Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Rivalries at Salon
EvilNight
writes "There's an interesting article up on Salon that
makes a few comparisons between Red Hat and Microsoft. Interesting reading.
They also touch a little on the squabbles between LinuxCare and
Red Hat. " A very good article. Covers a lot of the
issues, and clearly.
Err... CodeWarrior for Debian.
The guy who runs Gnome is not a Red Hat employee.
Suppose LinuxCare, which does not have its own distribution, were to choke off Red Hat's supply line by killing off RH's support. Where does that leave Red Hat? Where does that leave Linux in general? We'd be left with Debian, Slackware, et. al., all of which are highly advanced distros, but none of which can really set foot in the enterprise or home market (cf. PHB, MomTest).
In the end, only Red Hat and SuSE are in a position to spread Linux beyond its current "market" and seriously challenge Microsoft. If one or both of them dies off (or at least only limps along), Linux will not get anywhere. _Some_ kind of corporate or organized backing is needed.
I'm not suggesting that anyone boycott LinuxCare for the sake of Red Hat--far from it. I wish them well. Rather, I suggest that Red Hat and LinuxCare merge, cooperate, or that LinuxCare offers its own polished distro, for the sake of the greater good. A rivalry between the two--as things are now--is a Very Bad Thing(TM).
Just my thoughts...
cya
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
One is that we need to have access to hardware documentation in order to write drivers. Fortunately, we have seen much progress on this front. In the past few years, many companies have realized the value of releasing their programming docs so that drivers can be written. (I would like to know if the NDAs that RedHat has negotiated include release of the HW docs when the GPL'ed code is released, though...)
The other is that we need to have Open Employment -- the freedom to hack no matter who is our current or previous employer. Until recently, this hasn't been much of an issue, since few people were paid to hack free software. Now that we have many companies that pay employees to work on free/open software, we need to ensure that the employers don't restrict the freedom to develop.
This restriction could be done in a number of ways, either explicitly or implicitly. An explicit restriction could be a clause preventing employees from working on similar or competing products when they leave the company. An implicit restriction could be something like an NDA on hardware docs that only releases them to that company's employees. Both implicit and explicit restrictions tie the developer's productivity to remaining with the company. If restrictions like this are in place, then a developer who left the company, for whatever reason, might not be free to continue their work.
Now, I'm not accusing Red Hat of having these restrictions. In fact, I think Rasterman's recent departure from Red Hat to continue work on Enlightenment at VA shows that Red Hat does not have these restrictions.
But now that commercial Free/Open development is becoming the fad, I think it might be time to think about some Open Employment guidelines. Here's a quick brain dump for you to chew on (or chew up and spit out):
These Open Employment guidelines are designed to safeguard the freedom of an Open Source developer to continue contributing to the community.
The neat think about commercial Open Source development is that companies are realizing that what's good for the community is ultimately good for the company as well.
Comments?
Lets just get down to the facts of the Everyone vs. RedHat. When it comes down to it RedHat is the driving force of the linux world. Im not at all taking anything away from any distrobutions out there, in fact I use Slackware, but if it wasnt for RedHat the community would not grow.
A brand new linux user cannot simply jump into slackware and install it and get everything going because its not "easy", however on the flip side of the coin all they need to do with RedHat is boot up and click Workstation, Server or if they want to get to the nitty gritty, Custom and they are rocking.
RedHat has done what it set out to do. It has created an operating environment using the linux kernel that destroys anything Microsoft could ever produce. I love to hear people on the internet say "I hate RedHat" because when you ask them "why?" they just stutter, and say because its crap, or because its no good. They cant give you a true honest reason.
RedHat as a company is not doing anything wrong. They are trying to get into the corporate market, and to do that you have to have an image that can be presented to CEO's. A naked woman with a RedHat CD over her ass is not going to get that for them. When you have an investment you protect it. This is merely all RedHat is doing and you CANNOT blame them for that. They are not playing any of the dirty games that Bill Gates did/does, they are producing an awesome OS that is free. For crying out loud just leave them alone and if you "dont like RedHat", there is a simple solution. DONT USE IT, and DONT push your opinion on other people.
Regards, Ryan McAdams
Before we begin tearing Red Hat apart for all the real and imaginary wickedness they've perpetrated against Free Software, quality and choice, and reading through all the redundant posts that defend them, I propose the following solution that should at least make this latest flamefest worthwhile.
A voluntary Red Hat Bashing Tax, payable, for want of a better metric, in lines of code contributed to Free Software and/or Open Source projects. Say for instance that someone feels compelled to toss around unfunny parodies of Red Hat's name, like "FUD Hat", "Red$at" or "RootHat". Each occurance would oblige the posting individual to submit 10 lines of acceptable code to the project of their choice. More extreme complaints, such as Red Hat "forcing" people to use buggy software or not allowing the posting individual to configure their system without a GUI, would require 100+ lines of code submitted. Complaints about RPM could be a special case, in which the complaining party could submit code that corrects the alleged deficiency in RPM, regardless of line count.
I believe such a policy would greatly benefit the Free Software community by generating a virtually infinite supply of new code while letting people vent all their frustrations and fears against a favorite target.
---------------------
---------------------
John 3:16 - God's Public License
Pity the market leader in such a climate. Red Hat
spokeswoman Melissa London laughs at the Microsoft comparison:
"It's so funny -- when was the last time you saw Microsoft make its operating system available for free download and remain committed to that?"
Since when is Linux Red Hat's operating system?
Bit arrogant, that. I suppose you could argue
that it's a question of semantics, but the point
has to be made. A distribution is not an
operating system. Almost all of what's on a Red
Hat CD is freely available elsewhere.
K.
-
How come there's an "open source" entry in the
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
. . . this is Salon trolling Slashdot. They know it will just start another going nowhere debate. Almost all of the quotes seem to be rehashes from other articles or anonymous/out of the blue quotes. Side A of issue followed by Side B.
Interestingly they don't get to the true meat until the final page A) Redhat GPL's all their stuff B) which they don't state overtly--whiners worried about losing a competitive edge to companies who glomb kernel/OSS hackers are nothing more than whiners. For kernel issues, planning, bleeding edge garbage, where they are going, etc. etc.--why not go to *The Source*--the Kernel mailing list. Yes, for a non-kernel hacker or C-pro-pro (DemiGod) it is hard, and the companies who hire the kernel hackers do gain a slight advantage as they have in house experts, but that is called "doing business".
RedHat is a company that wants to sell support--and a large part of that is selling it to *companies* not Joe-Doom. RedHat has found the best selling point to attract those companies--they have the source of the source. A RedHat rep dealing with a large company deploying an in house app has access to the people who know the kernel (as well as other apps) inside and out.
As the article says, if RedHat makes a misstep they would quickly lose their advantage because the kernel hackers and other OSS leaders do not want proprietary solutions.
And for the whiners worried about price and using the newest libraries--I'll give you a hint--**Never buy/use/install anything that is #.0**. And last I checked you do have choices, and as long as it is GPL'd this can not change.
The article falls victim to what it is discussing - rampant over-analysis. Red hat is a company trying to make a living at supporting Linux for the business workplace. Is it so wrong for them to defend their image that they've worked to hard to build? Everyone fears the "Bill-Borg" so bad we're doing a witch hunt on anyone who smacks of success.
Lest we forget the days of Apple vs. IBM where it was the hobbists versus the Mega Corporate Monster, remember what became of that (besides spawning the "Bill-Borg") -- legitimization of the PC as a tool, not a toy. Same with Red Hat. They are going to turn the "hacker os" into a legitimate os and we'll all be better for it because since it's open source code, the os can't be the leverage to force another monopoly.
So let Red Hat be the company they want to be, and in this modern democracy vote your opinion with the standard business voting ballot -- the allmighty dollar.
CodeWarrior isn't shackled to RedHat. People with a clue are capable of running it under other Linux variants and are doing so. Some assumption had to be made about the installation, MetroWerks chose RedHat. No doubt RedHat did some campaigning for this. That's their perogative.
MetroWerks is releasing RedHat for Debian in the future according to their press releases. This may be the result of campainging by Debian. That's their perogative.
Users presently have a choice of an easy install under one Linux variant: RedHat. Soon they will have the choice of an easy install under two Linux variants: RedHat and Debian.
Clueful people will of course still be able to make it work with their variant of choice with additional effort. Any shackles against doing so are imposed purely by your skills.
If every linux vendor agreed on standard places to put things and standard technology this wouldn't be necessary. None of the vendors seem to be making any real comittment to doing so however (creating some ficticious standards body which recommends your distribution as the standard isn't a real comittment)
I don't work for MetroWerks, RedHat or Debian, though I used to be a satisfied customer of RedHat (not so satisfied anymore)