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Salon Article on Red Hat and Cygnus
krshultz writes "Salon has a
piece on Red Hat's aquisition of Cygnus Solutions. It mentions concerns that shareholders might see more dollar signs in proprietary software, and there's an interesting bit about the future of things like gcc." I didn't know gcc had a steering committee. It's nice to see its developers concerned about what all this will mean to the community.
Since gcc is under the liscence of the GPL it is impossible for it not to stay free forever. If someone does try to take it away they will just get someone else to maintain it.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Hey developers RedHat is profiting from all your hard work and you are getting little or nothing from it! ITS MICROSOFT ALL OVER AGAIN!
I've read that Redhat is working on adding things like large disc support, a journaling file system, etc to a custom linux version (ie redhat) Are they forking the kernel here - leaving the normal kernel dev people to integrate what they do on their own, or are they working with the kernel development team to actually bring these features to the standard linux kernels?
As a stockholder, I am concerned with this giving away of valuable software with no direct profit. Therefore I have made these proposals:
1) All Cygnus tools are no longer free. Since they have no real competition in their space, they should be sold for the highest price sustainable in the marketplace.
2) All code should become closed ASAP. This will keep others from leveraging our products to create competing software packages.
3) The license should be changed to reflect the above.
4) Anti-piracy measures should be put in place.
As a public company you have an obligation to increase short term shareholder value. Let's do this!
Yes, GCC does have a steering committee, mainly to prevent a single person or group from exerting too much control over the project, thus paralyzing development. (The entire EGCS idea was to get away from exactly that problem, which is /why/ there was no new GCC for a long time.)
h tml
The Salon article talks about Jeff [Law] mentioning changes to the steering committee. This is the first article in the thread:
http://egcs.cygnus.com/ml/gcc/1999-11/msg00421.
and the "changes" article comes later in the thread IIRC. Currently, Cygnus/RH employees together still don't have anywhere near a majority on the committee.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
from the article: "I don't think a corporation, particularly a public one, whose allegiances are only to its shareholders and its customers, can be trusted to keep software free"
Folks, believe in it. Have all the doubts you want about corporations and the people who operate them. They are, indeed, only out to make a buck. And for some, free software is how they do it.
A company that deals in free software would not be better off selling proprietary software, otherwise, they'd have started out doing that in the first place.
Stop worrying. Red Hat is Red Hat, Microsoft is Microsoft. They're both out to make a buck, and they're both doing well. Neither is going to adopt the other's way of doing things.
It's just weird that so many supporters and developers of free software are fretting about it's future, while at the same time, investors are expressing their confidence by pouring money into it.
But I recently discovered something that now has me wondering if this will continue to be the case.
In Red Hat 6.1, there is a new program called the Red Hat Update Agent . Basically, it appears to be a program that allows you to automatically download and optionally install updated RPM's. It sounds like a wonderful new addition, and I wanted to try it out.
Well, you have to be a registered user. But that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. They only want registered users to access their upgrade site (priority.redhat.com). I completely understand and agree with that. This is a service after all.
Because of this, I imagined that I (or anyone else) could simply setup one of these Update Agent servers myself. Knowing that Red Hat releases everything they create under the GPL, I started looking for the server-side CGI scripts.
I couldn't find them.
Now, it might just be that I didn't look hard enough. I have looked all over the FTP site, and I've tried several queries in their site's search engine. I haven't tried to actually send email to anyone at Red Hat, and I haven't actually asked anyone on a public forum (until now). But I'm still a little worried that the source for this script wasn't as easy to find as the sources for any other Red Hat software.
So, is it available? Or is Red Hat going to keep this script secret so that only registered Red Hat users can enjoy the benefits of the Update Agent?
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Barring any harrowing advances in intellectual property law, Stallman's gift, the GPL, insures that no one, no matter how eeee-vile, will ever be able to take the codebase from them.
We're on the road to Tycho.
I don't see why anyone is worried about Red Hat changing the GPL status of GCC. The entire existing codebase is copyrighted by the FSF. So there is no way Red Hat can alter the licensing of that. Therefore any contribution they make should also be GPL'd. Of course they may or may not assign the copyrights to the FSF, but they certainly will if they want their changes to be used. In any case, they can't change the licence without rewriting the entire existing code base.
Hopefully they'll put some guys on to precompiled headers and a working -frepo switch for C++.
Long compiles are a real headache.
Alex.
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
Your differentiation between "the normal kernel dev people/the kernel development team" and Red Hat does not make a lot of sense in context, because Red Hat's kernel developers are a subset of "the normal kernel dev people" and, in fact, Alan Cox, who is one of the kernel developers who work for Red Hat, is the one who does most of the kernel patch integration work for the stable kernels for Linus.
In any case, we actively integrate our patches with Linus's kernel. This is done individually by the developers working on their particular areas. The idea of maintaining a truly forked kernel is a nightmare to us, and no one in their right mind would want to do it.
So we are, in this context, just another group of highly-motivated and focused kernel hackers contributing code to the Linux kernel in the normal way, which involves maintaining patches outside the Linux kernel until Linus accepts them.
In a production context, we don't want to add patches to our official products that extend APIs beyond what Linus has blessed. The specter of us blessing an API that was subsequently cursed by the chief penguin himself would haunt us horribly.
-- "Ever wonder why the SAME PEOPLE make up ALL the conspiracy theories?"
Not here...land of the GNUheads and I want it for free, and I must see the source even though I don't know what i am going to do with it crowd.
Open and Closed software make up the landscape, and will continue to do so, despite what the kids here say. Most of them that bitch, would not know what to do with the source to begin with. My favorite line from them is "Well, I could pay someone to fix it." Bull, you won't even pay for the first person's hard work, why are you going to pay for someone elses?
Why? Because we, the Linux community, will tell them not to user RedHat. I think what Andrew Leonard and other journalists don't quite grasp yet is the power and voice that the community has. When I tell my friends which Linux to use, I tell them RedHat. When a business person comes into one of our LUG meetings asking for advice on what distro to run on his servers, the most common response is RedHat. Would this be the same if RedHat suddenly decided to close-source parts of their distro? I strongly suspect _no_. If they did, I for one would finally make the jump over to Debian that I've been pondering for a while. I think that you'd see a lot of others doing the same. The community is the marketing force for Linux. If any Linux company does something to piss off the community, they are going to feel the repercussions.
My 0x2 bytes worth.
--
Deepak Saxena
Deepak Saxena
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers" - Picasso
When I look at this, I don't see Redhat taking over GCC, I see Redhat taking over Cygus' expertise in the embedded OS space. Most of Cygnus' revenues come from their work on embedded systems and I don't see Redhat ignoring that. There's already a lot of work on Linux in embedded systems and if Redhat's smart, they'll push that work forward. Embedded is where it's at for the future IMHO. Just a thought...
Ever read thestreet.com's article on the "red hots?"
In it, Cramer said that Red Hat is one of those companies who had a good idea, convinced a few mutual funds to buy into it before the IPO, and soon EVERYONE is jumping on the Red Hat Bandwagon. the key thing is, when red hat ipoed, it essentially had no long term profit model (it was giving away software and making money from service and maintaince contracts)
however, now with a market cap of over 7 billion, red had is using its stock to buy real money making (i.e. profitable) companies such as Cygnus to fill out its business model. it just seems a little crazy that essential we the public gave red hat this money even before it had a long term model and said use this money to buy up competition and innovation!? please comment on this.
Please visit http://www.freedonation.com and save a life for free every day!
Surprise...coroporations make money, and they care about it alot. The world is not a charity event; Redhat is not going to pay them to work somewhere else.
RedHat also "owes" the community nothing. They just need to abide by the licenses of the software. If they don't violate a license, then there is no problem.
I am always amaazed about the "What are they giving back?" mentality. Redhat cares not about pissing off the Linux community. Why should they? How many here actually pay Redhat for something? They download it, or buy at CheapBytes. The people here don't pay for anything. Redhat has no interest. You are not even on the radar.
So, we aren't going to keep the server functionality secret, it will just take time to create a release of the pieces you need to build a server. It will be released when it is ready.
In the meantime, the the protocol is documented to some extent.
-- "Ever wonder why the SAME PEOPLE make up ALL the conspiracy theories?"
--
"I was either onto something, or on something!"
let me say this I pay for surport and equitment and not software anymore OK !
gcc is the fundermental backbone of free software
lets remind people what it stands for "GNU Compiler Collection"
Yep its more than C now
Big Boys dont like to do their dev work out in the open because they dont want to show whats going on ask marketing peoples about why, thats just a fact !
(GPL allows for this I know)
Big boys (and girls like HP) like gcc @ the moment beacuse it is the standard what we must not let happen is that they stop paying Cygnus to develope new GCC back ends to their hardware beacuse they are AFRAID of Redhat getting the advantage.
If the people shy away then Cygnus will lose revenue and find most of the developers walk exiting project elsewhere and the lure of money the reason why alot of people want to work for them is that they are on the cutting edge working on things like Sony PS2 (whose dev env is linux because of gcc and more stable haha) this is why they get people.
Without people a company is nothing !
Cygnus has lots of effort invested in the embedded market this can not be allowed to be wasted otherwise people (partners and staff) will walk.
Redhat had better make it clear to Cygnus partners that its work as useal and more funding to do better work and no change in direction of licenceing.
my thoughts
john
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Does anyone have any information about what Richard Stallman thinks of the Red Hat+Cygnus merger?
;-)
(Other then what they should call their products, I mean.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
if red-hat went closed source, I for one would sell off all my shares as fast as I could log into e-trade and do it. I bet theres a million other people out there that would do the same thing.
What are you going to boycott? When have you ever PURCHASED something from RedHat? If you don't buy something in the first place, you are not a customer (duh!), so they care less about you then I do.
I would love to join your campaign. It's motto can be, "If you don't do things our way, we are still not going to buy anything from you." You are no longer Redhat's market. Think about it. Please.
What are the licensing terms?
Most of the tools are covered by the GNU GPL, some are public domain, and others have a Berkeley style copyright. To cover the GNU GPL `restrictions', the basic rule is if you give out any binaries, you must also make the source available. For the full details, be sure to read the text of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
The Cygwin API library found in the winsup subdirectory of the source code is also covered by the GNU GPL. By default, all executables link against this library (and in the process include GPL'd Cygwin glue code). This means that unless you modify the tools so that compiled executables do not make use of the Cygwin library, your compiled programs will also have to be free software distributed under the GPL with source code available to all.
Cygnus' Native Win32 GNUPro subscriptions include a commercial license for Cygwin that is more suitable for commercial use of the Cygwin library. Pricing for a GNUPro Subscription starts at $6000 for three developers and includes GNUPro Toolkit, Developer Support, and a commercial-use license for 100 copies of the Cygwin library. Contact info@cygnus.com for more information about this license. All other questions should be sent to the project mailing list cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com.
One, the shareholders have already bought into the free-software (aka Open Source(TM)) model. See the RHAT prospectus and other info. That public info would have to be changed, requiring agreement among the stockholders and board members.
In the past, GPL opponents have sometimes argued that corporations wouldn't touch GPL'ed software with a ten-foot pole (especially wouldn't distribute software under the GPL) because it'd violate the trust they have with stockholders to maximize corporate value.
Now we have a company that makes that kind of maximization based on GPL'ed (and other freely-licensed) software part and parcel of its raison d'etre.
In effect, this means anybody wanting to invest in a company that makes money off of proprietary software won't invest in RHAT. Without such investors, there won't be the pressure to become a proprietary software company. (Compare S.u.S.E., Caldera, etc., companies that must eternally judge which software is "worthy" as proprietary versus free.)
Two, the only tantalizing aspect of twisting RHAT's mission is to try to extract profits by proprietizing software RHAT already owns. Such as RPM.
Now, how valuable could a proprietary RPM or similar really be? Remember, the programmers who people point to as new RHAT employees and as those who might assist this proprietization have already established their credentials as free-software, even GPL, enthusiasts.
For RHAT to convince them to go the proprietary route, it'd have to promise more money, fame, and/or hack value. They've already got money and fame, and the hack value of proprietary software is lower anyway. Further, the ability of such a programmer to leave RHAT and get good work outside goes down, not up, when that programmer's work becomes enshrouded by the proprietary veil.
So, only unenlightened-suit-type programmers are likely to take that bait, meanwhile, the big-name, free-software enthusiasts already there would see what was happening and probably leave like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
So, ultimately, for RHAT to go proprietary would be a huge mistake for its stockholders, who have a much easier approach to investing in proprietary software: buy MSFT.
The most likely way RHAT would be abused to injure our community would be if, say, MSFT bought it up wholesale and shut down as much competitive free-software stuff as it could. How successful could that strategy really be? Very Un, IMO, for many reasons, such as the above, and here we can be grateful for RHAT's insane market cap. If MSFT couldn't do it in one fell swoop now, how could a loosely organized bunch of RHAT stockholders manage to do it down the road? I don't see it.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Then I could pick them up, and laugh as the share price goes through the roof. Thanks.
Yes, Yes and expect RedHat/Cygnus to take care of the development platform for ADA. Guess what OS it will be running. It's a piece of cake for them to go into the ADA business where customers eager to pay skyhigh for 24/7 support. //007
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
I found the following piece amusing:
Any code that has at one time been protected by the GPL will still always be freely available, but new versions of that code could conceivably be released under different terms, even, potentially, as proprietary, closed-source software. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is considered by most programmers to be highly unlikely to perpetrate any such license changes for the software to which it holds the copyright.
It is simply impossible for the FSF to distribute proprietary code. If you have ever assigned any code to the FSF you would know that the assignment contract you sign obligates the FSF to always distribute the assigned code and any code based on your work as Free Software, although they might not distribute it under (a specific version of) the GPL.
But don't forget the dreaded "network effects", the phenonemon that tends to restrict people's choice in the workplace to a single standard. I think it ironic that this new kind of dominant player arises in the computing world so shortly after we've all felt the relief of the former giant being reined in. But it makes sense that it would happen, since venture capitalists main criteria for investing in firms (and buying up firms) is what they call "unfair advantage". Usually it is patents or specialized know-how. But there is one opportunity in the open-source world to create such a behemoth, and RedHat/Cygnus is gunning for it.
It is doubtful in 15 years time RedHat/Cygnus will be broken up because they became a monopoly that retarded innovation in the computer world. I think they are smart enough to avoid the breaking the law. But they could have a lot of power over our computing future.
Here is a hypothetical scenario: what if RedHat/Cygnus makes the decision to focus their limited resources for backward compatibility testing of gcc to only that software found in the RedHat Linux distribution? And what if they decide to start deprecating features of certain languages (i.e. disallowing pre-standard C++). Do you think this would be fair? Do you think they might do it anyways?
As their position with respect to the open source community grows I will be watching how they continue to perform their important role of stewardship of the FSF's programming utilities. I second the comment someone made above of asking them to support gcc and gdb developers on the FSF's payroll instead of their own. Richard Stallman is the one monopolist I can put my trust in for this software, because he has more than earned it.
Would be a fork on gcc and glibc. The comunity would loses the expertise of gcc developers.
However how long it would take before the so called expertise is attained again by the comunity? We're talking about years? Months? With the open source push, I do not think t would be too long after a fork before we have a decent compiler again.
And the road goes ever on....
What I wonder is what the Linux community gains by the Redhat takeover of Cygnus. Cygnus was already an open source company and seemed to do very well by it's own. I think it would be cool if Redhat used it's financial postition to acquire companies that are not yet in the open source camp. Currently, one of the major mancos of Linux is the lack of games. I think it would be very cool if Redhat aquired a big game company and started releasing some major titles for Linux. I think there's (real) money to be made here for Redhat and it would give us the users more things to do (not necessarely usefull things...) on our beloved operating system.
its all you've done the whole time. The only thing I am clueless about is how you keep chaing the subject instead of addressing my topics.
Once again: Most slashdotters don't buy from RedHat. Most of the hardcore geeks don't buy from RedHat. The PHBs of the world do.
An organized campaign (hypothetical in this case) against a company for which the people boycotting don't buy the products is kind of silly. And as far as the purchase influence of the average slashdotter, they still work for people that insist on Microsoft products, so that is a wash at best.
Lastly, me being an AC is no less brave than calling myself "Dodger" or some ridiculous name like that. I still have as little idea who you are as you do about me. Geeks that create "handles" is kind of sad.
"As a public company you have an obligation to give people a fair shake. If you don't do this you will loose as many customeers as you gain through the practices that you outlined. In fact you might have to file for chapter 14 if you do that."
Um, no. Where did you hear that? The only obligation is to increase shareholder value. BTW its "lose" not "loose".
"Wonderful! The code isn't nearly as important as the protocol."
NOW HEARD ON SLASHDOT. And it is the truth: the important thing is that the PROTOCOLS be kept open, not the SOURCE. The source is simply a proprietary implementation of the protocol.
NOW you guys are getting smart!