Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Red Hat Software Businesses

It's Official: Red Hat Buys Cygnus 182

Posted by HeUnique from the RH-getting-bigger.. dept.
Well, now it's official. Red Hat buys Cygnus for $674 Million. (Short story here.) I'm sure we're going to see lots of attention from the media in the following hours. What do you think?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

It's Official: Red Hat Buys Cygnus More

It's Official: Red Hat Buys Cygnus

Comments Filter:

  • Great (Score:2)

    by avail ( 84055 )
    I think that with the commitment that Redhat has shown to the community, this can only benefit. Cygnus gives Redhat a great technology portfolio, and provided redhat continues their trend of making their contribution free, we shoudl see some cool new things for linux from this...
  • Let's just hope (and pray) that this is not a Microsoft style embrace-destroy buy out.

  • Kick ass! (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    I hope they stay good and give some of that technology back to the community.

    I'd love to see some of their development tools and innovations folded back into gcc/egcs et al...

    Man, it's nice to see what they do with their IPO money. That's sweet! Keep it up, Red Hat...
    ---
    pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.

  • Despite being a Linux enthusiast, most of my customers demand Windows NT versions of nearly everything I write. Cygwin has been invaluable in allowing me to write high quality *nix software and provide a running version on NT (relatively painlessly).

    I'm most interested in Red Hat's continued support for these Cygnus projects.

  • This is great news!! Hopefully, g++ -o hello hello.cpp will generate a 10 KB code!
  • It'll be interesting to see how Red Hat's commitment to open source stands up to this. Will they open source Source Navigator, for example?

    Personally, I think it's a good move for Red Hat -- they're protecting their interests by ensuring they don't lose their development toolchain, which is pretty critical to their survival.

    It'll be interesting to see what they do with the parts of Cygnus that aren't related to their core Linux business, though. I think there are huge opportunities for Red Hat in the embedded space now, but I wonder if they're too Linux server oriented to see them...

  • I don't see how that could be the case. What did Cygnus make that has been in any way a competition to what RedHat does?

  • RedHat/Cygnus FAQ (Score:4)

    by jbrw ( 520 ) on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:07AM (#1532371) Homepage
    There's a FAQ [cygnus.com] up on the Cygnus site regarding the merger.

    Most interestingly (perhaps) is that a new CEO will be taking the helm at RedHat.
  • Check the Press Release on www.redhat.com about the whole deal. There is some good information as well as a nice FAQ on it.
    "We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
  • Sooner or later any successful company will expand. What else would you expect? Is the so-called 'community' about bashing all companies with a market share above 20%?

    My impression of 'the community' was that it has been created because a bunch of people all like a certain OS/movement - but all these anti RedHat posts kinda go against that. How can you ever expect Linux to get anywhere if you cannot agree with, and see the logic in, expansion caused by strategic moves made by one of the largest Linux distributers.

    It is so much easier to bash, destroy and so forth than it is to be creative.

    Success -> growth. We should all be happy.

  • This means my most important tools will be
    better - gcc and snes9x :)
    Mmm...well-financed compiler development...
  • Unfortunately, no business would pay 672 million to make their products into free software.. However, if they're planning to open any of it.. open their compiler! please, please, please. I would really like to see 20% better performance than vc++ in integer tests and precompiled header support. Oh yes I would.
  • RedHat [redhat.com] have more information at their site.

    Anyone have any more information on the rumours of senior RedHat people leaving?
    It'll be interesting to see what happens to this quote on About RedHat [redhat.com]:

    Red Hat shares all of its software innovations freely with the open source community under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
    since Cygnus certainly don't share all their products with the community.
  • > I'd love to see some of their development
    > tools and innovations folded back into
    > gcc/egcs et al...

    But Cygnus already _have_ been folding their work back into EGCS: who do you think has been maintaining all that stuff for the last bundle of years? Anyone who uses gcc or gdb is heavily indebted to their work on it.

    Their tool stuff (development environments, class browsers, etc), is a whole different thing, and I'd love to see that open sourced, but this is (and should remain) a totally separate thing to the compiler itself. I'd hate to see them go down the MS route of tying it all into one megalithic package. Did you know that the MSVC class browser depends on a special browser database that is generated for it by the compiler? Urgh. Works great, up until the day you want to use some different compiler for a change :-)

  • I believe this is a positive move. As long as RedHat maintains Cygnus' attitude towards open source (develop, enhance, support), adding RedHat's revenue stream to support Cygnus' development effort makes good business, and I think makes good sense for the Open Source community. Of course, only time will tell. *shrug*

    For more info, check out (this was jointly developed by RedHat and Cygnus, so it's obviously partisan):

    http://www.cygnus.com/news/c-rh_faq.html [cygnus.com]

  • They seem to have been quite a good company - cranking out free software and working most notably on egcs I think.

    If redhat buys them, it's because they see the value in the company. Let's just hope that redhat doesn't mess with success and lets them continue to do what they're good at and what made them attractive to redhat in the first place.
  • I think this sounds pretty good actually. Given the current smallish nature of all the current Linux dist. companies, Linux could potentially benefit from there being a couple "bigger" companies around which have real capital with which to pursue R&D and advertising.

    I mean, everyone keeps talking about Linux as a potential threat to some of the bigger more established OSs (the Win, Mac, other UN*X, whatever), but seriously, while most average Joes out there have most likely heard of Linux by now, could any of them probably name even one company doing a Linux distribution? I doubt it.

    While I think it's undesirable to have one company which everyone thinks of as THE Linux company (yikes!), I think we are a long way from that yet. However, a Redhat/Cygnus company can now devote even more to R&D of a single product, and a promotion of their Linux based product in the home and work place unlike any other company trying to do the same.

    So overall, I think this is a pretty good thing.

    On a side, note, I really don't see why everyone keeps bringing up the buyout as a MS-like thing?...so all corporate acquisitions now forever in time are to be MS-like? Even if they are beneficial?
  • "Let's start buying small companies up to make ourselves bigger."

    Was it not said a few days back that Cygnus was a bigger company than Redhat?

    Iain
  • 'How many "synergies" are there between the two companies ?'

    'Oh, about 20,000. You can lose 10% through natural wastage but you'll have to sack the rest!'

    [from a UK Daily Telegraph "Alex" cartoon]

  • I hope they stay good and give some of that technology back to the community.


    Have you visited Sourceware [cygnus.com] recently? The vast majority of Cygnus technology is given back to community...some of it more quickly that others but it all ends in publicly available distributions of gcc, binutils, etc eventually. The only exceptions to this are non-GPL Cygwin users, SourceFoundry and SourceNavigator.


    Cygnus is one of those wierdo software companies. One that a) understands Open Source (hell, they largely defined it!) and b) make a genuine profit.

    Redhat on the other hand just another Linux/ internet rah rah company which is built on hopes and promises rather than sound business sense.


    This is not a good day for Open Source (as opposed to Linux).

  • As far as I can tell, it worked really well for microsoft. Incidentally, it has worked REALLY well for Cisco. It didn't work too well for AOL, but as a general rule acquiring companies that have already developed useful applications in your market space is a good way to grow your business.

    If Red Hat follows in the footsteps of Microsoft when it comes to growing your business, we should all be relatively happy as the (open source) product line becomes more robust and feeds more good code (and paid coders) into the community.

    cheers.

  • >Sooner or later any successful company will
    >expand. What else would you expect?
    >Is the so-called 'community' about bashing all
    >companies with a market share above 20%?

    Yes it is.

    People don't get the warm fuzzies from being different from all of their Windows friends, when their Windows friends start moving over to Linux. It makes it harder for people to feel superior.

    But it's ok, those who are only using Linux because it's "different" will eventually move on to something else as Linux becomes more popular in the mainstream.
  • Both RH 6.1 installs I've done have gone smoothly.

    Only problem I had was making a boot disk for my second system [complicated 'cos it runs Linux on removeable hard drive /dev/hdc1 ]

  • Re:RedHat is MS style move? (Score:4)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:22AM (#1532391) Homepage
    Why would we want to destroy Cygnus?
    The way I see it, Red Hat and Cygnus are a great match - Red Hat builds the OS, Cygnus builds development tools and embedded systems.
    With both working together, it's far easier to coordinate, so both sides will profit.

  • Gee, scooter, how about Corel? (Score:3)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:23AM (#1532392) Homepage
    I mean, Corel's getting ready to provide a desktop operating system and a complete office software package. Does that make them like Microsoft?

    Actually, it's a good idea to become a one-stop. It means that your customers can come to you for all their needs and be confident that all of your particular configurations will work smoothly together out of the box. That's why OEMs who sell the OS and their hardware seperately never caught on.

    This is a case of seeing the best road and taking it. If you have to emulate the way MS does something (so long as its not something like RedHat crushing Debian by threatening OEMs), so be it -- the MS folks are obviously bang-up business guys; they didn't make their money by being good coders.

    Additionally: Stop comparing Red Hat to Microsoft. RH is in a position where they could start bullying, but they don't. They deserve some sort of recognition for that, not more flames. Just because you're the biggest kid on the block doesn't automatically make you a bully.

    ----

  • "who do you think has been maintaining all that stuff for the last bundle of years? Anyone who uses gcc or gdb is heavily indebted to their work on it.
    "

    If there's one thing I don't ever feel towards a commerical organisation, it's indebted. Unless maybe I steal their goods. That's the whole point of the business transaction. Now, if we are talking about a whole new business ethic, where people purchase from a company not just for a positive ROI, but for reasons such as moral support, strategic alignment and so on, then that's very interesting, but it's not at all obvious.

    Every day I go to small butchers and bakers and get a worse ROI on my cash than if I go to the supermarket. That's because I morally prefer small shops and I'm willing to keep them in business even when I'm forced to agree that they basically offer a worse product at a higher price than in the local Waitrose.

    However, I struggle to apply that way of thinking to RedHat. A typical US startup, full of geeks and suits and cash. Great, best of luck to them, but these aren't people I talk to on mailing lists - they aren't part of my community, and I don't feel like being charitable. I'm 100% not indebted to RH for anything.

    I'm all in favour of making purchasing decisions based on more than a cold calculation of product ability versus product TCO, but RedHat is not behaving like that kind of company. I'm looking forward to seeing how these OSS business models end up...
  • Excellent. I stand corrected, then.

    I somehow figured that the FSF was still doing the maintaining, but I don't really care as long as the same batch of knowledgeable people keep doing what they're doing.

    And yes, that is scary. Although I'd like to see a cool IDE development tool, my visions of it always look like a text-based Borland one, so I end up using RHIDE, or more likely grep and pico. :)
    ---
    pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
  • RedHat == Microsoft won't happen.

    Let's put it this way:

    if test x$RedHat == x$Microsoft; then
    mv RedHat/developers NewCompany
    mv RedHat/consultants NewCompany
    rm -rf RedHat
    fi
  • While they are spending $$$, they should try and buy the portion of Netscape that makes the browser from AOL. Then we know that Mozilla won't be screwed up by AOL/NS and it would put RH directly opposing MS.
  • Here is my list of companies RedHat shouldn't buy ( not buying anybody isn't an option when you are overvalued as they are ).

    1 : VA. Stay out of the Linux on iNTEL hardware business. More money in working with people who do that. Don't want RedHat Linux to go the way of OS/2 now :).

    2 : LinuxCare. Partner with Linux support companies don't buy them.

    3 : SCO. Very tempting, but repeat after me. "A culture clash will make all the good programers quit".

    4 : Troll Tech. This is an eggshell and we don't want it broken. Let them do QT under the QPL at there own pace.

    Now my list of companies to buy.

    1. Corel. Go for it, they make closed software that should stay closed so buy them up and keep a hands off approach; "It's not us it's the "Corel Division'". Best of all they are grossly undervalued.

    2. Borland/Imprise. MS got to be what it is buy building the best dev tools and practically giving them away at crucial stages. You could force them heavily into Linux.

    3. ISPs. Buy as many as you can get. You need to keep the cash streams pumping without disturbing the core business.

    4. SGI. Another money stream just waiting to be taped. Eat them up but don't try to manage them.
  • Don't you think that RedHat buying Cygnus makes more sense when you consider that quote? If Cygnus was interested in open sourcing their products what better way to facilitate that than to merge with a company like RedHat who has successfully been doing Open Source developement and actually making money at it?

    Makes sense to me at least.

    forgey

  • Remember, this was $672 million in stock. That is not the same as handing over that much in cash. The news wire is acutally reporting it as $674 million. The only reason the dollars are listed is because it looks good in print. What should really be said is that, "RedHat is acquiring Cygnus for a 9.5% ownership stake in the company." The Cygnus owners will be given 9.5% of the company held RedHat stock.

    Do you think that RedHat is at least 10 times the size of Cygnus? If you say no, then this was a very good deal.

    RedHat has established a history of supporting open source development efforts. Why does everyone just assume it will be different with new acquisitions? They know where their bed is made.

  • I am interested in seeing where this will go. If they still deliver it as open source that will be good, and if they offer it with either there developer tools or there distro that would be great. I have been looking for a decent ide for Linux, that can handle C / C++ that will not be difficutl to install and get running. If Redhat offeres it as an option in there install for there distro, then what could be easier.

    It does make me wonder thou a little about the Redhat tactics. Is this a step towards a Microsoft like monopoly thou? With Redhat owning Cygnus they could make it slightly "redhatish" with a RH icon and force other Linux distros to distribute as a RH product with a RH icon. Imagine having a SuSE distro, with Rh icons all over the IDE. Or worse image if SuSE buys an ide co and then a situation that if you uses SuSE you get this IDe while if you uses RH you get this ide. That could be bad for the whole community.

    Honestly I do not see this happening, but it is a thought. RH has been supporing much of the GNOME development and it has not gone the RH way. It will be good if they have RH developers working on Cygnus and Open Source it.

    just my .02 cents.

    send flames > /dev/null

  • I think... (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:28AM (#1532401) Homepage Journal
    ...Red Hat shares will sky-rocket (they've been needing to do something spectacular, to keep their share values over-inflated)...

    ...Cygnus' sofware will be exactly the same as it was before the takeover, except it =might= also have RH's daft logo on the box, too...

    ...EGCS' development will move fully to GNU, as per the original GCC...

    ...Red Hat's next distribution will be between 2-3 CD's larger than it was the last time...

    ...Cygnus' website will become slow and clunky, and their FTP site will need mirroring to be usable...

    ...EGCS will hit version 3.0 before it's ready, and lots of bugfixes will be released a short time later...

  • > If there's one thing I don't ever feel
    > towards a commerical organisation, it's
    > indebted.

    Not even when that organisation has been paying people to write cool software, and then releasing it under the GPL?

    Personally, I've bought one official Red Hat package (mostly for the manual, back when I was new to Linux), but I've never given money to Cygnus in any shape or form. And yet I use gcc daily, and benefit from it having good C++ support, and a lot of useful optimistations that weren't there before Cygnus added them. So yes, I'm indebted to them for giving me all this cool stuff to play with. Just the same way that I'm indebted to people like Linus and Alan for giving me a decent kernel to run it on, and to RMS for writing the compiler in the first place...

    Even if you don't use gcc, the chances are that you use programs which were compiled by it, and the chances are that you didn't pay Cygnus for that, either. So why not thank them for this? Whether they are a commercial outfit or a private individual is irrelvant, as long as they are doing good work and releasing GPL code that makes life better for everyone.

  • Re:Ummm, Sounds like Microsoft... (Score:3)

    by evilpenguin ( 18720 ) on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:33AM (#1532405)
    I don't think mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations are inherently evil. My problems with Microsoft are not (entirely) becuase they are big and successful (of course I do have a certain amount of animosity towards their success, everyone likes an underdog, nobody likes the top dog, but I try not to let that cloud my thinking). Microsoft's evil arises from their abuse of their OS market dominance. Because they "control the desktop," their give-away of IE with the OS that one needs to have (or at least most people think they need to have) was nothing but a blatant attempt to use their market power to crush Netscape, which did pose a real threat to MS's dominance.

    RedHat has not (up to this point) behaved like that. While they have become the big boy on the Linux block, they have steadfastly held to their open source roots. Everything they've done has been GPL'd back for anyone to use. Look at all the RPM-based distros, for example.

    I happen to use Debian because I'm a bit of a free software purist, so I'm leery of RedHat because it contains some licensed commercial code. Still, so long as RedHat continues to contribute open code, then more power to them.

    The measure of RedHat's "evilness" will come with what they do as they buy these other guys (hey, what happened with the "rename cygnus server giveaway," BTW?). If they leave Cygnus' stuff closed and bundle it with RedHat, well, that will be sad, because they will have missed an opportunity to "raise all boats."

    If they give away the code, then the buyout was a win for us all.

    Also, again, while I spurn RedHat personally for selling some non-free code with their product, you have to give them credit for being a leading light for good. IIRC, Alan Cox is paid handsomely by RedHat. Next to Linus himself, Alan is probably the most important person in Linux kernel development, and, as the principal maintainer of the stable kernel series, he is one of the biggest contibutors to the success of ALL of Linux.

    Alan's not the only one on RedHat's payroll either. We all benefit when hackers of all stripes are able to make a living writing free code. As long as RedHat keeps doing these right things, they should be respected and appreciated. Note I don't mean they shouldn't be criticized! RedHat has to expect some of that as the price of openness. But until RedHat starts openly acting against the interest of free software (which is different from bundling non-free code; I guess I see Debian-style DFSG as pure good, RedHat style GPL'ing of their own development while bundling other people's commercial stuff as impure good, and closed development as evil), I think they are doing just fine.

    They may become the more conservative, stodgy, "tux in a suit" distro as they grow, but so what? As long as it's still free, you can take it and make as cutting-edge and rebellious a distro as you like.

    I don't see a big, even a huge, Redmond-ready RedHat as a threat, unless they start closing the source (some of which they can't thanks to the GPL -- Why do people hate the GPL? -- Never mind, let's not go there today).
  • I think you are wrong. There is a widespread and damaging perception that good == big in the technology world.

    One of the great benefits of OSS is that we might be able to get away from the fear that if I buy into a minority technology I'll be left standing. I'd love to see Linux distros filling tiny little niche markets, and being able to do so becuase people know that they will be able to painlessly switch of their vendor goes belly up.

    The other relevant point is that RH are growing by acquisition, which is what MS is famous for. To be fair, the skills shortage is so accute in some areas that it's nigh on impossible to grow except by acquisition, which exonerates many of the MS buyouts as well as this one.

    Nonetheless, acquiring companies is a sure fire way to spread the message 'we are a big company who can buy little companies - we won't go bust'.

    It's also wrong, of course.

    The one thing I know about OSS is that it got where it is without commercial interest, and while I'd like to see some OSS business models work out, there is not the slightest evidence that any of them do*.


    *A few people sustaining a turnover for a couple of years, and paying a few hundred salaries does not prove a business model :-)
  • What does this mean for Cygwin? Will Redhat contribute to porting applications for windows? Or will that particular product be canned or put on hold?

  • Its about the embedded world. (Score:3)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:36AM (#1532410)
    RedHat realizes that the battle for the desktop, aka replacing Microsoft, will be a hard-fought battle with Microsoft having a better chance because they have more money.

    In the embedded market, if you work is what matters. Consider too, that what has kept Microsoft where they are today is the OS and the supporting software (Office, for example). In the embedded world, the supporting apps don't matter.
    (Note how WinCE isn't taking over as others thought it would.)

    OpenSource therefore has the best chance in the embedded market. Cygnus is quite a player there, with most of its coders contracted out. (over 50% is what I read...) And, like it or not, the BSD licence better protects the embedded players in court than the GPL. How can *ANYONE* take you to court to force a source code release with the BSD licence? In the embedded world, one of the most important thing is the IP (Intellectual Property) of your product. BSD licence better protects IP as expressed in source. As GCC is a compiler, and a tool, it can be used to make code for any licence type, so Cygnus is a win/win GPL or not.

    Oh, think this is good for OpenSource and the GPL? Try this: Motorola uses GCC on its switches. Ask Motorola for its changes to GCC. You won't get them. They say because they licenced them from FSF, they don't have to.
    (If you have products using Linux 'embedded', then write the companies and ask for the source code. See what they say, just for yucks.)



  • Basically they don't have to release the products allready in cygnus portfolio to the open source community since it reads.

    Red hat shares all of its software innovations freely..... (GPL).

    So strictly technical all the things cygnus has developed allready don't count as Red Hat's own innovations. But I too am curious to see what will happen with products born from this take over.

  • A Linux company buys out a Windows company (Score:3)

    by heroine ( 1220 ) on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:37AM (#1532412) Homepage
    It's more interesting in that we've seen a company specializing primarily in Linux consulting buy out a company which once specialized primarily in Windows software. In 1998 90% of Cygnus's revenue was based on versions of GNU pro and Code fusion which ran on Windows and competed directly with Microsoft Visual C++.
  • I recall CYGNUS was going for a name change, with a Linux box as a prize for the lucky one who would think up a compelling name (uh, and the stock symbol - so much for 'privately owned company'). Most wanted it to stay just as it was - Cygnus.


    Apparently, the name change came from where it wasn't expected. So, who gets the Linux box?!?


    If the matter is not settled, I could readily help in the adoption of the mentioned system. Ahem.

  • In order to support the huge stock value, RHAT needs to have some revenue stream. (That old passe concept of fundamental analysis rears its ugly head...)

    Sales of Cygwin and such represent sales. Since the product is already developed, such sales may even come at virtually no cost.

    There's obviously not too likely to be immense changes to GCC (note: it's not called EGCS anymore... ); it might be reasonably argued that RHAT is acting to counter VA Linux Systems, as VA has lately been involved with the IA-64 deployement of GCC.

    As for eCos, I suspect that it's not something RHAT will care much about. I also suspect that it hadn't yet become a substantial revenue stream for Cygnus. That bodes somewhat ill for it getting much continued support, although that's no guarantee.

    I'm actually rather more interested in hearing what RHAT policy is on Source Navigator and such; it would be a rather positive step if they are released under (L)GPL, and rather distressing if they are not...

  • Wow, you mean that was only 10% of their stock. Cygnus has a _way_ higher income than RedHat too, and as everything that redhat has done has been open, this is a Good Thing. (I still hope most that they open their compiler though :).

  • And you wonder why they call Linux users Commies (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:41AM (#1532417)
    This makes me sick. Red Hat is not evil. Have you ever been to a trade show and accually sat down and talk with an employee of redhat? They're very enthusiastic about Linux, and would only do whats best for the community.

    What are you going to say when Red Hat turns up a profit (They haven't so far)? "They're being greedy by charging us $80 for Linux". Whatever. The Book, box, CD, etc may only cost $15, but the rest is all "greed money". Phone tech support is expensive. You have to pay a room full of people $7.50-$10 an hour, plus all the hardware and phone equipment needed to do that (well, it may only be 3-5 people, but still). Plus there is employee healthcare benifits. Oh oh, but thats right, we wouldnt want our redhat employees to be healthy, they're tools of SATAN!!! And food is overrated, they shouldn't buy anything.

    You people are all warped and sick.

  • Re:Telling phrase (Score:3)

    by Jon Peterson ( 1443 ) <jon@@@snowdrift...org> on Monday November 15, 1999 @04:42AM (#1532418) Homepage
    >
    >> If there's one thing I don't ever feel
    >> towards a commerical organisation, it's
    >> indebted.
    >
    >Not even when that organisation has been paying >people to write cool software, and then >releasing it under the GPL?

    Certainly not. Either they pay people to write GPL software in the expectation that somehow they will get a return on their investment. Fine, best of luck to them.

    Or they pay people to write GPL software because they just love free software. In that case the people who should be indebted are the programmers, who are being given a job by people who don't expect to get anything back.

    I write software because its fun. It is its own reward. I hang out on mailing lists and usenet, because for every 25 answers I give, one person mails me back saying "Great - I understand now and it's all working, thanks!". That reply makes me happy, and it's why I do it. No-one should really feel indebted.

    I owe Larry Wall nothing except a smile and a hello if I ever meet him, despite have earned a salary for a year or so on the back of Perl.

    This is the basis of Open Source as it interests me. I use software without owing, and I write it without being owed. It is its own reward.
  • The original story on Slashdot about this had a rumor that some founding members of Redhat would be leaving as a result of this merger. The FAQ on the merger seems to indicate otherwise. Does anyone know if that rumor was definately false or not?
  • > Will they open source Source Navigator, for example?

    While that would be great for us developers, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a clause in the buyout agreement specifying that previously closed-source commercial Cygnus products will remain closed-source and commercial. Else they'd be getting a lot of complaints from people who bought those products before the sellout.


    > [RH are] protecting their interests by ensuring they
    > don't lose their development toolchain,

    Ummm, was there /ever/ any chance that they might? Somehow I just don't see everybody suddenly walking away from GCC, regardless of how badly GCC and Linux get along in any possible futures.


    > It'll be interesting to see what they do with the
    > parts of Cygnus that aren't related to their core Linux business, though.

    That's what bothers me. I like things like Cygwin, whereas RH has no interest in Windows-related software.

    Yeah, it's a great move for the RH business folks, but I don't know whether it was a good call on the part of Cygnus.

  • I recall CYGNUS was going for a name change, with a Linux box as a prize for the lucky one who would think up a compelling name (uh, and the stock symbol - so much for 'privately owned company'). Most wanted it to stay just as it was - Cygnus. Apparently, the name change came from where it wasn't expected. So, who gets the Linux box?!?

    Redhat. And yes, it's Caldera OpenLinux 2.3.

    Ralph

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • RH pays most of the principal kernel developers, and invested a lot of money in GNOME development, and there's no RH logo stamped on those. I think we're pretty safe :)
  • Cygnus has a report of an obscure bug which prevents its development tools from running on a Caldera distribution. No word on when it will be fixed. :)
  • I guess I must have missed something then...
    Did I sleep for 100 years, or why didn't I see Microsoft making all their source available, or even permitting free (as in $0) downloads of their products...

  • Is Redhat going to do what MS did with Transvirtual and ActiveState and let the products continue, or are they going to wipe it?
  • Now I know the alsa [alsa-project.org] team are making a lot of progress, but what if redhat bought opensound and freed it? That would mean a hell of a lot more sound support for linux, something that every distro desparately needs. Just a thought.
  • Luckily, we have to GPL to prevent them from *forcing* us to use their compiler. gcc is gpl'ed, so no one really owns it. The other dists can compile their own gcc and use that.

    However, I suppose they could provide a proprietary, but nice & slick, IDE that everyone chooses to use. But it doesn't seem RedHat's style to become a monopolist. Their business model is based on the notion that open source is a good thing (tm), as is Cygnus. I think it will end up being more like a 'pooling of skills', they weren't gobbling up a competitor. Cygnus was based (more or less) on selling support for open source software, as is Redhat, so there is no reason they won't continue on like that.

    And remember, this is the company that hired Alan Cox and said he could pretty much do whatever the heck he wants. I'm not worried or nervous in the least.

    Dana

  • I agree that this is about giving Red Hat access to the embedded world (in which Cygnus is a major player). Notice that Microsoft gained dominance on the desktop, and is trying to play that upwards into the server space -- it would make sense for Red Hat to try a similar ploy, leveraging Cygnus in the embedded space to help create opportunities in desktop/server spaces.

    One quibble: you write

    Oh, think this is good for OpenSource and the GPL? Try this: Motorola uses GCC on its switches. Ask Motorola for its changes to GCC. You won't get them. They say because they licenced them from FSF, they don't have to.

    This is all kosher. You can use GCC to write proprietary applications, and if you don't actually redistribute GCC, you are not required by the GPL to make your changes available.

    (If you have products using Linux 'embedded', then write the companies and ask for the source code. See what they say, just for yucks.)

    This is a real issue, and is one that the free software community will need to deal with carefully in the days and years to come ...

  • good move for Red Hat -- they're protecting their interests by ensuring they don't lose their development toolchain

    The key Cygnus tools such as EGCS are GPL, so what danger was there? I mean, if Cygnus turned bad, I always could have just grabbed the source and started my own forks, couldn't I? Now, if there ever was any chance of Red Hat losing its development tool chain, then there was the same chance for all of us.

    I'm an optimist, and I'd prefer to believe that Red Hat is after something less proprietary - branding, say, or customer base, or human capital. Not intellectual property. If Red Hat was after intellectual property, then I'm worried.

    Something else that worries me is standardization. Will Red Hat take the same fanatical approach to standardization as Cygnus did with EGCS? Again, I'm an optimist and I'd prefer to believe that Cygnus's commitment to standardization will infect Red Hat to the benefit of us all. I wouldn't like the converse: Red Hat's reputed lack of regard for certain standards infecting Cygnus.

    Now, I'm relatively new to Linux - about 9 months - so I'm not yet in a position to judge whether Red Hat's adherance to standards is good or bad. I do know that I've run into a couple of files with the "wrong" names or located in the "wrong" place, for example, the file HOSTNAME shouldn't be in caps, as I understand it. The ppp support appears to be somewhat "customized". More, I don't know... but it's already enough to get me thinking. It's not so much incompatibility that worries me - I expect it to arise in the natural course of development - but the fact that known incompatibilities go uncorrected for no good reason. Somebody, please tell me that this is accidental, and that with good feedback from the community, Red Hat would do what they have to to stay compatible with the rest of the distributions.

    I'd prefer to remain an optimist.

  • Re:Its about the embedded world. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > Ask Motorola for its changes to GCC. You won't get them.

    They don't have to give you anything according to the GPL. One thing the GPL does not force you to do is to distribute any copies of GPLed software.

    Now, if they gave you a binary version of gcc, then they are also supposed to make the source code changes available...
  • Robert Young will no longer be in charge of day-to-day operations and Matthew Szulik will be the new CEO.

    I suppose this is the source of the rumor. Not exactly true, but based in fact.
  • >This is all kosher. You can use GCC to write proprietary applications, and if you don't actually redistribute GCC, you are not required by the GPL to make your changes available.

    *smile* but Motorola was asked for the changes to GCC that shipped on the machine. Hence the statement from Motorola that 'they had a seperate licence from FSF'

    Anyone with access to Motorola Cell Phone transmitters wanna try again and document this? :-)
  • > EGCS' development will move fully to GNU, as per the original GCC

    I thought Cygnus had formally adopted GCC from GNU and that they were working on merging EGCS back into GCC (just as they had always hoped).
  • I could be off here, but it seems to me that a lot of people are having a knee-jerk reaction to RH's aquisition plans etc. What did you expect,
    really? They have to do something with the (absurd) market cap they have or they will loose it, *fast*. There are a lot of holes in the RH business plan at the moment, so of course they will try and plug them. Whether or not a particular purchase is good idea for redhat or for 'the community' (whatever that is) is not such an easy question to answer.

    I think it is *way* too early to start lumping them in with MS. Look, big (market wise) companies buy small ones because it is cheaper than developing in-house (or at least some PHB thinks it is). Why should we expect RH be different in that? The question is, what are they going to do with this new leverage they currently command in the commercial linux world? And what can we do to help keep them on track? Just because a company has money doesn't actually make them evil (statistical evidence aside :) ). Unfortunately there are going to be more and more pressures on RH from outside ( 'the community') to do things in conventially brain-damaged ways. That doesn't mean they will follow that pattern. I think this possibility is what people are reacting to, rather than any action RH has really taken.

    One interesting point is the fact that while RH and Cygnus are (were?) both commercial players in the open-source game, they had different outlooks. RH may have bundled commercial software, but it has always claimed that in-house software will be returned to 'the community'. Cygnus on the other hand had a commercial version/free version approach. The question is, will RH free up the Cygnus tools, or bundle them as a commercial add-on?

    A more important issue is the long term scope of RHlabs. Indirectly, RH has aquired the current gcc maintenance codebase and people, no? This is not inherently a bad thing. However, it does raise a few interesting points: like how much concentration of OS projects is a good thing? If at some later date RH starts playing silly buggers with some of 'our' cherised projects, is the OS community going to be faced with the possibility of a series of ugly forks?

    On a related note, RH is putting a lot of effort into PR on one side, and eye-candy (see new installer) on the other....fine, but they have some more serious problems to look at. I have recently played around with 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1 on both i386 and alpha. For the most part things have been smooth to get up and going (excepting 5.x on alpha). The problem is, once the system is up. I have never had as much trouble with a linux box as I have with the 6.x machines. Okay, that is not quite true... the 0.11x betas would fall down hourly when you played with them (but it was fun :) --- and things didn't get really solid until 2.0.x kernels (for me at least). But for example, the 6.x versions ship with a buggy gnome, and then try really hard to get you to use it. My 6.0 machines would dump a core in ~ every time you log in! Sometime gnome would hang for a minute or two with *no feedback* as to what was happening (unless you count the X error messages) 6.1 I thought would be better but it has all the signs of being a rush job to get the new installer out the door. Gnome was still problematic, there are config hiccups with less often use packages, and the 'upgrade' changes parts of *my* config without warning or backups. Annoying. I don't want to pick on Gnome, there are plenty of other examples but this message is way too long already...

    The point I am getting at (slowly, sorry) is that this is a bad sign. My debian machines, slack machines, and the machines that were hand-built (no distro) had never given me this much trouble. The problem is that in NA at least RH is becoming synonymous with Linux in the minds of the great unwashed. So either we don't care what anyone else thinks (a valid, if limited scope, view) or we care what people think about RH. In the later case we really need to push them on the underlying technical issues a bit. It is a bit discouraging, for example, to see the possibility of a BETA-VHS type thing being precipitated by RH. Look at .rpm vs say , .deb. The .deb is a better design, and fits in to existing tools more easily. Why didn't RH, realising this, bail on .rpm and make a set of good tools to sit on top of the .deb format? Ok, I know this has been talked to death, but I recall it to bring to mind the problems we could face in a couple of years if redhat has both a) de-facto control of a number of significant projects and b) a not-invented-here syndrome...

    Enough rambling!

    S.

  • *smile* but Motorola was asked for the changes to GCC that shipped on the machine. Hence the statement from Motorola that 'they had a seperate licence from FSF'

    Ah. That would be different.

    But still kosher, if in fact they do have a license from the FSF. This is one consequence of the FSF's insistance on copyright assignment -- they do have the right to negotiate a separate license agreement.

    Remember that one of the classic points about the GPL is that people who want to use GPL'ed code in a proprietary fashion always have the right to go to the license holder and negotiate a different license ...

    (... which makes things more interesting for Linux in the embedded space, as I don't think Linus has been as anal-retentive as the FSF about copyright assignment. Imagine trying to track down all the contributors to the Linux kernel to negotiate different license terms ...)

  • i don't see the point of you nay-sayers.

    after the microsoft case is over, everyone will be wary of monopolistic/evil companies in the computer industry. and besides, redhat peddles linux. what's good for redhat, is good for linux.
  • > Oh, think this is good for OpenSource and the GPL? Try this: Motorola uses GCC on its switches. Ask Motorola for its changes to GCC. You won't get them.

    And they don't have to. Do you see Motorola GCC being distributed anywhere? Jesus H Christ, are there any brain cells still active on slashdot whenever the GPL is mentioned?
  • Although I generally laud RedHat's business practices, I'm concerned about a couple of things. Cygnus was named the maintainer of egcs (i.e. gcc 3.0) which everyone depends on. Cygnus' revenue stream depended on making egcs work well for basically every platform on the planet. Does RedHat plan to use Cygnus just as a revenue generator or are they going to try to exert more control over egcs development to suit the RedHat platform? Will RedHat Linux (or just Linux in general) become the preferred platform for egcs?

    Perhaps RH's plans include nothing more than bundling some of Cygnus' cool tools with their distro. This might leave many free software advocates up in arms, but it would be basically harmless (at least in the short term) to the free software interests.

    At the Ottawa Linux Symposium, the Corel guys said that they were working with Cygnus to tune egcs for the WINE project. Now that Corel is positioning itself as a competitor to RH, how will the Cygnus buy out affect Corel and their distro?

    What RedHat does with Cygnus will be very important to everyone in the free software community. If they go completely evil on us, it will leave the free software community spinning trying to setup a new egcs maintainer and give RH an unhealthy head start in a number of linux markets.

  • As I understand it, it's more the other way round, with GCC 2.95.x being egcs, with some of GCC 2.8's enhancements being merged in.

    (Virtually nothing of PGCC is present in either, and it looks like that it's going to stay that way, at least until PGCC is more solid. Even then, it would seem like PGCC's and EGCS' philosophies are sufficiently divergent that PGCC will never make it into EGCS.)

  • Try compiling something a little larger than "hello world" with gcc sometime before comparing code footprints. apache produced a smaller executable with gcc than it did with DevPro (though DevPro could still probably crunch it way down if I used all the size-over-speed optimizations).

    My "hello world" is 1K, I just moved it to libc, gee doesn't that make it useful?
  • Before you have an aneurysm and kill off what brain cells you have....Motorola sells cell phone transmission equipment. Some of this equipment has Unix boxes. Motorola ships binaries of GCC on these machines. When asked for source, the asker was told NO. BECAUSE Motorola had a licensing agreement with FSF that allowed them NOT to have to ship their changes.

    Want to prove/disprove this?
    1) Buy a cell site
    2) Confirm the GCC is there
    3) Ask for the code

    I'm all for facts....you don't believe this...then go buy your own damn cell site and prove it.
  • I mean, if Cygnus turned bad, I always could have just grabbed the source and started my own forks, couldn't I?

    Yes, you could... assuming you have the relevant knowledge of compilers and compilation techniques. Do you? Buying Cygnus gives Red Hat a supply of developers that know the tools inside and out. They already had a couple of staff that did (e.g., David Miller, Jakub Jelinek), but probably not enough to do a good job should Cygnus have decided to start concentrating more on the embedded market or whatever else. A decent development toolchain is probably the single most critical factor to Linux's survival. Red Hat know this, and have taken steps to protect it. Think of it as a support contract. Companies buy support not because they expect things to go wrong, but so they're covered on the offchance they they do go wrong. Wise move, IMHO.

  • >But still kosher, if in fact they do have a license from the FSF

    *ding* Give that poster a moderation up!
    A 5 even.

    This little point is something the GPL 'keep the source free' crowd don't quite grok.

    Some source is 'free-er' than others. Especally if money is involved.


  • CBS has some lofty comments about Red Hat:
    "Red Hat, the specialist in software applications using the revolutionary Linux operating system..."

    Revolutionary eh?

    It seems the big media is really taking a good look at our little community!

    You can read the entire CBS Story Here [marketwatch.com]

  • I think VMWare would be a good thing to buy.

    And open-source a max of it too!

    VMWARE ANYONE?!?!?!?!?!?!

    Oh and while you are at it, could you finally make that portal of yours. I dream of the day I'll have a my.redhat.com page that makes sense and gives some benefits!


  • > it's more the other way round

    Regardless of what is merging into what, my real point was that Cygnus is the maintainer now, not GNU...
  • Your indenting style "sux reel bAd do0d!" :-)
  • Why woudln't they do it? If they make those ides why wouldn't they require other people to do it?


    I really don't see that it is evil.

    What is evil is not when you own everything like MS. It is when you use that power to screw other people's work, innovation!

    I wouldn't have cared less that MS makes win98, Office, IE , Visual Studio..... if they didn't use their cash to destroy other people's work.

    I don't question MS's work. I question their market methods!

  • Bollocks!

    Cygnus has always been focused on unix hosted FSF software like GCC (mainly their custom regression tested version called GNUPro). Sure they _have_ Windows software but their main revenue stream comes from unix workstation software (AFAIK)...cuz that's what embedded developers in large companies historically use. Their NT support is slow but useful (see my URL above).

  • Here we go again!
    17 years (or so) cycle?

    But really, shouldn't we read this news as:
    "RedHat buys GCC?"

    Hmm... I think GCC is (primarily) what made GNU project so important. Now GCC drifts away. What's next? GPL?
  • Check your WordNet dictionary, definition 2:

    > indebted
    [...]
    > 2: owing gratitude or recognition to another for help or favors etc

    In other words, you should be *thankful* that Cygnus and others have developed Open Source software that you use. There is no obligation on your part. An obligation would preclude gratitude.

    This is how Open Source works. While there is no requirement that you give anything back, it is hoped that you will feel gratitude for the Free software and that you might want to say "thank you" by offering something Free back.

  • Heck.. (Score:1)

    by ceeam ( 39911 )
    Originally there were HTML 5.0 Standard <paranoia> and </paranoia> tags in previous posting, but Slashdot's Preview->Submit sequence happily ate them.

    BTW: Be warned...
  • Try emailing the guy's at Moretonbay who make routers and remote access equipment using embedded Linux.

    Better still, save their time and just download it from their website at http://www.moretonbay.com/

  • Big synergies between RedHat and Cygnus (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    RedHat doesn't specialize in consulting! And Cygnus's revenues have never been primarily from selling boxed products -- let alone 90%.

    Cygnus makes money by selling support and development contracts for GNU software to large and medium sized companies. They built the development environment and complete software simulator for the Sony PlayStation-2. They sell risk reduction to big companies where time-to-market is critical and delays of even a week in product release cost millions of dollars over the life of a product. They make the compilers that Cisco uses to build all of its products (and Cisco pays $M for support to make very sure that no compiler problems delay or impede their products). Every time a new 32-bit or 64-bit chip comes out, the company ends up paying Cygnus to port the GNU tools to it (because their customers demand GNU tools, and while they could pay anybody to do the port, Cygnus has a great track record of doing good ports on time and on budget). They're doing the Merced compiler for Intel, for example, as well as a whole pile of MIPS chips, Hitachi H8 embedded micros, ARM, etc. Check the Cygnus press release page.

    Cygnus revenue has always been 90% from selling its services, largely to chip and product companies in the embedded market; RedHat revenue has always been 90% from selling boxed software to end users and companies in the PC OS market. The combined company will offer compatible POSIX APIs that let people write apps that will run on everything from digital cameras and cellphones, to MS-Windows, to Linux, up to Beowulf supercomputers. RedHat and Cygnus have an almost perfect matrix of overlapping and synergistic skills and markets. I'm psyched!

  • much needed... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    great, now they can hire some programmers to fix the pathetically buggy 6.1 install...
  • Inprise was woth less than $300 million this morning. It really would've been nice to see free versions of VisiBroker, Delphi, C++ builder, Interbase, etc. . . Not that I think this would happen in a million years. BTW, in terms of stock, Cygnus was also valued at 6 times as much as Motorola paid for Metrowerks. While I understand the reasons for Red Hat's purchase, doesn't it seem like they overpaid a bit ? --JRZ
  • I guess Sun didn't just pay 500+ million to give StarOffice away for free.

    Not quite the same as being open, but still the same as cutting off direct revenues from selling the product.

    I agree, I don't think RedHat has plans on giving anything away.
  • What on earth are you talking about? Think about that. Sarcasm aside, why would RedHat EVER want to make it easier for people to run software on Windows? Regardless of what API the software uses, it's still running on Windows, not Linux.

    RedHat isn't interested in APIs, because there's no way to make money off them (if they remain open, anyway). What they do make money off of is operating systems. And if people are using Windows, then they aren't using Linux, so I think it's a pretty valid concern as to whether or not RedHat/Cygnus will continue their work on Cygwin or drop it.

    If they drop it, another group can pick it up, but it's much nicer to have a company with financial backing working on code like this.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Also, let's be sure to mention it's not because of the merger, but because of workload.
    Bob is not leaving Red Hat or anything.
  • SGI is already in cahoots with Debian - I doubt that they'll jump in the RedHat pool.
    --
    Steven Webb
    System Administrator II - Juneau and TECOM projects
    NCAR - Research Applications Program

  • You know, they could also make gcc output "Red Hat is your friend. Trust Red Hat. Buy Red Hat products" on your speakers when you compile something.

    But they won't. And even if they did, SuSE could just remove it (it's their right with GPL software)

    What Red Hat gains from this (apart from revenue, which cygnus has been making quite a lot of) is several top-notch compiler/development environment developers.

    Some people say Red Hat is monopolizing the Linux software market. Is that really even possible since you are giving out all your software?

    The Linux support market is a different matter. They certainly have most of the top developers working for them, but is that really a bad thing? It's not like they're not paying them for their work. With stock options and all that they probably are doing quite well too. As are the shareholders.

    It is necessary to have companies which can answer questions from "I get this login prompt and don't know what to do?" to "gcc creates broken code when cross-compiling our code to this and that architecture, here's a code sample" if Linux wants to be a credible operating system.

  • ...the Corel guys said that they were working with Cygnus to tune egcs for the WINE project. Now that Corel is positioning itself as a competitor to RH, how will the Cygnus buy out [sic] affect Corel and their distro?...

    Umm... as an earlier poster commented on Cygwin - why would RH *not* want there to be optimizations in egcs/gcc for WINE? How does a strong WINE with good compiler backing hurt RH in any way?

    By allowing Windows users to easily migrate to Linux, and by allowing Windows programmers to easily port to Linux - this hurts RH? I think not. To answer your question, it won't affect Corel, or their distro. GCC is GPLed, so any changes would benefit the entire community.

    The strength of the OS only helps *all* distributions. Distributions seek to gain and maintain market share by offering value-adds. Since many programs which could be considered value-adds are GPLed, there's not really any danger of any one company taking over because they own WINE, for instance. It's a lot like the difference between, say, Mandrake and Slackware. They're marketed and developed for different audiences. And let us not forget, children, about the primary source of revenue in the coming years, by distribution - the ever-popular service and support model. Further, Corel will be able to successfully value-add their Wordperfect product, probably bundling it in with at least a year of support and their Linux distro. This is how things will be done - with service, support, and closed-source value-adds. As a community, we need to highly discourage the use of closed-source products, in order to prevent any one distribution company from attaining the Microsoftian level of market dominance. The question I pose now is, "Does the Linux community really want to prevent *any* Linux company from turning a profit?"

    Remember, boys and girls - free speech, NOT free beer.
  • Here is my list of companies RedHat shouldn't buy... Troll Tech. This is an eggshell and we don't want it broken. Let them do QT under the QPL at there own pace.

    Actually, I think this might be a Good Thing. People flame the GNOME folks for releasing GNOME 1.0 before it was ready, but look at the bugs in Qt 2.x and you'll see Troll has the same problems. The difference is, it is one company, not legions of Open Source developers. If Red Hat bought Troll, they could GPL Qt, which I think would be a Good Thing. IMNSHO.

    Now my list of companies to buy... Borland/Imprise.

    Fine, but don't kill off their Windows product lines. Borland's C++Builder and Delphi make Windows development bearable.
  • That's very true, and I understand that. What I was trying to say was that if Red Hat's takeover makes the Cygnus developers jittery, they may well pass control -back- to GNU. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

  • They're paying a notional $674 million, based on Red Hat's current stock price. I think that valuation is unreasonably inflated, at over 90 times the last half's revenue.

  • I'm a member of the GCC (formerly egcs) steering committee, but this is just me speaking here.

    egcs and FSF gcc re-merged in April 1999. There is no longer a separate egcs project. The former egcs team now controls the FSF gcc, the rifts have been patched up, and some of the key GCC developers are competitors to Cygnus (and possibly to Red Hat).

    Cygnus marketing has no say on GCC releases, just as they had no say on egcs releases. Red Hat marketing won't be able to affect the timing or quality of GCC 3.0.

    Cygnus donates a machine and network bandwidth, plus developers; however, the steering committee, not Cygnus (or Red Hat) controls the direction of the project.

    Both Cygnus and Red Hat have good records in their interaction with the free software community, so even if we didn't have the safeguards in place that we do, there wouldn't really be anything to worry about.

  • The Linux box was sub-divided among all of the thousands of folks who told them to leave the name the same. One transistor per person ...

  • Goodie!

    Now maybe Gilmore will have the bucks that Hudson needs to get his rotary rocket [rotaryrocket.com] into space. B-)

  • heroine claims that In 1998 90% of Cygnus's revenue was based on versions of GNU pro and Code fusion which ran on Windows ....

    Cygnus is (was) a private company and never reported numbers that would enable you to make this estimate, which it appears you are just making up. Cygnus's big-money customers were generally doing embedded systems development, not Windows development, so Cygnus was in no way competing with MSVC++.

  • > *smile* but Motorola was asked for the changes
    > to GCC that shipped on the machine. Hence the
    > statement from Motorola that 'they had a
    > seperate licence from FSF'

    Actually, there never was such a statement. You are simply testing the bullshit-o-meter on /.

    > Anyone with access to Motorola Cell Phone
    > transmitters wanna try again and document
    > this? :-)

    How would that be possible, when you are simply making things up?
  • Being lazy has nothing to do with it. It is a question of not being stupid.

    Evidence pointing toward your lies containing any truth: An anonymous posting on a web board.

    Evidence pointing towards your lies being totally made up for the occation: All prior experience with the FSF and RMS.

    There really aren't no comparison. Making up anonymous claims on web boards with no evidence is no effort, putting in active effort to disprove them would be a losing strategy.

    However, iff someone here are inclined to put any value in what they read from anonymous sources on /., check out the signed contracts gcc contributers gets from the FSF. It should be relatively simple to show that such "special closed source licenses" would not be legal.

Slashdot Top Deals

"The medium is the massage." -- Crazy Nigel

Close