugs, and the like.
Comparing RedHat's release of some proprietary software, such as Netscape and Real Audio, and their desire to use an open-source desktop is not really valid.
The desktop is a more central component of the system, whereas user applications like netscape just perform a task. People don't write applications based on netscape, but they do write apps based on the desktop.
I think Red Hat had a legit concern that if people wrote free software based on QT (the old non free QT at least), then the software wouldn't really be free because it would be based on code not freely available.
I think from this perspective it makes sense for Red Hat to take the stance they did.
The important thing, IMO, about this response is that it doesn't indicate Red Hat only compatibility, but rather Red Hat only support, which is a vastly different thing. It makes perfect sense to me that a company like Metrowerks would want to explicitly limit the environment they have to support. At the same time, it seems to me that if Red Hat wanted to do something nasty (a la Microsoft) they would have asked for Redhat only compatibility.
In the end, I think that Red Hat is just a little company that's trying to do the right thing. So far they haven't done anything to be upset about, not that I've seen anyway. In fact, their only sin seems to have been success, and if we (as a community) don't get past the success == sin idea then we're doomed to destroy ourselvs.
Like the article said: Red Hat has given a lot back. Let's not lose sight of that just because a witch hunt is exciting.
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Behold the Power of Cheese!
I've never heard so much complaining from people who pay nothing for a product (you can ftp red hat gratis).
So they want to make some money with special deals and CDs? Is that a crime? Once most of you college grads get out there and start getting bills for your loans, making money is going to be a motivation that dogs you night and day. I say kudos to Red Hat for figuring out how to make a buck from all of this.
I was very happy to see this article concerning RedHat. I am quite fed up with the latest round of RH bashing that has been going on in the Linux community. It has to stop.
I've also noticed something of a trend among some RH bashers - they are Debian users. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to start a religious war here, I'm just saying that many of my friends who use Debian feel the need to bash RH simply out of spite.
I have three friends who avidly use Debian either at home or at work. Every time I talk to them about the latest Linux news, one of them has to ask, "You still using that piece of junk RedHat." To that I reply, "Yeah... of course." And I'm not afraid to admit it. I just want to know why it is that more often than not (in my experience) do Debian users feel the need to constantly put RedHat down? It doesn't make sense that the Linux community should fight over such things.
Debian is a great distribution - but so is RedHat.
I also have a few friends who use other distros such as Slack, and Caldera. They don't bash RH. In fact, they are quite happy with their distro and thats where it ends.
The great thing about all these distros is that we have the freedom to choose. Thats a great thing. We should revel in it - not fight about it.
To that I would like to add that I'm sick of hearing about vi vs. emacs, gnome vs. kde, etc, etc... its all a waste of time. Pick what you like and support it - believe in it - contribute to the development - but please, for god's sake, stop the pointless bickering over which distro is better than another!
The Linux community has the last word on what stays and what goes. If we don't like it, if it violates our philosophy, if it goes against our beliefs, we don't have to support it. Just like we don't support M$ or the closed source software community.
Disclaimer: Please don't construde this response to mean that I hate Debian, Slackware, or any other distro - I don't. I love them all and I wish each of you the best of luck with whatever choice you have made. Just stop the arguing - please.
Mark
All the Redhat bashing that's been going on is ridiculous. I for one second Miguel's comments and quite a few of the replies to his post. I was VERY impressed with Redhat 6.0. As far as I'm concerned, the GNOME / enlightenment desktop is almost ready for the unwashed masses and that is an amazing step from where things were when I started with open source. Redhat has had a major impact on the development and rounding out of these open source projects, and as they say, has still "kept it real" by respecting and promoting open source.
Spencer