I bet if the ISP or whomever decided that although you both agreed to have a deal for 6 months, you are now forced to be with them for 12, or you agreed to pay 100SEK for 6 months, but now had to pay 400SEK, the Swedish law would let you bail out of the agreement without penalty, or to continue on the original terms for the 6 months YOU BOTH AGREED TO BEFOREHAND, and at the end of the term, you were free to go with someone else. Am I wrong?
- It's legal to copy music from family and _close_ friends. Thus uploading to a P2P network is illegal.
I was mighty surprised when I moved to the UK and discovered that over there, they are not allowed to do this. In fact, they are not allowed to backup any music from a CD. I discovered this after I had burnt a CD to put in my car (no originals, please, they steal like mad).
Can you imagine bashing Bush in Central Park in New York or bashing Blair in London and worrying that someone might hear it and get you into trouble?
Ehh, yes. I live in the US. I am a foreigner. I am constantly afraid I will be thrown out if I say something too negative about the government. I have been a foreigner in many countries, and this is the first time I am actually afraid of being deported. Hence, I shut up.
Can I just point out that Red Hat actually RELY on Fedora to work? Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a fork.
At the moment most of the developers are working real hard on RHEL4. As soon as that is out the door, focus will completely shift to Fedora. Why? Without Fedora, RHEL doesn't have a base. It's been about 15 months since RHEL3 was released. The only progress that has been made in product development in that period has happened in Fedora. (I am exaggerating, of course.)
Fedora is also one of the best tested products that Red Hat has ever released. When FC1 was release, no product, not even RHEL had gone through more rigorous QA. Red Hat still continue this process, because RHEL depends on the fact that things work in FC. If it doesn't it's out!
Think about it for a second, Red Hat is a small company compaired to the competition. Who is really doing QA? You guys. If Red Hat didn't have people trying things out, the company would be out of business in a heart beat.
During the RHL years Red Hat slowly started going from the red into the black. It was slow, with setbacks (going back into red, then into black again) and Red Hat barely broke even. Since RHEL3 was released, the company has seen a huge profit rise and have made heaps of money for share holders.
So Red Hat cannot please everybody. Who can? Should the company continue making small profits, making shareholders unhappy, workers in unsafe jobs, large customers unhappy (you are moving too fast! We haven't got the applications we need, because no-one will make it for you)? It made partners frustrated too, since they would not have time to certify their software on each release (come on, six month? It sometimes takes that long just to test that things work!)
The problem as I see it, is that it is a sin to make money in the Linux world. We must all be idealists only, and when someone is making money, we chop them down! Down you go, matey! Not only do we want free speach, we want free beer to! In my home country, Norway, we call this the Jantelaw: Don't think you are somebody, in fact, you are nobody.
I work for Red Hat, and a I have never seen such a bunch of dedicated people work together before. We argue about what is best for our product and we tell management when they are wrong. Most of us are idealists that does this for love of Linux and Open Source, not for money. We do, however, need to eat, hence want our company to go with profit, why shouldn't we? It makes our jobs more secure too!
Sometimes employees of Red Hat lashes out. It is very frustrating to go to work every day, trying to be an idealist, trying to do the right thing for everyone, trying to help grow the business, grow Linux, meet the competition, just to be told that we are a bunch of money grabbing bastards with no integrity. Many of us could go somewhere else and make a whole darn more money, but we stay with Red Hat because our ideals. Because we love Open Source and want it to be more than just a hobby OS. That's what we all want in the end, isn't it?
Red Hat supports RHEL for 7 years after release. That's right, 7 years.
This agreement does not tie you in with IBM/Red Hat, it just means that if you want to run a certain software that is certified, IBM/Red Hat guarantees that it works. If you are not interested in that guarantee, buy your hardware from Dell/HP/whatever, your OS from Suse/Debian/whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
I bet if the ISP or whomever decided that although you both agreed to have a deal for 6 months, you are now forced to be with them for 12, or you agreed to pay 100SEK for 6 months, but now had to pay 400SEK, the Swedish law would let you bail out of the agreement without penalty, or to continue on the original terms for the 6 months YOU BOTH AGREED TO BEFOREHAND, and at the end of the term, you were free to go with someone else. Am I wrong?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is still free. Go to ftp.redhat.com and download RHEL4 any day. CentOS and Whitebox Linux are RHEL clones.
OK, so you have to build from source, but it is still free.
It runs Fedora
I was mighty surprised when I moved to the UK and discovered that over there, they are not allowed to do this. In fact, they are not allowed to backup any music from a CD. I discovered this after I had burnt a CD to put in my car (no originals, please, they steal like mad).
Although, Hell is actually in Norway. And it freezes over on a regular basis...
I never said anything about China. I don't condone what the Chinese government does or did.
I just pointed out that in this "free" country, I don't feel free at all!
Ehh, yes. I live in the US. I am a foreigner. I am constantly afraid I will be thrown out if I say something too negative about the government. I have been a foreigner in many countries, and this is the first time I am actually afraid of being deported. Hence, I shut up.
Fedora has a release cycle of 4-6 months. My money is on 6 months...
Since you are a student, you might want to try to buy the student version of RHEL, it is not the latest, but it is stable. The price? $50.
Can I just point out that Red Hat actually RELY on Fedora to work? Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a fork.
At the moment most of the developers are working real hard on RHEL4. As soon as that is out the door, focus will completely shift to Fedora. Why? Without Fedora, RHEL doesn't have a base. It's been about 15 months since RHEL3 was released. The only progress that has been made in product development in that period has happened in Fedora. (I am exaggerating, of course.)
Fedora is also one of the best tested products that Red Hat has ever released. When FC1 was release, no product, not even RHEL had gone through more rigorous QA. Red Hat still continue this process, because RHEL depends on the fact that things work in FC. If it doesn't it's out!
Think about it for a second, Red Hat is a small company compaired to the competition. Who is really doing QA? You guys. If Red Hat didn't have people trying things out, the company would be out of business in a heart beat.
During the RHL years Red Hat slowly started going from the red into the black. It was slow, with setbacks (going back into red, then into black again) and Red Hat barely broke even. Since RHEL3 was released, the company has seen a huge profit rise and have made heaps of money for share holders.
So Red Hat cannot please everybody. Who can? Should the company continue making small profits, making shareholders unhappy, workers in unsafe jobs, large customers unhappy (you are moving too fast! We haven't got the applications we need, because no-one will make it for you)? It made partners frustrated too, since they would not have time to certify their software on each release (come on, six month? It sometimes takes that long just to test that things work!)
The problem as I see it, is that it is a sin to make money in the Linux world. We must all be idealists only, and when someone is making money, we chop them down! Down you go, matey! Not only do we want free speach, we want free beer to! In my home country, Norway, we call this the Jantelaw: Don't think you are somebody, in fact, you are nobody.
I work for Red Hat, and a I have never seen such a bunch of dedicated people work together before. We argue about what is best for our product and we tell management when they are wrong. Most of us are idealists that does this for love of Linux and Open Source, not for money. We do, however, need to eat, hence want our company to go with profit, why shouldn't we? It makes our jobs more secure too!
Sometimes employees of Red Hat lashes out. It is very frustrating to go to work every day, trying to be an idealist, trying to do the right thing for everyone, trying to help grow the business, grow Linux, meet the competition, just to be told that we are a bunch of money grabbing bastards with no integrity. Many of us could go somewhere else and make a whole darn more money, but we stay with Red Hat because our ideals. Because we love Open Source and want it to be more than just a hobby OS. That's what we all want in the end, isn't it?
Red Hat supports RHEL for 7 years after release. That's right, 7 years.
This agreement does not tie you in with IBM/Red Hat, it just means that if you want to run a certain software that is certified, IBM/Red Hat guarantees that it works. If you are not interested in that guarantee, buy your hardware from Dell/HP/whatever, your OS from Suse/Debian/whatever.
It's all YOUR CHOICE!