Interestingly enough, there is a group that proclaims a phone number, 1-800-TEL-JURY which prescribes the same thing. One important point made: if a jury believes the law to be unjust or unjustly applied, they can reach a not guilty verdict even if they believe without a doubt that the person in question committed the act.
Of course, juries are often instructed otherwise by judges and lawyers, and since they are often uneducated and rarely if ever legally educated, they are apt to listen. And for people with 1-800-TEL-JURY signs to be outside the courthouse has been counted as jury tampering in the past, and invalidated their rulings.
www.warmann.com is osm's site for hosting archives of his stories.
Slashdot is a public forum for discussion which is specifically designed to allow everything, including trolls. You do not have to click on osm's stuff, and especially you do not have to click on read more... By doing so it wopuld seem to me you actually liked what you were reading.
Moderation and bitchslapping ensure that osm and the trolls are at -1 anyway. Browse at 0 or better and osm goes away for you. This was the way taco designed/. and it works. try it sometime.
Andover should not be encouraging everyone to post on their site, and yet turning around and suing people for doing that, or censoring anyone who says something they do not like. And as for the trolls they make Andover money, so I do not see what they have to cry about.
It is extremely common and very sound legal advice that a litigant not speak about the case in public. Anything they say can be used by the other side, and if it angers the other side it generally makes it harder to reach a settlement.
It is equally common for a judge to issue a gag order to participants in a case.
IANAL but it looks like you aren't either.
If osm is faking why are his natalie stories gone from his website now?
This would be wonderful if your numbers had any basis. I see your point, but even assuming every other number in your analogy is correct, autodesk spends $0, not $6,000,000. They incurred no cost in copying, as that was paid by the pirates. They did gain some sales though, which they otherwise would not have.
That is basically why there are no flying cars. They would require a pilot's license, basically, versus the cracker jack box drivers licenses cars require. And making the licensing easier like they do with cars would be very bad, just for the reasons you mention. Those dipshits would wreck into buildings and such, and can you imagine a drunk aircar driver?
I think they should make them and let people who are very skilled have them. But things are made to work for dipshits, because they are the majority and therefore a larger market. Stuff only moderately skilled people can use would have a very small target market in today's world...
I think the real problem is not preventing users from doing this. The real problem is liability. If he has a good eula and disclaimer, he should be legally covered such that users who insist on storing warez are on their own, his company is not liable.
I agree totally. If this is truly what has happened, and this would suggest something horrible has happened to osm, we should not only actively boycott slashdot for this behaviour, but email taco every day that we do not go and explain why, report to other news sites, post on other news sites in our support for osm daily.
Obviously now that/. is coprporate this will be the only way to get them to do right. It is really interesting how hypocritical/. can be. They advocate open sourcing everything from toasters to nuclear codes but/code has always been woefully behind and released "when [taco] feel[s] like it." (direct quote) They talk about allowing free speech, anonymity, and privacy, but make/. all but unviewable without an account. Then they pull this shit. It was bad enugh when they wee disabling accounts for "trolling" and indeed IP addresses. It is the reason some of the newer trolls (Karma pimp? where art thou?) have disappeared.
It's not like they really encourage positive participation anyway. Moderation will automatically make you leak karma like there is no tomorrow, so the only people who will do it have vested interests. Posts critical of/. practices (like these) will be modded down. YOu can't moderate down signal 11 or you will be bitchslapped by Taco. You also cannot annoy Taco in any way or he will bitchslap you too.
At one point there was supposedly a bug in slash that allowed posts to end up at -2. Probabaly an urban legend, but interesting if it was true. Given the way posts are moderated, it would not be hard to (re)impliment silently because anyone who dared point it out would be moderated down to -2. Thankfully this has not happened yet.
Maybe we should support and send articles to the troll-friendly slashdot2.org? Perhaps that page could become the place to report bullshit on/. since/. no longer reports on it anymore (they used to report when they were hacked, DDOS'ed, down, or anything, now they are down in some fashion almost daily with no explanations, and all kinds of nefariousness goes unexplained, like the undocumented bitchslap system).
I agree with you that this was a violation. But they are not the only company to have ended up in a situation like this. And in the past, the FSF and co. have allowed companies to "make good" in some way rather than attacking them. Tripwire is going to "make good" by releasing the source, after having made an effort to do this other ways (by not statically linking anymore) and failing.
I am willing to accept this as an overture of goodwill and further accept their explanation as completely plausible and most probable. Besides, now that they are releasing the Linux version under the GPL, as other posters pointed out, their livelihood is threatened, and they probably will make much less money on their product since the GPL'd version will find its way onto the platforms they have been charging money. So your little high school with Solaris can download from freshmeat and not worry anymore about licensing. Yeah.
It is exactly this kind of attitude that holds Open Source and Linux back. Someone makes a program and releases it for Linux and are attacked for doing it. Then they release the license under Open Source (or in this case Free Software, I mean for crying out loud it is the GPL!) and the cry goes out "They suck! don't use their product!" and they get attacked for either a) using the wrong license b) releasing too late c) because someone feels like it.
Is someone gong to be applauded for releasing Linux software soon, or for releasing their Intellectual Property (code) because if not I am starting to get sick, and certainly companies are going to start feeling that this Open Source thing was a Bad Plan, and a Fad, and stay far away from all the insanity and zealotry, safely esconsced in their closed-source, PHB-buys-us-anyway, corporate world while the Open Source/ Free Software community is left to code for itself, attack itself bitterly, and write their resumes on vi on Gnu Hurd.
Actually Playboy has some of the best damn articles in the business, and by that I mean the business of journalism. Their news reporting beats the hell out of that of Time or Newsweek, because they report things which are curiously absent or underreported in such "publications."
And unlike some web "news" sites, they actually WRITE ARTICLES.
Of course there is a browsable kernel source tree, and it is wicked cool. You can click on any function/variable/etc and get the definition. The page is http://lxr.linux.no/
Oh come on. If we keep on like that there is little reason for us to expect developers of commercial products to come to the Linux platform. Apparently the violation was in not allowing people to link tripwire to disparate versions, tripwire says they didn't let it happen because it didn't work. This means they were stealing code?
Now they are releasing it under the GPL, and if you want it to work with your library version, your happy ass can hack away at the problem. These guys are developing a product and trying to make money for their efforts. The linux version has been beer free forever, anyway. So you expected them to continue to pour money into a product they can't make money on? Sheesh!
First off, YHBT HAND. that said, I think it should be pointed out that you are dead wrong in the area of oil companies and their interests. Of course, it is better if oil is sold rather than spilled, and to suggest otherwise would be ridiculous. However, oil companies consider this part of the cost of doing business. Spills happen.
I would like to point out that in connection with large oil spills in recent years (like the 1989 exxon valdez spill) legislation was introduced to attempt to increase safeguards against oil spills. Exxon and other oil companies fought that tooth and nail, as they had before the Valdez. In particular, one of the most glaring regulations fought would have required all oil tankers to employ double hulls. A simple enough request, and a common enough construction in normal ships. However it would have cost money therefore the oil companies fought it. The oil companies weigh the cost of prevention and the cost of cleanup, and find that the cost of cleanup is less, especially when, as exxon did in 1989, they leave the environmentalists to finish the cleanup.
As for boycotts, I laugh in your general direction. Boycotts on products generally have histrically had little or no effect whatever on a companies bottom line, which is the point of boycotts. This is mainly due to lack of participation in doing without a good or service for political purposes. As for the oil companies, boycotting them would mean not driving or maintaining a car, not using electricity, not using petroleum products. have fun in your cabin in Montana, I am sure that Exxon will really be hurt.
Generally oil companies are like tobacco companies, but definately worse. People know they are big bad and evil, but hey, they make a product with a high demand and have high profit margins. Their stock will not suffer because of PR. How can companies that prop up third world dictatorial regimes, regularly pollute the environment, seek areas of poor to no environmental regulation, undermine and oppose what regulations exist, mistreat their workers and create some of the most dangerous workplaces in the world ever have a problem with PR?
well, looks like you can't use a pipe in your text...
Sure can. First off squid is a proxy service so it makes perfect sense to me on a firewall. DNS doesn't necessarily have to be on the firewall, but it does talk to the outside world, so it might as well be. Ditto with mail. The point is, if you are not running these services on your firewall you would have to port forward to the box that does run them, giving you more boxes to harden.
The machines inside the firewall are usually running more services, are accessable to more users, and generally are tougher to harden and keep that way because of that. The firewall should never be touched except perhaps for security updates, and therefore is a safer place to host these services.
Of course there are advocates for port forwarding from a firewall that does nothing else, and ideally every system in your operation should be secure as hell, but PHB's who don't care about security and in fact undermine it regularly but will blame YOU if the l337 5kr33p+ k1dd33z come knocking are a factor in this equation. Especially since you will probably not be given the time you need to get every machine properly secured; you will be lucky to get the firewall.
After all, look what happened to Yahoo, etc. They blame the kiddeez, but I see classic signs of PHB activity, which would be the real culprit.
As a sidenote, I would like to add that it is too bad that one cannot change comments. It appears that thanks to the trolls you cannot post any similar comment after posting one before. They seem to get away with it anyway though. I know there is a preview button, but hey, who knew that an html page would try to use a pipe. Now in order to make my comment not look like total garbage, I have to add this rant to the end of it. Oh well.
Sure can. First off squid is a proxy service so it makes perfect sense to me on a firewall. DNS doesn't necesarily have to be on the firewall, but it does talk to the outside world, so it might as well be. Ditto with mail. The point is, if you are not running these services on your firewall you would have to port forward to the box that does run them, giving you more boxes to harden.
The machines inside the firewall are usually running more services, are accessable to more users, and generally are tougher to harden and keep that way because of that. The firewall should never be touched except perhaps for security updates, and therefore is a safer place to host these services.
Of course there are advocates for port forwarding from a firewall that does nothing else, and ideally every system in your operation should be secure as hell, but PHB's who don't care about security and in fact undermine it regularly but will blame YOU if the l337 5kr33p+ |After all, look what happened to Yahoo, etc. They blame the kiddeez, but I see classic signs of PHB activity, which would be the real culprit.
A friend of mine had a 486 DX2/66 runnning a mongrel form of Linux working as his firewall, router, samba server, web server, and distributed.net client IIRC. The damn thing was up for almost 500 days before he accidentally unplugged it cleaning up his apartment.
He had often wondered if it qualified as the longest running 2.2.x system since he had started it up basically as soon as 2.2.3 came out. he had upgraded libraries and software on it of course, but not the kernel because of the need to reboot for that. I think it was a great illustration of another reason why *nix is so great for uptime that Microsoft is only NOW figuring out... reduced reboot situations.
Of course the machine is back up now, he was able to upgrade it with a DX4/100 overdrive chip... I dunno if he upgraded the kernel. I guess he will be shooting for a new record soon;).
Maybe someone should make a hall of fame for these boxen where you can post your uptimes.. the important thing about uptime is you have to be able to go and type the command.. Microsoft, sitting there on and frozen while some fool from Ziff Davis holds a stopwatch doesn't cut it.
Indeed, Win2k has support for this, but it is using Virtual IRQ's that only exist in software. The hardware is using 16 IRQ's AFAIK. However there are machines that can do 64, though so far I have only seen that in high-end servers.
Machines with Serverworks chipsets support them, (Serverworks being formerly known as Reliant Computer Corporation). However, I have not seen a motherboard mere mortals can buy with this chipset. So far I have only seen them in x86 Servers from Dell, Compaq, and IIRC IBM. The serverworks line of chipsets also include IIRC an end to ISA, and an end to the 16 IRQ barrier (allowing 64 virtual IRQ's).
Of course I could be mistaken on the IRQ thing because the Intel Profusion chipset does that, and I could be confusing the two. Nevertheless Serverworks based boards do use 64bit hot-swappable PCI slots. Woohoo!
Coke and Pepsi have long signed exclusionary agreements with restaurants and stores. A store can generally carry both, but cannot have both on sale simultaneously. A restaurant is generally only allowed to have products from one company or the other.
Since Coke and Pepsi already own just about every soft drink there is, and have bought or driven out of business any competitors, it is never a good idea to piss them off.
Of course this bears no relation to the Pepsi owned restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) which will of course always sell Pepsi, or the Pepsi-owned snack foods (Frito Lay, etc) which will promote and be promoted by coupons on Pepsi products...
Besides, you do not even have to let people download your GPL software. You are only required to distibute source with binaries, even on CD. And IIRC you can charge for the source seperately from the product. However, it is generally not done because whoever gets your software has the right to distribute under their own terms.
Redhat et al sell more than support. They also sell pretty manuals, hats, etc. In other words, they sell value rather than just holding the user hostage because their computer needs an OS or whatever. The largest cost in the production of software is the box it comes in, and any printed materials. Most closed-source software makes you pay ridiculous prices for the box and / or licenses, whereas the product itself may be of little or no use to you at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly enough, there is a group that proclaims a phone number, 1-800-TEL-JURY which prescribes the same thing. One important point made: if a jury believes the law to be unjust or unjustly applied, they can reach a not guilty verdict even if they believe without a doubt that the person in question committed the act.
Of course, juries are often instructed otherwise by judges and lawyers, and since they are often uneducated and rarely if ever legally educated, they are apt to listen. And for people with 1-800-TEL-JURY signs to be outside the courthouse has been counted as jury tampering in the past, and invalidated their rulings.
A few whacks from said cluehammer for you:
www.warmann.com is osm's site for hosting archives of his stories.
Slashdot is a public forum for discussion which is specifically designed to allow everything, including trolls. You do not have to click on osm's stuff, and especially you do not have to click on read more... By doing so it wopuld seem to me you actually liked what you were reading.
Moderation and bitchslapping ensure that osm and the trolls are at -1 anyway. Browse at 0 or better and osm goes away for you. This was the way taco designed /. and it works. try it sometime.
Andover should not be encouraging everyone to post on their site, and yet turning around and suing people for doing that, or censoring anyone who says something they do not like. And as for the trolls they make Andover money, so I do not see what they have to cry about.
It is extremely common and very sound legal advice that a litigant not speak about the case in public. Anything they say can be used by the other side, and if it angers the other side it generally makes it harder to reach a settlement.
It is equally common for a judge to issue a gag order to participants in a case.
IANAL but it looks like you aren't either.
If osm is faking why are his natalie stories gone from his website now?
This would be wonderful if your numbers had any basis. I see your point, but even assuming every other number in your analogy is correct, autodesk spends $0, not $6,000,000. They incurred no cost in copying, as that was paid by the pirates. They did gain some sales though, which they otherwise would not have.
That is basically why there are no flying cars. They would require a pilot's license, basically, versus the cracker jack box drivers licenses cars require. And making the licensing easier like they do with cars would be very bad, just for the reasons you mention. Those dipshits would wreck into buildings and such, and can you imagine a drunk aircar driver?
I think they should make them and let people who are very skilled have them. But things are made to work for dipshits, because they are the majority and therefore a larger market. Stuff only moderately skilled people can use would have a very small target market in today's world...
I think the real problem is not preventing users from doing this. The real problem is liability. If he has a good eula and disclaimer, he should be legally covered such that users who insist on storing warez are on their own, his company is not liable.
I agree totally. If this is truly what has happened, and this would suggest something horrible has happened to osm, we should not only actively boycott slashdot for this behaviour, but email taco every day that we do not go and explain why, report to other news sites, post on other news sites in our support for osm daily.
Obviously now that /. is coprporate this will be the only way to get them to do right. It is really interesting how hypocritical /. can be. They advocate open sourcing everything from toasters to nuclear codes but /code has always been woefully behind and released "when [taco] feel[s] like it." (direct quote) They talk about allowing free speech, anonymity, and privacy, but make /. all but unviewable without an account. Then they pull this shit. It was bad enugh when they wee disabling accounts for "trolling" and indeed IP addresses. It is the reason some of the newer trolls (Karma pimp? where art thou?) have disappeared.
It's not like they really encourage positive participation anyway. Moderation will automatically make you leak karma like there is no tomorrow, so the only people who will do it have vested interests. Posts critical of /. practices (like these) will be modded down. YOu can't moderate down signal 11 or you will be bitchslapped by Taco. You also cannot annoy Taco in any way or he will bitchslap you too.
At one point there was supposedly a bug in slash that allowed posts to end up at -2. Probabaly an urban legend, but interesting if it was true. Given the way posts are moderated, it would not be hard to (re)impliment silently because anyone who dared point it out would be moderated down to -2. Thankfully this has not happened yet.
Maybe we should support and send articles to the troll-friendly slashdot2.org? Perhaps that page could become the place to report bullshit on /. since /. no longer reports on it anymore (they used to report when they were hacked, DDOS'ed, down, or anything, now they are down in some fashion almost daily with no explanations, and all kinds of nefariousness goes unexplained, like the undocumented bitchslap system).
So you are teaching him what a troll really is? ;)
I agree with you that this was a violation. But they are not the only company to have ended up in a situation like this. And in the past, the FSF and co. have allowed companies to "make good" in some way rather than attacking them. Tripwire is going to "make good" by releasing the source, after having made an effort to do this other ways (by not statically linking anymore) and failing.
I am willing to accept this as an overture of goodwill and further accept their explanation as completely plausible and most probable. Besides, now that they are releasing the Linux version under the GPL, as other posters pointed out, their livelihood is threatened, and they probably will make much less money on their product since the GPL'd version will find its way onto the platforms they have been charging money. So your little high school with Solaris can download from freshmeat and not worry anymore about licensing. Yeah.
It is exactly this kind of attitude that holds Open Source and Linux back. Someone makes a program and releases it for Linux and are attacked for doing it. Then they release the license under Open Source (or in this case Free Software, I mean for crying out loud it is the GPL!) and the cry goes out "They suck! don't use their product!" and they get attacked for either a) using the wrong license b) releasing too late c) because someone feels like it.
Is someone gong to be applauded for releasing Linux software soon, or for releasing their Intellectual Property (code) because if not I am starting to get sick, and certainly companies are going to start feeling that this Open Source thing was a Bad Plan, and a Fad, and stay far away from all the insanity and zealotry, safely esconsced in their closed-source, PHB-buys-us-anyway, corporate world while the Open Source/ Free Software community is left to code for itself, attack itself bitterly, and write their resumes on vi on Gnu Hurd.
Worse than that, how is the parent redundant? /. crack moderation strikes again.
Actually Playboy has some of the best damn articles in the business, and by that I mean the business of journalism. Their news reporting beats the hell out of that of Time or Newsweek, because they report things which are curiously absent or underreported in such "publications."
And unlike some web "news" sites, they actually WRITE ARTICLES.
Of course there is a browsable kernel source tree, and it is wicked cool. You can click on any function/variable/etc and get the definition. The page is http://lxr.linux.no/
Borland/Inprise has a long history of bad business decisions, so I guess we shall see?
Oh come on. If we keep on like that there is little reason for us to expect developers of commercial products to come to the Linux platform. Apparently the violation was in not allowing people to link tripwire to disparate versions, tripwire says they didn't let it happen because it didn't work. This means they were stealing code?
Now they are releasing it under the GPL, and if you want it to work with your library version, your happy ass can hack away at the problem. These guys are developing a product and trying to make money for their efforts. The linux version has been beer free forever, anyway. So you expected them to continue to pour money into a product they can't make money on? Sheesh!
Yeah, THEY'RE the evil ones....
First off, YHBT HAND. that said, I think it should be pointed out that you are dead wrong in the area of oil companies and their interests. Of course, it is better if oil is sold rather than spilled, and to suggest otherwise would be ridiculous. However, oil companies consider this part of the cost of doing business. Spills happen.
I would like to point out that in connection with large oil spills in recent years (like the 1989 exxon valdez spill) legislation was introduced to attempt to increase safeguards against oil spills. Exxon and other oil companies fought that tooth and nail, as they had before the Valdez. In particular, one of the most glaring regulations fought would have required all oil tankers to employ double hulls. A simple enough request, and a common enough construction in normal ships. However it would have cost money therefore the oil companies fought it. The oil companies weigh the cost of prevention and the cost of cleanup, and find that the cost of cleanup is less, especially when, as exxon did in 1989, they leave the environmentalists to finish the cleanup.
As for boycotts, I laugh in your general direction. Boycotts on products generally have histrically had little or no effect whatever on a companies bottom line, which is the point of boycotts. This is mainly due to lack of participation in doing without a good or service for political purposes. As for the oil companies, boycotting them would mean not driving or maintaining a car, not using electricity, not using petroleum products. have fun in your cabin in Montana, I am sure that Exxon will really be hurt.
Generally oil companies are like tobacco companies, but definately worse. People know they are big bad and evil, but hey, they make a product with a high demand and have high profit margins. Their stock will not suffer because of PR. How can companies that prop up third world dictatorial regimes, regularly pollute the environment, seek areas of poor to no environmental regulation, undermine and oppose what regulations exist, mistreat their workers and create some of the most dangerous workplaces in the world ever have a problem with PR?
Kept getting that all day recently... oh well, "No Slash for you!"
Sure can. First off squid is a proxy service so it makes perfect sense to me on a firewall. DNS doesn't necessarily have to be on the firewall, but it does talk to the outside world, so it might as well be. Ditto with mail. The point is, if you are not running these services on your firewall you would have to port forward to the box that does run them, giving you more boxes to harden.
The machines inside the firewall are usually running more services, are accessable to more users, and generally are tougher to harden and keep that way because of that. The firewall should never be touched except perhaps for security updates, and therefore is a safer place to host these services.
Of course there are advocates for port forwarding from a firewall that does nothing else, and ideally every system in your operation should be secure as hell, but PHB's who don't care about security and in fact undermine it regularly but will blame YOU if the l337 5kr33p+ k1dd33z come knocking are a factor in this equation. Especially since you will probably not be given the time you need to get every machine properly secured; you will be lucky to get the firewall.
After all, look what happened to Yahoo, etc. They blame the kiddeez, but I see classic signs of PHB activity, which would be the real culprit.
As a sidenote, I would like to add that it is too bad that one cannot change comments. It appears that thanks to the trolls you cannot post any similar comment after posting one before. They seem to get away with it anyway though. I know there is a preview button, but hey, who knew that an html page would try to use a pipe. Now in order to make my comment not look like total garbage, I have to add this rant to the end of it. Oh well.
Sure can. First off squid is a proxy service so it makes perfect sense to me on a firewall. DNS doesn't necesarily have to be on the firewall, but it does talk to the outside world, so it might as well be. Ditto with mail. The point is, if you are not running these services on your firewall you would have to port forward to the box that does run them, giving you more boxes to harden.
The machines inside the firewall are usually running more services, are accessable to more users, and generally are tougher to harden and keep that way because of that. The firewall should never be touched except perhaps for security updates, and therefore is a safer place to host these services.
Of course there are advocates for port forwarding from a firewall that does nothing else, and ideally every system in your operation should be secure as hell, but PHB's who don't care about security and in fact undermine it regularly but will blame YOU if the l337 5kr33p+ |After all, look what happened to Yahoo, etc. They blame the kiddeez, but I see classic signs of PHB activity, which would be the real culprit.
A friend of mine had a 486 DX2/66 runnning a mongrel form of Linux working as his firewall, router, samba server, web server, and distributed.net client IIRC. The damn thing was up for almost 500 days before he accidentally unplugged it cleaning up his apartment.
He had often wondered if it qualified as the longest running 2.2.x system since he had started it up basically as soon as 2.2.3 came out. he had upgraded libraries and software on it of course, but not the kernel because of the need to reboot for that. I think it was a great illustration of another reason why *nix is so great for uptime that Microsoft is only NOW figuring out... reduced reboot situations.
Of course the machine is back up now, he was able to upgrade it with a DX4/100 overdrive chip... I dunno if he upgraded the kernel. I guess he will be shooting for a new record soon ;).
Maybe someone should make a hall of fame for these boxen where you can post your uptimes.. the important thing about uptime is you have to be able to go and type the command.. Microsoft, sitting there on and frozen while some fool from Ziff Davis holds a stopwatch doesn't cut it.
Indeed, Win2k has support for this, but it is using Virtual IRQ's that only exist in software. The hardware is using 16 IRQ's AFAIK. However there are machines that can do 64, though so far I have only seen that in high-end servers.
Machines with Serverworks chipsets support them, (Serverworks being formerly known as Reliant Computer Corporation). However, I have not seen a motherboard mere mortals can buy with this chipset. So far I have only seen them in x86 Servers from Dell, Compaq, and IIRC IBM. The serverworks line of chipsets also include IIRC an end to ISA, and an end to the 16 IRQ barrier (allowing 64 virtual IRQ's).
Of course I could be mistaken on the IRQ thing because the Intel Profusion chipset does that, and I could be confusing the two. Nevertheless Serverworks based boards do use 64bit hot-swappable PCI slots. Woohoo!
Wasn't a high school student suspended/(expelled?) for wearing a Pepsi shirt on "Coke day?"
In other parts of the South all soda is called "Coke." I am sure there is a historical reason there... rather ionteresting.
Coke and Pepsi have long signed exclusionary agreements with restaurants and stores. A store can generally carry both, but cannot have both on sale simultaneously. A restaurant is generally only allowed to have products from one company or the other.
Since Coke and Pepsi already own just about every soft drink there is, and have bought or driven out of business any competitors, it is never a good idea to piss them off.
Of course this bears no relation to the Pepsi owned restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) which will of course always sell Pepsi, or the Pepsi-owned snack foods (Frito Lay, etc) which will promote and be promoted by coupons on Pepsi products...
Besides, you do not even have to let people download your GPL software. You are only required to distibute source with binaries, even on CD. And IIRC you can charge for the source seperately from the product. However, it is generally not done because whoever gets your software has the right to distribute under their own terms.
Redhat et al sell more than support. They also sell pretty manuals, hats, etc. In other words, they sell value rather than just holding the user hostage because their computer needs an OS or whatever. The largest cost in the production of software is the box it comes in, and any printed materials. Most closed-source software makes you pay ridiculous prices for the box and / or licenses, whereas the product itself may be of little or no use to you at all.