Actually on the box it says that you have to accept the enclosed licence agreement, and that seems to take care of the legal issues EULAs have had in the past: Modification of contract after sale.
Wrong. Unless you a) are allowed to actually READ the entire proposed contract before money changes hands and b) both sides sign the document then it is not a legally binding contract. Period, end of story. This is basic Contract Law 101 stuff.
If the EULA said that by purchasing the product you turned over custody of your first born to Bill G., would it be OK that the box said there was a EULA inside that you were agreeing to at time of purchase? Nope. Same with those silly clauses about not publishing performance comparisions. Even a valid contract has to be very carefully worded to trump the assumption that people have the right to speak freely. Hint: they are called Non Disclosure Agreements, not EULAs.
You are not required to accept the GPL to use GPL licensed software. Use is outside it's scope. Neither are you required to accept the Microsoft EULA, since it is just a shrink wrap license and isn't legally binding.
However if you wish to MODIFY and/or REDISTRIBUTE software licensed under the GPL you must accept the license, renegotiate a different license with the author or violate the author's Copyright. See the difference?
Btw, you also must accept the Microsoft EULA if you want rights over and above what the standard copyright license aquired at point of sale gives you. For example, tech support, updates, upgrade rights, etc.
Asking for a "Macro language" on a UNIXlike system is like asking for an automatic transmission on a sportscar. They just don't belong together.
In UNIX we have programs that do stuff. Then we have programs that implement graphical user interfaces to those programs. We don't write "macros" to click widgets in an automated way, we write new programs (often in easy to use scripting languages) that automate those underlying programs that do useful stuff to create new things. And if needed we then write new graphical interfaces to these new programs.
Yes, because of the infection from migrating Windows/Mac programmers and programs we now have some exceptions to those rules, like OOo and Mozilla; but they are exceptions. And there are plenty of toolkit web browsing programs (wget, lynx, links, assorted Perl modules, etc.) and OO.o is rapidly being assimilated into the UNIX Way and becoming scriptable for truly useful work.
> Back in the day (early 80s) we'd copy whole tapes, FBI warning and all.
Of course you copy the FBI warning! Only a half-assed pirate would leave off the FBI warning. Copying the warning was my way of saying "Hell yes I know this is technically illegal, but screw em anyway."
Like copying a tape from the rental shop is somehow EVIL and taping from HBO is different? Personally I draw the line at assholes selling bootleg tapes, but even then I don't think it is always EVIL. Selling bootlegs of titles that are not (and usually never will be) available through legit channels just doesn't seem wrong. Copyrights should not be allowed to be used to suppress a work. (example: Disney and _Song of the South_)
But I would like to be able to hack my DVD player to allow me to skip the damned thing, especially FOX titles that force it down your throat before the opening menu will come up. But I bought a good Japanese name brand deck that can't be flashed. On the other hand the picture is very good (compared to the el cheapo Chinese stuff from Apex, etc.) so I guess I won't bitch too loud.
Because most people are paranoid enough to assume M$ watermarks each distributed copy to allow them to trace it back to the point of release. But now they are giving copies to governments like China and folks there just don't really give a damn about western notions of copyrights.
> Are you sure you can disable SCMS on your component deck?
No, I'm sure you CAN'T disable SCMS. But you can can play back digital and if you record something through the mic plug it should be tagged as an original, allowing you to make at least one generation of copies. You can also buy little boxes that allow you to reset the SCMS bits to anything you like. Those work for CD, DVD, MD, DAT and whatever they cook up next, so long as it uses SCMS over s/pidf.
> The intended use is to deprive me of my artwork?
Yes. And it sucks
> Or to raise the barrier to entry into high-quality sound recording?.
Exactly. When you buy consumer electronics you are supposed to CONSUME, not produce. Therefore any copying must be 'stealing' their precious 'content.' To produce music you are supposed to fork over the money for professional equipment. (Or at least prosumer.)
Hint: when they call it "content" it usually contains zero quality.
As a storage medium it would be linux compatible. But re-read the.pdf and you learn that, like the iPod, it stores music files in an encrypted form and will only play one in that mutant format. Expect hell to freeze before a legal transfer program appears for Linux/BSD. On the other hand you can expect a Free program to show up on a server in the Free World in a few months. And on the gripping hand expect it to be suppressed about like DeCSS, i.e. everyone will know about it but linking to it will get you a lawsuit.
Get a component MD deck and you get optical in and out. It is only the portable players that lack a digital output. Makes sense when you consider their intended use. They need a way to dump CD's in but are only expected to playback via the headphones.
Unions only work when the workers are replacable cogs in a machine. When it makes sense to collective bargain because one trained bricklayer is basically about as productive as another. And because you can't outsource their ass. And also note that unions are only effective in locations where they can operate under cover of the government. Unions in Right to Work states like mine don't get nearly as crazy with their demands.
So if you believe IT workers are generic cogs that can be catagorized into neat job slots paying a negotiated wage and want the government to force employers to hire your sorry ass, then unionize. Me, I believe I'm worth more than the average MCSE and if the market ever decides to disagree I'll learn a new skill and jump industries.
Don't expect any success with simply screaming "Buy American". Offer a better value proposition.
You are closer to the customer, not thousands of miles away.
You understand their problem better than some Indian programmer who doesn't truly grok the underlying American business practices being codified into software.
You are operating in their time zone.
etc.
That will win business a lot better than trying to shame a potential customer into paying more just because you are an American.
> Most people believe that they are "better than average" drivers, > even if they have no evidence to support that belief.
No, some of us have a proven track record. Been driving 'bout 24 years now and have NEVER driven the speed limit if I could do it safely. Paid my share of road taxes (speeding tickets) but am still accident free.
As opposed to timid dipshits that cause accidents by driving like an idiot, mistaking yield signs for stop, driving 45 in a 55 and stacking up drivers behind them until one of the more unstable idiots does something stupid, etc.
As far as I'm concerned the safest way to drive is by putting idiots in my rear view mirror where they can't hurt me. (How do I know who the idiots are? Simple, assume they ALL are.)
> Why? YOu can always use a commercial qt license and release your > code under any license you wish.
No you can't. Try reading the license before posting again. Sure, in theory, an app developed on the commercial Qt could be converted to Free. One time, and all commercial development would either have to stop or a total code fork take place. Because developers using the Free Qt MAY NOT CONTRIBUTE CODE to a tree that will ever see commercial release.
They did it that way to prevent the otherwise totally reasonable tactic of developing entirely on the Free toolchain and only having one commercial license to do the final release build on.
> The Gnome camp should be thanked for making TrollTech give us qt under > the linux license GPL. Mission accomplished, I'd say.
Mission not accomplished. From RMS's viewpoint Qt is now free, because he cares not about cross pollination with the commercial software world. But in the real one, it matters.
Wrong. GIMP runs just fine under Windows. A GPLed Qt app could not be so ported without violating the Qt license. You don't have to believe me, go read the license.
How about another major Gtk vs Qt advantage. Go look at the GNU Win CD or The Open CD and count the Qt/KDE apps. Or let me save you the time and do it for you. Zero. Think that just might matter to Enterprise customers working in a diverse environment?
The pisser with the Qt license is that a project must decide before writing the first line of code which license they plan to release under and you can't change your mind later. You can't dual license either. And if you opt for free you can never port to an unfree system.
The KDE camp still refuse to admit they made an unholy alliance with the devil and will forever be damned for it. The GNOME camp saved the Free Software world by realizing the danger and running balls to the wall to quickly organize themselves and catch up close enough to KDE/Qt to prevent it from ever becoming a defacto standard.
They are accurately measuring what they set out to measure. The top 1000 corporate websites. And most top 1000 corporations are Microsserfs these days. No suprise here.
But then Martin Marietta Materials and Warnaco running IIS6 doesn't mean squat. They ain't exactly prime destinations on the Internet so IIS can probably carry the load well enough, and if it is down a few minutes each Sunday morning for the weekly reboot who really notices.
As for the Windows e-commerce sites, they pretty much speak for themselves if you have ever used them. They generally work fairly well but never great. Blame it on IIS or on the sort of second rate techs who either choose inferior tech or hang around somewhere where decisions in their own area of expertise are overrulled by ignorant suits like a bad scene from the Dilbert Zone.
Look at the sites that carry the weight, the ones that laugh at the slashdot effect, they know what works and what doesn't. Hell, if Microsoft didn't feel they had to eat the dogfood, microsoft.com would probably be running apache. Especially if the web services division had to actually take the licensing cost for that buttload of servers out of their departmental budget.
> If you need an enterprise OS, then you can afford an enterprise OS.
But what if you just need an OS with a support window longer than six months? That was our situation, we needed a successor to RH7.3 which goes off support on Dec 31. Turns out we weren't alone either, the response from just telling a couple of people two weeks ago has been bigger than anything I had imagined.
> I find it a shame that someone would simply go through and remove the > trademarks (which RedHat allows and even gives instructions in their > license for it).
Why? RHEL3, as a collective work, is released under the GPL with the exception of their registered trademarks. So you find it a 'shame' that I am redistributing GPL software under the terms and conditions of it's license? And I went far beyond the minimum required by their license to remove the association with Red Hat so that nobody in their right mind would mistakenly assume White Box is a product of, sponsored by, etc. of RH Inc.
> To those companies using it I hope you get to see why people say, > you get what you pay for.
To those of us who understand what Free Software is really about, we already know. We are getting the software we wished RedHat had found a profitable way to sell us with the understanding we have to now take responsibility for maintaining it ourselves. It is more work but less than the effort of migrating. RHEL itself was never an option though. It just doesn't make sense to pay that kind of money annually for public access workstations and $250 EPIAs at library checkout stations.
In public statements I had said for years that one of the main attractions was control of our own destiny. We could upgrade or not on our own timetable. That if Red Hat did something we couldn't abide we could just pick our ball and go home. Turns out an even better option was to take THEIR ball and play without them.
I might have bought a license for RHEL AS on our primary server, but that RHEN EULA scared the hell out of me when considering I wasn't going to be buying for the workstations, and plus, if I was going to be rebuilding from scratch anyway.....
The GPL is truly a wonder of the modern age, right up there with the Magna Carta, the US Constituition and the other great works of liberty. RMS can be a prick sometimes, but history is going to remember him long after thee, me and even Red Hat are all long forgotten.
p.s. Just an update on the/. effect. This thread is far enough down that no visible damage is happening to our site as I write this. Only 184 hits with slashdot in the referrer field.
Hmm. Looks like Cheap Bytes is actually doing a little more nowadays. Their "Pink Tie" version of RH 7.3 was no different from Red Hat's version, no logo removal, etc.
But yea, White Box is essentially a Cheap Bytes style RHEL except I had to build it ALL from source, not just anaconda-images and redhat-logos. Still working out some kinks though. Feel free to drop in, grab the release candidate isos and help out if ya want.
Go look at a recent Linux distro. Notice all those printers supported, including a lot of the lowball host based models? HP for one has been pretty good about making sure their products get supported.
They couldn't give a crap about the printers. All the vendors see printers as are a disguised way to get a customer to buy into a longerm committment to the vendor's supplies.
Remember that they aren't selling a product, they are selling a service. So you need to ask if you need the service or not. If you need it you are down to talking price and if you have enough seats, which you do, you can probably call em up and end up with a deal you can both be happy with, especially with the new educational pricing options they have announced.
If you don't need the enterprise support though, but do need a distribution close enough to RH not to shock the users come have a look at what I'm up to at whiteboxlinux.org and see if it might be the answer to your problem. The idea is to rebuild RHEL from the SRPMS and following their EULA by deleting the Red Hat trademarks. Same Penguin, only delivered in a plain white box!
As soon as I'm legal (I have to get all of RedHat's trademarks removed at a minimum) I'll be slowly floating availibility out. Our library only has a T-1 so a Slashdot announcement is RIGHT out, even with BitTorrent.:)
True, but how much of an incubator will Fedora actually be? Before, all of the geeks swarmed the servers to get a RedHat x.0 release because they wanted to see, debug and learn about what they would be using on production machines come the.2 release. Will that attitude continue? That is the billion dollar gamble RH is taking. Time will tell if worked.
You would lose that bet. I'm very close to releasing ISO images of "white box enterprise linux". I have all of the heavy lifting done, currently I'm polishing things up a bit and starting in on cleaning out logos.
And no, I don't expect to be sued. RedHat understands the consequences of releasing software under the GPL. Besides, they would have to be zarking mad to try sueing a public library for publishing GPL software. They would be reviled second only to SCO.:)
If they find something I have missed I expect they will drop an email, I'll make a corrected set of images available and that will be that. They aren't at war with us, they just made a business decision that non-enterprise customers weren't all that profitable. Personally I think it is going to cost them in the long term, but that's just my opinion and it is their call to make. They are the ones who answer to the shareholders.
Linux on the desktop is already beginning to happen. But it has been clear for at least a year that RedHat has made a strategic decision to leave that segment to others.
Guess they have now decided to sow salt over that ground as they leave to hurt their competitors. No matter, they will be a footnote in a few years.
I tend to doubt Fedora will ever build much of a community because Redhat will find they can't really cut it loose. Because were they to actually turn it over to the developer community we already know what they would do, and it isn't what Redhat has traditionally done.
RedHat drove innovation by producing horribly broken.0 releases with all sort of bleeding edge software. Contrast to Debian. Being more concerned with stability, they would never have unleashed GCC 3.0 (aka RedHat's 2.96) anytime close to as early as RH did, but they NEEDED it for their commercial customers. Same for Glibc and their most recent stunt of backporting native pthreads from 2.6 into a 2.4 mutant kernel for RH9 and RHEL3.
The value of RedHat used to be that they were where the Geeks and Suits collided and out of that friction came innovation. Run the Geeks off and they are doomed to solidify into the next SCO, a tired outdated product from a company without the resources to continue the required level of development needed to keep up. Anyone want to bet that several of their superstars bail before their next major release?
> the Supreme Court some time ago interpreted the 10th Amendment
If by 'interpreted' you meant to say 'rewrote' I'd agree with you. And since an angry mob didn't hang the sons of bitches way back when they first legislated from the bench some would say it is legitimate now. I disagree.
Only one problem, the 9th and 10th Amendments have been effectively removed from the US Constituition. When was the last time a major case turned on one of them? For if the Courts were t rediscover them they would be forced to strike down most of the Federal Government.
Example: I have the babble box on in the background right now, happen to be on CNNFN and was half listening to a discussion about a new proposed EPA rule requiring apartments to install water meters on each unit in the name of water conservation. The discussion covered a lot of issues, whether it would actually save water, how hard it would be to retrofit existing structures, blah blah. At no point was the most important question asked. What section of the US Constituition granted the Federal Government the power to regulate water supply to dwellings? Since there is no such section, the clear language of those same Amendments mean it HAS no such authority. Most of the EPA, FDA, HUD, etc. etc. are illegal according to the Constituition but violate their edicts and you will go directly to jail, not pass go and never find a lawyer willing to take your 200/hr to use the 9th or 10th Amendment in your defense.
The Constituition uses shockingly clear and direct language, but it still gets ignored.
Amendment 9:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually on the box it says that you have to accept the enclosed licence agreement, and that seems to take care of the legal issues EULAs have had in the past: Modification of contract after sale.
Wrong. Unless you a) are allowed to actually READ the entire proposed contract before money changes hands and b) both sides sign the document then it is not a legally binding contract. Period, end of story. This is basic Contract Law 101 stuff.
If the EULA said that by purchasing the product you turned over custody of your first born to Bill G., would it be OK that the box said there was a EULA inside that you were agreeing to at time of purchase? Nope. Same with those silly clauses about not publishing performance comparisions. Even a valid contract has to be very carefully worded to trump the assumption that people have the right to speak freely. Hint: they are called Non Disclosure Agreements, not EULAs.
You are not required to accept the GPL to use GPL licensed software. Use is outside it's scope. Neither are you required to accept the Microsoft EULA, since it is just a shrink wrap license and isn't legally binding.
However if you wish to MODIFY and/or REDISTRIBUTE software licensed under the GPL you must accept the license, renegotiate a different license with the author or violate the author's Copyright. See the difference?
Btw, you also must accept the Microsoft EULA if you want rights over and above what the standard copyright license aquired at point of sale gives you. For example, tech support, updates, upgrade rights, etc.
Asking for a "Macro language" on a UNIXlike system is like asking for an automatic transmission on a sportscar. They just don't belong together.
In UNIX we have programs that do stuff. Then we have programs that implement graphical user interfaces to those programs. We don't write "macros" to click widgets in an automated way, we write new programs (often in easy to use scripting languages) that automate those underlying programs that do useful stuff to create new things. And if needed we then write new graphical interfaces to these new programs.
Yes, because of the infection from migrating Windows/Mac programmers and programs we now have some exceptions to those rules, like OOo and Mozilla; but they are exceptions. And there are plenty of toolkit web browsing programs (wget, lynx, links, assorted Perl modules, etc.) and OO.o is rapidly being assimilated into the UNIX Way and becoming scriptable for truly useful work.
> Back in the day (early 80s) we'd copy whole tapes, FBI warning and all.
Of course you copy the FBI warning! Only a half-assed pirate would leave off the FBI warning. Copying the warning was my way of saying "Hell yes I know this is technically illegal, but screw em anyway."
Like copying a tape from the rental shop is somehow EVIL and taping from HBO is different? Personally I draw the line at assholes selling bootleg tapes, but even then I don't think it is always EVIL. Selling bootlegs of titles that are not (and usually never will be) available through legit channels just doesn't seem wrong. Copyrights should not be allowed to be used to suppress a work. (example: Disney and _Song of the South_)
But I would like to be able to hack my DVD player to allow me to skip the damned thing, especially FOX titles that force it down your throat before the opening menu will come up. But I bought a good Japanese name brand deck that can't be flashed. On the other hand the picture is very good (compared to the el cheapo Chinese stuff from Apex, etc.) so I guess I won't bitch too loud.
> It *amazes* me that it hasn't been routine.
Because most people are paranoid enough to assume M$ watermarks each distributed copy to allow them to trace it back to the point of release. But now they are giving copies to governments like China and folks there just don't really give a damn about western notions of copyrights.
> Are you sure you can disable SCMS on your component deck?
No, I'm sure you CAN'T disable SCMS. But you can can play back digital and if you record something through the mic plug it should be tagged as an original, allowing you to make at least one generation of copies. You can also buy little boxes that allow you to reset the SCMS bits to anything you like. Those work for CD, DVD, MD, DAT and whatever they cook up next, so long as it uses SCMS over s/pidf.
> The intended use is to deprive me of my artwork?
Yes. And it sucks
> Or to raise the barrier to entry into high-quality sound recording?.
Exactly. When you buy consumer electronics you are supposed to CONSUME, not produce. Therefore any copying must be 'stealing' their precious 'content.' To produce music you are supposed to fork over the money for professional equipment. (Or at least prosumer.)
Hint: when they call it "content" it usually contains zero quality.
As a storage medium it would be linux compatible. But re-read the .pdf and you learn that, like the iPod, it stores music files in an encrypted form and will only play one in that mutant format. Expect hell to freeze before a legal transfer program appears for Linux/BSD. On the other hand you can expect a Free program to show up on a server in the Free World in a few months. And on the gripping hand expect it to be suppressed about like DeCSS, i.e. everyone will know about it but linking to it will get you a lawsuit.
Get a component MD deck and you get optical in and out. It is only the portable players that lack a digital output. Makes sense when you consider their intended use. They need a way to dump CD's in but are only expected to playback via the headphones.
Unions only work when the workers are replacable cogs in a machine. When it makes sense to collective bargain because one trained bricklayer is basically about as productive as another. And because you can't outsource their ass. And also note that unions are only effective in locations where they can operate under cover of the government. Unions in Right to Work states like mine don't get nearly as crazy with their demands.
So if you believe IT workers are generic cogs that can be catagorized into neat job slots paying a negotiated wage and want the government to force employers to hire your sorry ass, then unionize. Me, I believe I'm worth more than the average MCSE and if the market ever decides to disagree I'll learn a new skill and jump industries.
Don't expect any success with simply screaming "Buy American". Offer a better value proposition.
You are closer to the customer, not thousands of miles away.
You understand their problem better than some Indian programmer who doesn't truly grok the underlying American business practices being codified into software.
You are operating in their time zone.
etc.
That will win business a lot better than trying to shame a potential customer into paying more just because you are an American.
> Most people believe that they are "better than average" drivers,
> even if they have no evidence to support that belief.
No, some of us have a proven track record. Been driving 'bout 24 years now and have NEVER driven the speed limit if I could do it safely. Paid my share of road taxes (speeding tickets) but am still accident free.
As opposed to timid dipshits that cause accidents by driving like an idiot, mistaking yield signs for stop, driving 45 in a 55 and stacking up drivers behind them until one of the more unstable idiots does something stupid, etc.
As far as I'm concerned the safest way to drive is by putting idiots in my rear view mirror where they can't hurt me. (How do I know who the idiots are? Simple, assume they ALL are.)
> Why? YOu can always use a commercial qt license and release your
> code under any license you wish.
No you can't. Try reading the license before posting again. Sure, in theory, an app developed on the commercial Qt could be converted to Free. One time, and all commercial development would either have to stop or a total code fork take place. Because developers using the Free Qt MAY NOT CONTRIBUTE CODE to a tree that will ever see commercial release.
They did it that way to prevent the otherwise totally reasonable tactic of developing entirely on the Free toolchain and only having one commercial license to do the final release build on.
> The Gnome camp should be thanked for making TrollTech give us qt under
> the linux license GPL. Mission accomplished, I'd say.
Mission not accomplished. From RMS's viewpoint Qt is now free, because he cares not about cross pollination with the commercial software world. But in the real one, it matters.
Wrong. GIMP runs just fine under Windows. A GPLed Qt app could not be so ported without violating the Qt license. You don't have to believe me, go read the license.
How about another major Gtk vs Qt advantage. Go look at the GNU Win CD or The Open CD and count the Qt/KDE apps. Or let me save you the time and do it for you. Zero. Think that just might matter to Enterprise customers working in a diverse environment?
The pisser with the Qt license is that a project must decide before writing the first line of code which license they plan to release under and you can't change your mind later. You can't dual license either. And if you opt for free you can never port to an unfree system.
The KDE camp still refuse to admit they made an unholy alliance with the devil and will forever be damned for it. The GNOME camp saved the Free Software world by realizing the danger and running balls to the wall to quickly organize themselves and catch up close enough to KDE/Qt to prevent it from ever becoming a defacto standard.
They are accurately measuring what they set out to measure. The top 1000 corporate websites. And most top 1000 corporations are Microsserfs these days. No suprise here.
But then Martin Marietta Materials and Warnaco running IIS6 doesn't mean squat. They ain't exactly prime destinations on the Internet so IIS can probably carry the load well enough, and if it is down a few minutes each Sunday morning for the weekly reboot who really notices.
As for the Windows e-commerce sites, they pretty much speak for themselves if you have ever used them. They generally work fairly well but never great. Blame it on IIS or on the sort of second rate techs who either choose inferior tech or hang around somewhere where decisions in their own area of expertise are overrulled by ignorant suits like a bad scene from the Dilbert Zone.
Look at the sites that carry the weight, the ones that laugh at the slashdot effect, they know what works and what doesn't. Hell, if Microsoft didn't feel they had to eat the dogfood, microsoft.com would probably be running apache. Especially if the web services division had to actually take the licensing cost for that buttload of servers out of their departmental budget.
> If you need an enterprise OS, then you can afford an enterprise OS.
/. effect. This thread is far enough down that no visible damage is happening to our site as I write this. Only 184 hits with slashdot in the referrer field.
But what if you just need an OS with a support window longer than six months? That was our situation, we needed a successor to RH7.3 which goes off support on Dec 31. Turns out we weren't alone either, the response from just telling a couple of people two weeks ago has been bigger than anything I had imagined.
> I find it a shame that someone would simply go through and remove the
> trademarks (which RedHat allows and even gives instructions in their
> license for it).
Why? RHEL3, as a collective work, is released under the GPL with the exception of their registered trademarks. So you find it a 'shame' that I am redistributing GPL software under the terms and conditions of it's license? And I went far beyond the minimum required by their license to remove the association with Red Hat so that nobody in their right mind would mistakenly assume White Box is a product of, sponsored by, etc. of RH Inc.
> To those companies using it I hope you get to see why people say,
> you get what you pay for.
To those of us who understand what Free Software is really about, we already know. We are getting the software we wished RedHat had found a profitable way to sell us with the understanding we have to now take responsibility for maintaining it ourselves. It is more work but less than the effort of migrating. RHEL itself was never an option though. It just doesn't make sense to pay that kind of money annually for public access workstations and $250 EPIAs at library checkout stations.
In public statements I had said for years that one of the main attractions was control of our own destiny. We could upgrade or not on our own timetable. That if Red Hat did something we couldn't abide we could just pick our ball and go home. Turns out an even better option was to take THEIR ball and play without them.
I might have bought a license for RHEL AS on our primary server, but that RHEN EULA scared the hell out of me when considering I wasn't going to be buying for the workstations, and plus, if I was going to be rebuilding from scratch anyway.....
The GPL is truly a wonder of the modern age, right up there with the Magna Carta, the US Constituition and the other great works of liberty. RMS can be a prick sometimes, but history is going to remember him long after thee, me and even Red Hat are all long forgotten.
p.s. Just an update on the
Hmm. Looks like Cheap Bytes is actually doing a little more nowadays. Their "Pink Tie" version of RH 7.3 was no different from Red Hat's version, no logo removal, etc.
But yea, White Box is essentially a Cheap Bytes style RHEL except I had to build it ALL from source, not just anaconda-images and redhat-logos. Still working out some kinks though. Feel free to drop in, grab the release candidate isos and help out if ya want.
Go look at a recent Linux distro. Notice all those printers supported, including a lot of the lowball host based models? HP for one has been pretty good about making sure their products get supported.
They couldn't give a crap about the printers. All the vendors see printers as are a disguised way to get a customer to buy into a longerm committment to the vendor's supplies.
Remember that they aren't selling a product, they are selling a service. So you need to ask if you need the service or not. If you need it you are down to talking price and if you have enough seats, which you do, you can probably call em up and end up with a deal you can both be happy with, especially with the new educational pricing options they have announced.
If you don't need the enterprise support though, but do need a distribution close enough to RH not to shock the users come have a look at what I'm up to at whiteboxlinux.org and see if it might be the answer to your problem. The idea is to rebuild RHEL from the SRPMS and following their EULA by deleting the Red Hat trademarks. Same Penguin, only delivered in a plain white box!
As soon as I'm legal (I have to get all of RedHat's trademarks removed at a minimum) I'll be slowly floating availibility out. Our library only has a T-1 so a Slashdot announcement is RIGHT out, even with BitTorrent. :)
True, but how much of an incubator will Fedora actually be? Before, all of the geeks swarmed the servers to get a RedHat x.0 release because they wanted to see, debug and learn about what they would be using on production machines come the .2 release. Will that attitude continue? That is the billion dollar gamble RH is taking. Time will tell if worked.
You would lose that bet. I'm very close to releasing ISO images of "white box enterprise linux". I have all of the heavy lifting done, currently I'm polishing things up a bit and starting in on cleaning out logos.
:)
And no, I don't expect to be sued. RedHat understands the consequences of releasing software under the GPL. Besides, they would have to be zarking mad to try sueing a public library for publishing GPL software. They would be reviled second only to SCO.
If they find something I have missed I expect they will drop an email, I'll make a corrected set of images available and that will be that. They aren't at war with us, they just made a business decision that non-enterprise customers weren't all that profitable. Personally I think it is going to cost them in the long term, but that's just my opinion and it is their call to make. They are the ones who answer to the shareholders.
Linux on the desktop is already beginning to happen. But it has been clear for at least a year that RedHat has made a strategic decision to leave that segment to others.
.0 releases with all sort of bleeding edge software. Contrast to Debian. Being more concerned with stability, they would never have unleashed GCC 3.0 (aka RedHat's 2.96) anytime close to as early as RH did, but they NEEDED it for their commercial customers. Same for Glibc and their most recent stunt of backporting native pthreads from 2.6 into a 2.4 mutant kernel for RH9 and RHEL3.
Guess they have now decided to sow salt over that ground as they leave to hurt their competitors. No matter, they will be a footnote in a few years.
I tend to doubt Fedora will ever build much of a community because Redhat will find they can't really cut it loose. Because were they to actually turn it over to the developer community we already know what they would do, and it isn't what Redhat has traditionally done.
RedHat drove innovation by producing horribly broken
The value of RedHat used to be that they were where the Geeks and Suits collided and out of that friction came innovation. Run the Geeks off and they are doomed to solidify into the next SCO, a tired outdated product from a company without the resources to continue the required level of development needed to keep up. Anyone want to bet that several of their superstars bail before their next major release?
> the Supreme Court some time ago interpreted the 10th Amendment
If by 'interpreted' you meant to say 'rewrote' I'd agree with you. And since an angry mob didn't hang the sons of bitches way back when they first legislated from the bench some would say it is legitimate now. I disagree.
Only one problem, the 9th and 10th Amendments have been effectively removed from the US Constituition. When was the last time a major case turned on one of them? For if the Courts were t rediscover them they would be forced to strike down most of the Federal Government.
Example: I have the babble box on in the background right now, happen to be on CNNFN and was half listening to a discussion about a new proposed EPA rule requiring apartments to install water meters on each unit in the name of water conservation. The discussion covered a lot of issues, whether it would actually save water, how hard it would be to retrofit existing structures, blah blah. At no point was the most important question asked. What section of the US Constituition granted the Federal Government the power to regulate water supply to dwellings? Since there is no such section, the clear language of those same Amendments mean it HAS no such authority. Most of the EPA, FDA, HUD, etc. etc. are illegal according to the Constituition but violate their edicts and you will go directly to jail, not pass go and never find a lawyer willing to take your 200/hr to use the 9th or 10th Amendment in your defense.
The Constituition uses shockingly clear and direct language, but it still gets ignored.
Amendment 9:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.