Ric Moore wrote:
I tend to agree with you Martin, as RH's lawyers have undoubtedly been
all over the GPL with a fine tooth comb. Maybe the word used was
RedHat's "offering' of a set of CD's and a built-in price for support,
while the SRPMS are freely available for redistribution, then they have
satisfied the intent of the GPL. Then you just pick it up or lay it
down. Plus, the fact that FC is married in a sense to RedHat and thereby
an extension of it, that to say that RedHat is a closed binary is not
-entirely- accurate. Maybe some, at some point between 0% and 100%, but
not entirely.
So to that effect if Marks statement was 100% correct, then CentoOS
would not and could not exist. Yet, on the other hand, CentOS does exist
which negates the statement that RH would be *-completely-* closed,
instead of 'to-a-degree' closed. Kinda like being a little-bit pregnant,
but I think you see my point, even if you do not agree with it, ole
friend Les. It is open enough to satisfy the GPL and probably not one
erg of energy more.
In practice, what matters in terms of being 'open' is how easily someone
else can take a complete existing work, add value to improve it, and
redistribute the combination. CentOS does a lot of work just to get to
the point where redistribution is allowed and doesn't add much except an
option kernel with more drivers included. I'd rather see that work go
into something like a better installer, or combining newer desktop apps
into the stable kernel/libs from RHEL - but nobody does because RH goes
out of their way to make it difficult to compete by adding improvements.
Contrast that with the Debian base and Ubuntu/Mepis/Knoppix if you don't
see a difference.
Also, RedHat has poured more money into devel than just about any other
distro, so you at least tip your hat to who brung ya to the dance
instead of bitch-slapping at them. It's considered poor form in "Polite
Society".
OK, but at the same time you have to admit that RedHat has dumped more
bugs onto more people's desktops than any other Linux system and that
most of the stability they enjoy now came as a result of bugs reported
by their early users - and these same users now are prohibited from
freely copying the enterprise product around. It's not quite the way
anyone expected things to turn out.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
