On 6/3/2011 1:17 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>
>> 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'm not talking about the hurt feelings, I'm talking about the ultimate
best interests of the community members that are now relying on the
rebuilds.
> 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:
Fedora is not a 'usable' distribution unless you have nothing better to
do with your life than install software and it is nothing like the
old-style RH release that were maintained for years with updates. How
many hours have you spent re-installing fedora versions? I quit when a
mid-release kernel update refused to boot on a mainstream IBM box where
it had happily installed. And running a box without current security
updates is not an option so you can't just stick with an old copy.
> 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.
No, the difference was every fedora was like the X.0 release for RH
releases up to 7, where they were followed with X.1, X.2, etc., that
actually worked. If you came in at 8 or 9 you might not understand the
distinction because 8 and 9 never did reach the stability of 7.3.
> 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.
No, what has been cut off is the product that evolves from user feedback
and experience - that is, the thing that eventually works in spite of
the broken new stuff that keeps getting pushed into new fedora versions.
If they knew how to do that without community input, a fedora release
or the old X.0 RH releases would be as good as X.2 or an EL. They aren't.
>>> 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.
It's not the development community that pushes wild and crazy changes
into fedora that I'm talking about. They seem to not like unix much and
want to turn it into something else anyway.
> 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.
They don't participate in the packaging of the bits, but I'm not
convinced that they don't contribute to the results.
> I fail to see how did Red Hat restrict the access to the result of any
> community work.
That depends on what you consider community work. I say every change
resulting from a bug report or contributed patch is community work, and
work that would be better aimed in a direction that doesn't restrict
redistribution or require a dependency on a rebuild effort.
> 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.
Their 'different idea' was to have an actual release schedule, unlike
the Debian of the day with the 'when it's ready' mantra. Plus they
relaxed the free-as-in-gnu policies to make it usable.
> And they apparently succeded in that.
They did that too, but a linux distro is a linux disto and you can
install the parts you want. The important part is how well updates are
handled. You need a predictable release schedule to get new versions
out and an update process that maintains them with minimum breakage.
> Ubuntu was *not* created as a community response to Red Hat going commercial.
> Far from it.
That's not what I said. I said Red Hat's redistribution restriction
created the need for Ubunutu. And that the community that is now
dependent on RH-rebuilds might be better served by a distribution that
does not restrict redistribution in the first place. These aren't
cause/effect but you could put them together if you want.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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