Actually, as a nation, we are all imports. I think it's amazing how far we've come, considering America started out as just being a mix of people that no other country wanted.
You wouldn't care to support a family on $50,000? Do you spend money like water? I have a family, a house, and two cars, with my only debts being on the house, and I managed on $30,000. That also included a major medical disaster for the year. I have friends who get by (with more kids) on much less.
Actually, homeschooling generally provides better education for any economic class, and also tends to have better moral education, too. I don't know about getting rid of public education, but it's not the only way kids learn.
I do. First of all, there are programs that prefix themselves with gnu even though they have nothing to do with GNU, like gnutella.
Also, there is a difference between KIllustrator and Kaldera, being that "illustrator" has to do with the products function, while "Caldera" does not. I would not be opposed to a volcano-predicting program being called Caldera, because its related.
Depending on where you upgraded from, you need to remove all of your mozilla files, all mozilla things in c:\windows, and all Mozilla registry entries.
I don't see property ownership as imaginary. I see intellectual property ownership as imaginary because I don't believe in Plato's theory of the forms, which leaves there to be nothing left to own.
In reply to your other question, I would generally prefer no software at all. However, I have a general distaste for most software:)
I might agree that if it was the only way to get the software written. But, obviously (by the current state of free software), it is not.
Actually, the three posts were because I had three different thoughts at different times.
The only imaginary boundary the GPL puts up is the "must distribute source" boundary, which, although I disagree with, I find that the rest of the license makes it the best option, because it prevents others from putting up imaginary boundaries.
As for "good cause", I would say that _if_ no software would have been written without such boundaries, then _possibly_ they are useful. However, given the current state of free software, that is obviously not the case. There's also the question as to whether most software is really useful or not. Is there anything _useful_ MS Office does that emacs doesn't? Does page-designing _everything_ actually count as useful? I don't think so. Most software that I use on a daily basis is more pretty and interesting than useful. In fact, I would say that the current "I must have all new technology" syndrome is causing corporations to bleed out cash. Anyway, that's another rant for another day, though.
Obviously, my morals are my opinion. Even when taking morality directly from the Bible, you still have interpretation to consider. So, eventually, much of morality not directly mentioned biblically is essentially opinion.
As to the discussion of whether or not having contracts preventing sharing is moral or not, you can see a previous post of mine at
But that's the thing. They are selling convenience and knowledge. They know how to build it completely right, and they know all the funky compiler switches, and they ship it all together with printed documentation - meaning they print it for you.
When you buy a computer from Dell or Gateway, do you consider it a donation because you could have built it yourself for $1000 cheaper?
I think you misunderstood my statement. I was correcting the poster who thought you could put restrictions on the binaries as long as the source was free. You also may have been misunderstanding what I meant by "their own binaries". I was meaning binaries of applications they had written themselves.
Actually, I think you are confused on terms. Gecko (I think) still fits on one disk. It is Mozilla that doesn't.
Someone needs to take Gecko, remove XUL, remove Mozilla and add a decent, smart API (just like Netscape's plugin API, which is, what, 5 functions?) and release that browser only app. Galeon and Skipstone are nice strips of Mozilla, but they still require a lot of Moz parts unfortunately.
Actually, Galeon uses very little Mozilla. It only uses the rendering engine and http/https stuff. It handles its own bookmarks, it uses an external handler to handle downloads. It uses very, very little Mozilla.
Also, if you don't like XPCom (which very few people do), you could just use it as a GTK widget. Yes, Mozilla compiles down to just a regular GTK widget. Then, you don't have to mess with XPCom _at all_.
Gecko is doing a great job. It is still the best rendering engine available. Why don't you trust the Mozilla people? The reason they have so many bug reports is that they count everything a bug that even remotely looks incorrect. Most applications that track bugs that well, (1) take a long time to finish, and (2) have a very large bug database. I imagine if Konqueror classified everything as a bug that Mozilla does, it would have a large bug database, too. I've seen the list of non-standards-compliance tests that Konqueror fails. In Mozilla, each failure would be listed as at least one bug.
Now, I actually like Konqueror, and use it on occasion. But please, Mozilla is aiming high. Don't trash them because their aims are higher than yours.
Actually, it is immoral. It is immoral to put up imaginary boundaries between people. It is immoral to place restrictions on sharing without good cause. I would find it immoral for me to purchase a lawnmower, and then come home and find that I can only use it on my lawn. Yes, it is the same as other licenses, because I can only use the CD I purchase on one computer. I could see it being at least reasonable to replace restrictions on copying CD's (even if it is not the _most_ moral way to go), however, preventing someone from using that machine on multiple computers is, especially when the agreement comes as a post-sale agreement (I've already bought it, but now I have to sign a contract to use it).
Anyway, also don't get me wrong on my use of immoral. I'm not calling the people immoral people, any more than you or I are immoral. I can usually count at least 20-30 immoral things I do each day. I'm just trying to alert people to what they are doing, so that they can try to do better in the future. I'm not trying to claim any moral superiority, because, as the Apostle Paul said, "ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God", meaning that we all suck, and the differences between our suckinesses don't really amount to much.
Where exactly can I find a GNU CD compiled for VAX? Or HPUX? Or Solaris? You are forgetting that GNU supports a number of architectures that may or may not compile right in the latest version of GNU. $5000 is not just copying a CD. It's building all the packages for bizarre architectures.
Thank goodness there are some actual thinkers out there! Usually I spend my time debunking common misconceptions from people who don't think things through. It's nice to have someone with actual good arguments for a change. I wish I could mod you up!
Anyway, first off, you said - Users are free to choose a free product, or one that costs money. That's where the freedom thing really is
First off, I'm going to assume that you meant to say "choose a free product or a proprietary one" because that actually makes the sentence make sense with the rest of the paragraph. However, you seem to imply in your first paragraph that free software zealots don't like people making money. I haven't seen but maybe one or two slashdotters who were upset that someone was making money, only that software was proprietary. Anyway, that's not the good part of your argument. I'll skip that because it was obviously not well thought out. The good part is this:
I know you didn't mean to imply that users freely agreeing to MS's licensing terms and using their software was somehow violating their rights, right?
Aha! An actual, worthwhile argument. You are saying that you don't think it's a violation of user rights for them to freely agree to MS's restricted licensing terms. That's quite a fair statement. Definitely not one that can be rebuked out-of-hand. Let me address at least a few issues related.
First of all, not all licensing terms _can_ be freely agreed to. For example, in some states certain warrantees cannot be waived no matter how many papers the customer signs. Also, you can't sell yourself into slavery, and the like, no matter how many papers you sign. So, obviously, at least by current standards (which may or may not be valid), it is illegal to have contracts which the signer gives up too many rights. I would gather that the people who wrote these laws thought it immoral, too. I would have to agree, although I don't know where exactly to draw the lines. So, in general, I would say that you _can_ violate someone's rights even in contracts they freely agree to. We'll get back to whether or not it is the case here later.
First, let's go over the "freely agreeing" part. When you buy software, is the license on the box? No. If I open the box, and see the license, and decide I don't like it, can I return it for a refund? Almost always - no. Personally, I have no moral problems with ignoring any post-sale contracts (I don't ignore them because of legal issues, however). I don't have any problem with lying to _my_ computer about anything. Being a programmer, that's actually how I make my living. I do think there's a difference between lying to my computer and lying to a remote computer, because then I'm ultimately lying to someone else. If I just lie to my computer I'm only lying to myself. Anyway, so the whole idea of post-sale contracts in my mind is completely bogus. Using them at all I think is totally wrong.
Now, let's say instead of post-sale, someone decided to do the right thing and make the contracts pre-sale. Is it good now? Personally, I don't like _any_ contract where one side has no leverage. What I mean is that one side is dictating all of the terms, and the person bying can't even talk to the person who made the terms. However, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that, considering how widespread the practice is.
So, let's say they did pre-sale contracts. Is it good now? Well, I'll say it's better. I'm not sure whether or not it falls into the category of "rights that you shouldn't be allowed to give away", however, I think asking someone to do so without a _really_ good reaaon is morally questionable. It's morally questionable in the same way letting people who are bad with money own credit cards is morally questionable. Most users don't understand what they're giving up. Is it right to even ask that of someone? Maybe in some cases. In most, definitely not.
So, I'll conclude by saying that if they made pre-sale rather than post-sale agreements it would be much better, but I still find that they force such limits on rights to be a very questionable practice.
Anyway, I hope I answered your question. Sorry for being so verbose. It's late.
Actually, the corporate buyer _is_ RedHat's target market. Your corporation obviously either (a) has in-house support staff, or (b) doesn't care about support. In the case of (a), then RedHat doesn't have any additional value to pass on to you past the first copy they sell you. They recognize that, and do the moral thing and don't charge you for extra copies that _you_ create. In the case of (b), RedHat is more than happy to sell you support for your servers and workstations, and consult with you about how to better use free software to make your organization more productive.
A large part of their revenue stream is from selling GnuPro to large corporations, who pay a lot of money for it ($200/seat, I think), all the while you can get the download the whole thing off the internet. They pay for it because the support is valuable.
So, my two points - (1) If you do your own support, vendors don't give you any added value past the first copy. Moral vendors recognize this and don't continue charging. (2) For those without in-house support, vendors add continuing value through support.
As for GNU, RMS used to make all his money selling emacs for $150/tape. Those people were definitely not making a donation - most of them didn't have access to the net.
Anyway, all that to say, RH's target market _is_ the corporation, and they are doing a pretty good job making money there. And they do it without freedom-restricting licensing.
Actually you are mistaken. Caldera puts a _lot_ of closed software in their base distribution. Their configuration tools, integrations tools, etc. If you use Caldera, it is _hard_ to be only using free software.
You are also incorrect about the GPL. The GPL doesn't just require you to make the source available, it requires you to allow the binaries to be copied as many times as you want. This only applies to the GPL part of Caldera's distribution. They can put whatever license they want on their own binaries.
Caldera is a mix of several different licenses, but to really use the distribution, you have to be using many non-free tools. For someone like me who values Linux for its freedom, this is totally unacceptable. This is why I always bought RedHat instead.
You do have a freedom to make money. You just don't have the freedom to make money by violating others' freedoms. In the U.S., I have lots of freedoms. But I don't have the freedom to punch other people. Why? Because that violates their freedom.
Making money is not the problem. There are many ways that many people have made money on free software. Violating user freedoms is the problem.
Many people are making money off of Linux. Just not the public companies. Also, most of them don't sell a distribution as their primary product. Most of them are consultants who add extra pieces to whatever software their customers need. They aren't in the spotlight, but these are the real workhorses. The ones who add on to gcc, Ada, HtDig, and all the little projects that make your life just a little easier. If you add in the companies who are writing/improving and releasing free software not as their main business, but just as part of their IT infrastructure, that figure grows a whole lot.
The difference between free software and proprietary software is that they are from totally different sources. Proprietary software says "TAKE WHAT I BUILD" while free software grows wild without any overarching leader. You can't expect them to make money in the same ways.
No that is incorrect. One method of paying for software is paying for the distribution of the software. For example, you don't have to make your software downloadable. You only have to allow the people who have purchased it to have their freedoms.
Even if the software is freely downloadable, there is merit in selling CDs. Just because you _can_ download it, doesn't mean that it's free for you to do so. If you have a slow or metered connection, paying for it makes sense. Do you consider tipping Pizza Delivery people a "donation"? I sure don't.
The best method, though, is to contract improvements. For example, if company X wants feature Y in emacs, but doesn't have the ability to do it themselves, they hire you to do it. This is the best way of making money. A lot of people do it, too. In fact, you could say this is where _all_ I.T. money comes from.
No, this is not about paying for things. This is about paying for ideas. A CD is a thing. Software is not a thing. Noone is asking Caldera to provide CDs or boxed sets for free. They are simply asking them not to restrict the user's freedom with the abstract software. To think that "software" in the abstract can be owned is to believe in Plato's "world of ideas" theory. If you believe in it, fine. Just remember that software doesn't classify as a "thing".
Obviously you can't get support without paying. That's true on any of the Linux platforms. The fact is, Caldera _is_ the parasite RMS makes them out to be. I can't think of a single piece of GPL software they created or heavily funded. If you use software from thousands of programmers without paying them for it, and then refuse to develop even one program that's free, you are a parasite. A legal parasite, yes. But a parasite nontheless.
RedHat has managed to be successful and give back _everything_ they developed (maybe not everything, but I can't think of a single thing offhand).
The question isn't whether you should be able to make money from Linux. Noone has a problem with that. What people have a problem with is using freedom-restricting practices to do so. Just because we find a particular _way_ of making money off of software offensive does not mean that we find all ways offensive. You should really take the time to read the stuff in the Philosophy section of gnu.org.
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Actually, as a nation, we are all imports. I think it's amazing how far we've come, considering America started out as just being a mix of people that no other country wanted.
You wouldn't care to support a family on $50,000? Do you spend money like water? I have a family, a house, and two cars, with my only debts being on the house, and I managed on $30,000. That also included a major medical disaster for the year. I have friends who get by (with more kids) on much less.
Actually, homeschooling generally provides better education for any economic class, and also tends to have better moral education, too. I don't know about getting rid of public education, but it's not the only way kids learn.
I do. First of all, there are programs that prefix themselves with gnu even though they have nothing to do with GNU, like gnutella.
Also, there is a difference between KIllustrator and Kaldera, being that "illustrator" has to do with the products function, while "Caldera" does not. I would not be opposed to a volcano-predicting program being called Caldera, because its related.
Depending on where you upgraded from, you need to remove all of your mozilla files, all mozilla things in c:\windows, and all Mozilla registry entries.
Actually, most of the Mozilla workers are employed by AOL to do Mozilla.
Actually, the Mozilla UI _is_ written in javascript.
I don't see property ownership as imaginary. I see intellectual property ownership as imaginary because I don't believe in Plato's theory of the forms, which leaves there to be nothing left to own.
:)
In reply to your other question, I would generally prefer no software at all. However, I have a general distaste for most software
I might agree that if it was the only way to get the software written. But, obviously (by the current state of free software), it is not.
Actually, the three posts were because I had three different thoughts at different times.
3 92 35&cid=243
The only imaginary boundary the GPL puts up is the "must distribute source" boundary, which, although I disagree with, I find that the rest of the license makes it the best option, because it prevents others from putting up imaginary boundaries.
As for "good cause", I would say that _if_ no software would have been written without such boundaries, then _possibly_ they are useful. However, given the current state of free software, that is obviously not the case. There's also the question as to whether most software is really useful or not. Is there anything _useful_ MS Office does that emacs doesn't? Does page-designing _everything_ actually count as useful? I don't think so. Most software that I use on a daily basis is more pretty and interesting than useful. In fact, I would say that the current "I must have all new technology" syndrome is causing corporations to bleed out cash. Anyway, that's another rant for another day, though.
Obviously, my morals are my opinion. Even when taking morality directly from the Bible, you still have interpretation to consider. So, eventually, much of morality not directly mentioned biblically is essentially opinion.
As to the discussion of whether or not having contracts preventing sharing is moral or not, you can see a previous post of mine at
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/06/25/19
But that's the thing. They are selling convenience and knowledge. They know how to build it completely right, and they know all the funky compiler switches, and they ship it all together with printed documentation - meaning they print it for you.
When you buy a computer from Dell or Gateway, do you consider it a donation because you could have built it yourself for $1000 cheaper?
I think you misunderstood my statement. I was correcting the poster who thought you could put restrictions on the binaries as long as the source was free. You also may have been misunderstanding what I meant by "their own binaries". I was meaning binaries of applications they had written themselves.
Someone needs to take Gecko, remove XUL, remove Mozilla and add a decent, smart API (just like Netscape's plugin API, which is, what, 5 functions?) and release that browser only app. Galeon and Skipstone are nice strips of Mozilla, but they still require a lot of Moz parts unfortunately.
Actually, Galeon uses very little Mozilla. It only uses the rendering engine and http/https stuff. It handles its own bookmarks, it uses an external handler to handle downloads. It uses very, very little Mozilla.
Also, if you don't like XPCom (which very few people do), you could just use it as a GTK widget. Yes, Mozilla compiles down to just a regular GTK widget. Then, you don't have to mess with XPCom _at all_.
Gecko is doing a great job. It is still the best rendering engine available. Why don't you trust the Mozilla people? The reason they have so many bug reports is that they count everything a bug that even remotely looks incorrect. Most applications that track bugs that well, (1) take a long time to finish, and (2) have a very large bug database. I imagine if Konqueror classified everything as a bug that Mozilla does, it would have a large bug database, too. I've seen the list of non-standards-compliance tests that Konqueror fails. In Mozilla, each failure would be listed as at least one bug.
Now, I actually like Konqueror, and use it on occasion. But please, Mozilla is aiming high. Don't trash them because their aims are higher than yours.
Given that _both_ Mozilla and Galeon are beta/alpha software, I don't see where the problem with this is.
Also, where can I get a deluxe distribution for _any_ architecture compiled with GCC 3.0?
Actually, it is immoral. It is immoral to put up imaginary boundaries between people. It is immoral to place restrictions on sharing without good cause. I would find it immoral for me to purchase a lawnmower, and then come home and find that I can only use it on my lawn. Yes, it is the same as other licenses, because I can only use the CD I purchase on one computer. I could see it being at least reasonable to replace restrictions on copying CD's (even if it is not the _most_ moral way to go), however, preventing someone from using that machine on multiple computers is, especially when the agreement comes as a post-sale agreement (I've already bought it, but now I have to sign a contract to use it).
Anyway, also don't get me wrong on my use of immoral. I'm not calling the people immoral people, any more than you or I are immoral. I can usually count at least 20-30 immoral things I do each day. I'm just trying to alert people to what they are doing, so that they can try to do better in the future. I'm not trying to claim any moral superiority, because, as the Apostle Paul said, "ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God", meaning that we all suck, and the differences between our suckinesses don't really amount to much.
Where exactly can I find a GNU CD compiled for VAX? Or HPUX? Or Solaris? You are forgetting that GNU supports a number of architectures that may or may not compile right in the latest version of GNU. $5000 is not just copying a CD. It's building all the packages for bizarre architectures.
Anyway, first off, you said - Users are free to choose a free product, or one that costs money. That's where the freedom thing really is
First off, I'm going to assume that you meant to say "choose a free product or a proprietary one" because that actually makes the sentence make sense with the rest of the paragraph. However, you seem to imply in your first paragraph that free software zealots don't like people making money. I haven't seen but maybe one or two slashdotters who were upset that someone was making money, only that software was proprietary. Anyway, that's not the good part of your argument. I'll skip that because it was obviously not well thought out. The good part is this:
I know you didn't mean to imply that users freely agreeing to MS's licensing terms and using their software was somehow violating their rights, right?
Aha! An actual, worthwhile argument. You are saying that you don't think it's a violation of user rights for them to freely agree to MS's restricted licensing terms. That's quite a fair statement. Definitely not one that can be rebuked out-of-hand. Let me address at least a few issues related.
First of all, not all licensing terms _can_ be freely agreed to. For example, in some states certain warrantees cannot be waived no matter how many papers the customer signs. Also, you can't sell yourself into slavery, and the like, no matter how many papers you sign. So, obviously, at least by current standards (which may or may not be valid), it is illegal to have contracts which the signer gives up too many rights. I would gather that the people who wrote these laws thought it immoral, too. I would have to agree, although I don't know where exactly to draw the lines. So, in general, I would say that you _can_ violate someone's rights even in contracts they freely agree to. We'll get back to whether or not it is the case here later.
First, let's go over the "freely agreeing" part. When you buy software, is the license on the box? No. If I open the box, and see the license, and decide I don't like it, can I return it for a refund? Almost always - no. Personally, I have no moral problems with ignoring any post-sale contracts (I don't ignore them because of legal issues, however). I don't have any problem with lying to _my_ computer about anything. Being a programmer, that's actually how I make my living. I do think there's a difference between lying to my computer and lying to a remote computer, because then I'm ultimately lying to someone else. If I just lie to my computer I'm only lying to myself. Anyway, so the whole idea of post-sale contracts in my mind is completely bogus. Using them at all I think is totally wrong.
Now, let's say instead of post-sale, someone decided to do the right thing and make the contracts pre-sale. Is it good now? Personally, I don't like _any_ contract where one side has no leverage. What I mean is that one side is dictating all of the terms, and the person bying can't even talk to the person who made the terms. However, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that, considering how widespread the practice is.
So, let's say they did pre-sale contracts. Is it good now? Well, I'll say it's better. I'm not sure whether or not it falls into the category of "rights that you shouldn't be allowed to give away", however, I think asking someone to do so without a _really_ good reaaon is morally questionable. It's morally questionable in the same way letting people who are bad with money own credit cards is morally questionable. Most users don't understand what they're giving up. Is it right to even ask that of someone? Maybe in some cases. In most, definitely not.
So, I'll conclude by saying that if they made pre-sale rather than post-sale agreements it would be much better, but I still find that they force such limits on rights to be a very questionable practice.
Anyway, I hope I answered your question. Sorry for being so verbose. It's late.
Actually, the corporate buyer _is_ RedHat's target market. Your corporation obviously either (a) has in-house support staff, or (b) doesn't care about support. In the case of (a), then RedHat doesn't have any additional value to pass on to you past the first copy they sell you. They recognize that, and do the moral thing and don't charge you for extra copies that _you_ create. In the case of (b), RedHat is more than happy to sell you support for your servers and workstations, and consult with you about how to better use free software to make your organization more productive.
A large part of their revenue stream is from selling GnuPro to large corporations, who pay a lot of money for it ($200/seat, I think), all the while you can get the download the whole thing off the internet. They pay for it because the support is valuable.
So, my two points - (1) If you do your own support, vendors don't give you any added value past the first copy. Moral vendors recognize this and don't continue charging. (2) For those without in-house support, vendors add continuing value through support.
As for GNU, RMS used to make all his money selling emacs for $150/tape. Those people were definitely not making a donation - most of them didn't have access to the net.
Anyway, all that to say, RH's target market _is_ the corporation, and they are doing a pretty good job making money there. And they do it without freedom-restricting licensing.
Actually you are mistaken. Caldera puts a _lot_ of closed software in their base distribution. Their configuration tools, integrations tools, etc. If you use Caldera, it is _hard_ to be only using free software.
You are also incorrect about the GPL. The GPL doesn't just require you to make the source available, it requires you to allow the binaries to be copied as many times as you want. This only applies to the GPL part of Caldera's distribution. They can put whatever license they want on their own binaries.
Caldera is a mix of several different licenses, but to really use the distribution, you have to be using many non-free tools. For someone like me who values Linux for its freedom, this is totally unacceptable. This is why I always bought RedHat instead.
You do have a freedom to make money. You just don't have the freedom to make money by violating others' freedoms. In the U.S., I have lots of freedoms. But I don't have the freedom to punch other people. Why? Because that violates their freedom.
Making money is not the problem. There are many ways that many people have made money on free software. Violating user freedoms is the problem.
Many people are making money off of Linux. Just not the public companies. Also, most of them don't sell a distribution as their primary product. Most of them are consultants who add extra pieces to whatever software their customers need. They aren't in the spotlight, but these are the real workhorses. The ones who add on to gcc, Ada, HtDig, and all the little projects that make your life just a little easier. If you add in the companies who are writing/improving and releasing free software not as their main business, but just as part of their IT infrastructure, that figure grows a whole lot.
The difference between free software and proprietary software is that they are from totally different sources. Proprietary software says "TAKE WHAT I BUILD" while free software grows wild without any overarching leader. You can't expect them to make money in the same ways.
No that is incorrect. One method of paying for software is paying for the distribution of the software. For example, you don't have to make your software downloadable. You only have to allow the people who have purchased it to have their freedoms.
Even if the software is freely downloadable, there is merit in selling CDs. Just because you _can_ download it, doesn't mean that it's free for you to do so. If you have a slow or metered connection, paying for it makes sense. Do you consider tipping Pizza Delivery people a "donation"? I sure don't.
The best method, though, is to contract improvements. For example, if company X wants feature Y in emacs, but doesn't have the ability to do it themselves, they hire you to do it. This is the best way of making money. A lot of people do it, too. In fact, you could say this is where _all_ I.T. money comes from.
No, this is not about paying for things. This is about paying for ideas. A CD is a thing. Software is not a thing. Noone is asking Caldera to provide CDs or boxed sets for free. They are simply asking them not to restrict the user's freedom with the abstract software. To think that "software" in the abstract can be owned is to believe in Plato's "world of ideas" theory. If you believe in it, fine. Just remember that software doesn't classify as a "thing".
Obviously you can't get support without paying. That's true on any of the Linux platforms. The fact is, Caldera _is_ the parasite RMS makes them out to be. I can't think of a single piece of GPL software they created or heavily funded. If you use software from thousands of programmers without paying them for it, and then refuse to develop even one program that's free, you are a parasite. A legal parasite, yes. But a parasite nontheless.
RedHat has managed to be successful and give back _everything_ they developed (maybe not everything, but I can't think of a single thing offhand).
The question isn't whether you should be able to make money from Linux. Noone has a problem with that. What people have a problem with is using freedom-restricting practices to do so. Just because we find a particular _way_ of making money off of software offensive does not mean that we find all ways offensive. You should really take the time to read the stuff in the Philosophy section of gnu.org.