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Red Hat Forms non-Profit Open Source Group
shawnb writes "Wired has an aticle describing Red Hat's new Non-Profit Open Source group. The group's aim is to 'sponsor, support, promote, and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public.' "
Redhat is a publically traded corporation. Everything they do is mandated by an obligation to increase their stock price (via the omnipresent threat of shareholder lawsuits, which is very real)
Therefore - how will this group help increase their stock price?
Sorry to be slightly more optimistic, but another way to increase stock price is to actually do tangible and profitable things, not just good marketing. So another alternative is that this group increase Open Source acceptance and awareness to the PHB out there. Who knows? But a coporate minded entity to promote Open Source doesn't sound like a bad idea when it's targets may included other corporate entities that don't Get It(tm) as regards to Open Source.
In the end it may indeed be a flash in the pan and a simple marketing move. One cannot discount the idea that it could be more substantial, either.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The press release about the Center was purposefully vague. One, because it was written by lawyers, and two, because we want to leave the door wide open for the Center and its board of directors to decide how it will go about its business. Certainly, the Center will fund software development. It will be done in cooperation with, and very likely *through*, organizations like OSI, SPI, FSF, Linux International, etc.Who said this has anything to do with software?
They plan "... to study how to apply the open source movement to a broader range of uses."
In other words, why does it cost 10,000s of dollars to get a college degree?
Why can't an instructor teach the same class at a different university without getting sued by his previous employer? Can education be open-sourced?
What about an automobile engine? Can its design be open-sourced? What about its manufacturing process?
But the real mission of the Center is to facilitate Open Source-style thinking in fields outside of software development. There is an incredible amount of interest and confusion about this topic that increase as you move further away from coding. What the Center hopes to accomplish is to cause people to realize that Open Source is not as radical or "niche" as it may seem to the untrained eye. In fact the opposite is true: Open Source is founded on principles that are the bedrock of a free society. Principles that are not new. Principles that have been driving segments of our society for hundreds of years, in science, the law, governance, etc.
In the end, all of us in the Open Source community are trying to do the same thing: help other people understand, benefit from and become part of our incredible community. The Red Hat Center for Open Source is going to try to do this in a unique way - by showing people they already believe in Open Source!
-Marc
PS - The Center's Board is now in the process of figuring out exactly what it will do and how it will go about it. Stay tuned for announcements from the Center in the next month or two.
If Red Hat were to pour this kind of money into any of the established groups, they would in effect be buying the group (by being by far the largest contributor).
So it's just as well that they start a separate group. Their foundation is free to make donations to the FSF, Debian, SPI, LSB, etc.
However, this is not to say that I completely agree with your stated position. In fact, WRT Redhat I think they've done a spectacular job at riding the razor-thin line between competitive corporate self-promotion and FUD, one the one hand, and complete community sharing of code on the other. Frankly, they've been much better than SUSE or Pacific Hi-Tech (Turbo Linux HA clusters, anyone?), for example, when it comes to GPLing their internally written projects, and they have consistently funded many large projects over the years, all of which they've given away under the GPL. This is not the behavior of a corporate wolf in a sheep suit... they've done much good for the Linux community.
You may point to Debian as the pinnacle of community self-organization and development, and I think you're right that Debian is the best organized and most advanced Linux distribution out there as far as number of packages and stability of the core tree. But I note that they never did get around to resolving serious installation problems until a corporate giant -- Corel -- moved in and decided to use Debian as a base for their distribution. And it's Corel that finally written an easy to use installer for
This is not to say that we should expect perfectly gentleman like behavior from them as the Linux market heats up... especially as a service vendor. Honestly, I think Redhat realizes that funding free development projects is purely an R&D expense for them, and that their returns will have to come as service sector sales. I note that VAResearch is going down this very same route, which makes sense considering the thin margins available in the x86 hardware assembly market. The money in building "Redhat" mindshare among the general public comes back through service channels and not through direct product sales, unlike most proprietary shops. This means that Redhat has little incentive to "kill" competitive distributions as they can simply make money selling service for sites running the "other" linux distribution as well (should the market drift to another distribution).
I'd like to quickly go through your points:
But as I wrote before, unlike a traditional proprietary shop where developer mindshare around a closed API actually counts for something, just what would such an approach buy Redhat? They're just selling a prepackaged version of all the standard tools and libraries... along with a few internally written kickers. Having a well known name does help them sell service though... and I note that the $80 cost of a boxed Redhat is really just the implied service cost of providing installation support. Nobody at Redhat shit a brick when I FTP installed my machine across a cablemodem. Welcome to the GPL.
I'm right there with you until you hit those last two lines... "Does Red Hat care if the FSF dies?" and "Does Red Hat care if free software developers with any affiliation whatsoever to any other organization stop coding?" this is absurd. For exactly the same reason Microsoft fears the Free Software avalanche, as noted in Halloween, Redhat could never outflank the entire Free Software development community by forking off and maintaining an entire OS code base. They need the FSF, Linus/Alan Cox, Cygnus, XFree86, Eric Allman, and all the developers of smaller tools scattered around the distribution. This is a specious argument.
Regarding the other Linux distribution developers -- Why should they care??? The only distribution in this list which is community developed is Debian... and I don't fear Debian going tits up any time soon. They've done a wonderful job at self organization both politically and at software development.
So what? It's not like you have to buy Redhat... HELL, THEY GIVE IT AWAY! Go ahead and download it... or don't. Install Debian... actually, I suspect you may find it a more stable (if composed of slightly older components) distribution. Once you get past the installation, it rocks.
Why do we need another group to act in our best interests? The people that most want to lead the community are usually the ones least likely to be able to do it (the right way).
--
Let me understand this - in order to provide *community* focus, for free *liberated* software, we need a corporate sponsored group consisting of representatives from companies (Sun, MS) that have done thier damndest to enslave and bind thier users to thier corporate vision.
Sorry, I think that Debian, FSF and SPI are *much*, *much* better at demonstrating what Open Source is and means to the public than a corporate sponsored think tank would ever be.
How can publically traded corporations really be honest when they try to promote a philosophy of software that is so opposed to thier way of doing buisness?
DURHAM, N.C. - November 1, 1999 - Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ:RHAT) announced today the formation of a new non-profit organization, the Red Hat Center for Open Source (RHCOS), that will sponsor, support, promote and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public.
"The open source software movement has been successful because it has provided unprecedented control and quality to users, and at the same time enabled a model for cooperative development of technology that leveraged the expertise of the global community," said Ewing. "The implications of this model when applied outside of software development are enormous, and the benefits to society will be huge. Advancing this global cooperative model for the development of technologies and ideas is what RHCOS is all about."
I guess this means that Red Hat is going to try and focus now on getting all those windows (l)users to at least try Linux. Mostly they want them to try Red Hat, of course, but this move is meant to make sure that whatever they come up with can benefit everyone.
Frankly, I don't know if they really needed to do this. It might be a PR move rather than any kind of a technical move. (I know that sounds kind of obvious.) A lot of people, especially around here have been bashing Red Hat for "selling out." This could be the first part of their answer to those critics.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
I'm wondering if anyone has more data on exactly what this group will be focused on. Is it simply a place to guide OS products? Provide hardware and funding for projects, like LI does for Linux Development Grants?
The article itself is very vague, and I think we'd all be extremely interested to get more information regarding this 'venture'..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
If naive means that I don't believe that the majority is always correct, then I guess I must be naive. Who cares if every other software company is lobbying their congressmen? If Redhat should do what every other company does, then why in hell aren't they a proprietary software company?
I'm not arguing that Redhat shouldn't be marketing themselves. But if they're going to publish opinion and position pieces intending to add to the laws that I have to live under, I must forcefully disagree.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
... must be no good. I mean, what has Red Hat ever done for anybody, let alone the open source community? You just know that, now that they're corporate, they've turned evil, or, more likely, since they set out to make money off of GPLd software that they were evil all along.
</sarcasm>
Hey, before anyone flies off the handle (too late!) and asks "what can this group do that the FSF/SPI/LSB can't do?" (see, too late!) you need a bit more information as to what they're up to. A vague snippet of a press release does not a vision make. One thing I can think of is that the perception (yes, perception) of the GNU project as inherently anti-corporate might scare off potential open-source allies from that quarter. So un-knot your knickers, wait, and listen.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
The following statement from Redhat unnerves me: "projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public."
This is political rhetoric, pure and simple. If it came from a government, it would terrify me. If it came from a political organization it would make me nervous. But coming from a distributor of sofware, it confuses me. I want Redhat to distribute software that doesn't suck. I don't want Redhat supporting a "cause".
"Advancing social principles" is a strange phrase. I can only assume it's the "freedom" of Open Source. But this freedom doesn't exist as a social principle. It is not emancipation, liberty or even free speech. It is merely a permission to use and share. "The greater good of the general public" is much more troubling, and I must reject it with every fiber of my being. It presupposes that Redhat is knows what it best for billions of people it knows nothing about. It's also the common prelude to onerous laws and the destruction of liberties.
Get off the political bandwagon, Redhat, you're not running for office. If you want to help society, then put out a better product than everyone else.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Man, some of the people on Slashdot are goddamn paranoid fools. Come on, people!!! Red Hat cobbles together a few big names, 8 mil, throw the cash at scientific and educational OSS causes, and generally be good members of the community. What kind of response do they get from Slashdotters??
Oh, it's a tax break.
Oh, the goals are too vague.
Oh, everything Red Hat does is evil.
Jesus, people. WAKE UP!!! The company is doing something nice with it's cash!!! For chrissake, RELAX!
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
1) Introduces "Rawhide", allowing the userbase to follow the development branch of the distribution.
2) Tools such as AutoRPM appear, allowing users to update seamlessly through the web.
3) Establishes a non-profit organization towards the betterment of Free software.
The transformation is almost complete....
4) Add 3500 more packages and a little better quality control.
5) Changes name to "Debian".
;-)
In short, I think this is wonderfull news and applaud Redhat for what they have done and am glad for their success. They have always been and I believe they will continue to be a Good influence. Anyone that blabers on about Redhat being the next MS is either a troll or a fool.
Hurrah for the wonderfull news!
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This begs the question of whether the Debian folk would find this to be of any value... For the most part, Debian doesn't consume money. If they suddenly had $8M to throw around, this would enter "monied politics" that could have pretty shattering effects.
And, in any case, why would anyone consider it appropriate for RHAT to need to sponsor a project that is quite directly competitive?
The FSF actually has offices, budget, and some experience in hiring programming staff. Which makes it a more sensible idea, in some ways, to throw "ludicrous amounts of money" at the FSF than it would have been for Debian.
But even still, $8M is on the order of 30 times the recent amounts of annual funding of the FSF.
Again, dumping $8M on the FSF would be not unlike pouring a truckload of chocolate syrup onto an ice cream sundae. Interesting to see, but likely rather messy and even wasteful.
I'd rather see RHAT hire a bunch of people and build software that is released under free licenses, with CVS archives to allow external contributions as well. The costs will be as "tasty" a tax writeoff as anything else; the benefits include that if they regard the results as valuable, perhaps others will find them similarly valuable.
Strange, how that sounds a whole lot like RHAD Labs...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
John Gillmore is a long term nerd and free software supporter, from way before the phenomen became mainstream with Linux and Mozilla. He was one of the people starting Sun, which made him a lot of money, but I doubt he is involved with that company anymore. He spend some of the money starting cygnus. He is also very interested in electronic rights, helped start EFF and have put a lot of work in the cypherpunks movement.
He is one of the people /.'ers should know and respect, but he is not really into self-promotion. I think he is ideal for the post.
As far as I'm concerned (and I have a sizable essay to this argument ), the more organizations trying to do cool stuff the better.
It would be nice to see some funds get "thrown" at organizations like the FSF, SPI, XFree86, and so forth. Unfortunately, "throwing" money at them doesn't forcibly accomplish useful things. It is a joke that "Mathematicians are nature's way of turning coffee into theorems."
Frankly, I'd rather see RHAT take the simpler tack of hiring more programmers to write software that gets GPLed. Note that that happens to be just as much of a "tax break" as a contribution to a charitable organization.
The merit of having a separate organization may be the goodwill that results from having what may appear to be a bit more independent organization.
Alternatively, they may (and this is a bit of a reach, I'll admit) be founding an organization so that they can encourage others to contribute to it.
Consider: I'm not in the market for a "fully supported $80 RH Linux boxed set." But I might be game to help contribute to development efforts. If RHAT spins some/all of the development effort out to a separate organization, that may encourage people like me to contribute to that.
This could be a step towards transforming RHAT, the commercial organization, into the service organization that represents where IPO documentation has indicated that their revenues were expected to come from in the long term.
They roll development into a "charitable" organization, which:
Perhaps I'm being dramatically overoptimistic here; it's still possible that this be quite a good thing.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.