On Friday 03 June 2011 16:21:35 Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 6/3/2011 8:57 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> >
> > Red Hat deserves credit for still provided the source RPM's in buildable
> > form even for those parts of the distribution that are not GPL licensed.
> > They are not required by license to do that; for instance, the
> > PostgreSQL RPM's, since PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed. I mention that
> > particular package only because I have first-hand knowledge of that
> > package.
>
> I'm not really talking about what Red Hat does - and I'm not against
> selling restricted software in general. I'm talking about what would be
> more in the best interest of the community that they attracted by
> permitting redistribution of the collated works - and then cut off.
So what? Red Hat created a community by beeing free in both senses, and then
decided to go commercial at some point. And that hurt the feelings of some
minor number of hard-nosed community members. Is that what you are talking
about?
I was around at the time of Red Hat going commercial. I heard about that, and
immediately went to their website to see if that was true, since I was having
a hard time figuring out the alternative distro I could use. And when I opened
the website, there it was --- Fedora Core 1. It was publicly advertized by Red
Hat as a free (in both senses) continuation of old-style Red Hat releases,
only with the branding and name changed. It was right there, on redhat.com,
you can take a look:
http://web.archive.org/web/20031118114916/http://redhat.com/
I still remember a sentence somewhere that said something like "Think of
Fedora Core 1 as a release of Red Hat 10" (although I failed to find it now).
There was a clear pointer for every community member where to go if they
wanted to stay in the "old" community. The only difference was the absence of
the "shadow-man with a red hat" logo.
So that can be considered as "cutting off" only for a couple of very hard-nosed
community members who were emotionally attached more to the name "Red Hat" and
a nice picture of a hat, than to the product itself. Both the old product and
the old community continued to live, just under a different brand. And Red Hat
helped to create that new brand, and is still helping.
> > Red Hat is not the only Linux provider who has limited distribution of
> > binaries. And as the CentOS and other rebuild projects have proven time
> > and time again, having the source (and some time and significant effort)
> > is sufficient to build a fully binary compatible distribution.
>
> But the need for the rebuild projects shows that Red Hat has restricted
> access to what is mostly the result of community work.
Red Hat didn't restrict access, it was only rebranded as another project. The
result and work of that same community is still here, is very much alive, and
is called Fedora. Every RHEL release is based on Fedora, which is still
unrestricted and available. The process of creating RHEL from Fedora is closed
within Red Hat, and community does not contribute to that part. And Red Hat
has every right not to release the binary distro (RHEL) that they created
*without* community input from a community-based free distro (Fedora).
Everything that community creates is still completely free (again, in both
senses). The "difference" between Fedora and its derivative RHEL lies strictly
in the closed-to-community input from a commercial company, and Red Hat has
therefore every right not to publish the resulting distro. They publish just
the source code, since they are required to do it by the GPL (and other
licences).
I fail to see how did Red Hat restrict the access to the result of any
community work.
> > To my eyes it was a win-win for Linux, since without the for-profit model
> > that Red Hat adopted, Red Hat likely would not be around today, nor
> > would Red Hat-funded developers likely have been able to continue to
> > devote as much time and effort as they have done. Perhaps they could
> > have handled the PR in a better way, but then again when someone is used
> > to freeloading they're going to hate having to pay anything at all (and
> > that's not an accusation of anyone in particular, just a simple
> > observation of human behavior).
>
> At the time, RH was backporting fixes into most/all of their previous
> major-number releases in a way that clearly wasn't sustainable. So they
> had to do the split between fast-track new development and long-term
> supported versions that get backports, but it is not at all clear that
> they had to restrict redistribution in addition to selling support.
> This just created the need for Ubuntu...
I tend to disagree here as well. Ubuntu was created from Debian, and had a
completely different idea --- to become a favorite Linux distro for desktops.
And they apparently succeded in that. Red Hat, and later Fedora, never even
aimed at such a goal. The need for a desktop-oriented Linux distro was there
since Linux came to existence, and was never properly addressed until Ubuntu
appeared. Using Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Slackware or Debian as a desktop
distro was more a "surrogate Linux desktop". Creating a proper desktop distro
needed an initial financial push by someone, and that push finally came with
Shuttleworth creating Ubuntu.
Ubuntu was *not* created as a community response to Red Hat going commercial.
Far from it.
Best, :-)
Marko
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