RedHat's Solution to Pseudo-Free Software Problem.

Christian Winebrenner writes "RedHat seems to have seen the new licensing terms on rdist (background story: Pseudo-Free software...) and decided that the best solution to the problem is to recommend that users DOWNgrade to the previous version. Their RH 6.0 errata page offers the solution of ditching rdist 6.1.5 in favor of 6.1.0. Who knows how long it will be until we find that distributions will be riddled with "holes" from out of date non-free-for-commercial-use software? "

Comments

Good copmany

[Anonymous Coward]

I really admire Red Hat. Red Hat and Debian are the only two distributions with this strong a policy towards free software. Red Hat is the only commercial distribution with this strong a moral stance.

It's stuff like this that makes me really annoyed at people who make the Red Hat/Microsoft comparison. I mean people are buying SuSE, a distribution that is known to use underhanded tactics (undermining the Red Hat IPO), proprietize everything they can, and act generally sleazy to avoid the new Microsoft of Red Hat. In the meantime, Red Hat is one of the only two really ethical major distributions.

Re:No, distributions won't be riddled with holes

[Bruce Perens]

I've thought about auditing Red Hat and the others - of course it would take a lot of time, and that's something I don't necessarily have. If someone else wants to do this there's a good article in it and I can help you get it published.

Thanks

Bruce

No, distributions won't be riddled with holes

[Bruce Perens]

Distributions won't be riddled with holes because they'll be too careful to include poorly-licensed software in the first place.

Red Hat made a mistake in this case. It was their policy to not put this kind of software in their distribution, and one package slipped by. We all had some fun razzing them, but this was never a controversy - we knew they'd revert to another version of the package.

We also had fun exploring the alternatives to the problem package, there were at least two of them, at least one of which was much more powerful and both had no questions about their licenses.

In other words, this is no big deal. It's nice to note that Red Hat did the right thing, though.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

RDist is free with Linux

[Mike Cooper]

I'm the Founder/Owner/President/Primary Developer for MagniComp.

I've recently been made aware of the discussions on this site regarding the licensing terms of RDist. It came as a bit of a shock to learn about the trouble with our RDist license agreement.

I have always been a free/open software supporter and have always intended to make sure RDist was freely distributable by all like minded groups. This definetely includes all the Linux distributions both free and for-profit. The trouble is, the license agreement was originally written long before Linux rose to it's current stature.

After reviewing our RDist license agreement I can easily see where there's a problem with the Linux groups. So I have updated the RDist License Agreement to clearly state it's fine to distribute as part of any Linux distribution.

I welcome any and all feedback on this and other topics.

- mike