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Red Hat Software Businesses

Red Hat Backlash? 309

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
FolkWolf sent us a link to CNET which as an article on Red Hat Backlash speculated on by the The Gartner Group. Basically revolves around the recent investment announcements. They talk about RH walking a line between boasting their successes, and alienating themselves from the community.
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Red Hat Backlash? More

Red Hat Backlash?

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  • I agree that redhat is more free than some of the others. But redhat does ship non-free stuff on their cds. Netscape comes to mind. So debian is and probably always will be the most-free distribution there is. The Social Contract gaurantees that.
  • Uhh, I'm sorry, you mistakenly thought I cared. The point is, it is not "free" so therefore debian is more free than redhat.
  • Anonymous Coward (why am I not surprised) wrote:

    Look. Red Hat is a threat. Pure and simple. Sure, Gnome is great. Thanks. But right now Red Hat is VERY CLOSE to becoming the new MS of Linux. Look at what IBM did-- it didn't want to settle on one company and crown it "CZAR of the PCs" like it did with MS in the 1980s.

    This is FUD pure and simple. Saying "RedHat is a threat" over and over does not make it so. If it is a threat, tell us how it is a threat. Vague references to IBM granting the PC-DOS contract to Microsoft in the early eighties doesn't cut it. Not only is IBM's investment in RedHat completely different from granting a monopoly contract, but IBM is a completely different company now than it was then. If RedHat is a threat than you should be able to come up with a plausible chain of events from the current situation to a bad one. RedHat has bent over backwards to make sure there is no such chain.


    As far as I'm concerned, it's Debian all the way, until Debian gets too corporate. And then it's off to some other model.

    More FUD. How can Debian possibly get "too corporate"?!!? They're a non-profit organization based on volunteers with almost no cash flow.


    They're welcome to contribute to the free source initiative all they want. (Hey, Red Hat, FUCKING JOIN IN ON STANDARDS, why doncha?) But I don't trust them just because they're kewl and sold Linux back in the old days.

    What standards aren't they joining in on that they should? Again, vague accusations just make for FUD. They have a delegate to the LSB, their distribution is POSIX compliant, they ship an ICCCM compliant X Server, they follow the FHS better than most distributions. What do you want from them, Unix trademark compliance?


    Stick to core principles: Trust no one but yourselves.

    Finally, some wisdom. I'm certainly not going to trust an anonymous coward with anger but no information.
  • Actually, for a troll it was better than average. The responses had at least some thought put into them.

    And no, I don't consider myself a sucker for replying to a Troll. My posts are more to get my viewpoint out there, either directly or in response to an opposing viewpoint. The troll's viewpoint here was one that is common enough that I thought it should be rebutted regardless of whether or not it was the person's real opinion. It all goes to show that, even if you think you're playing petty games, there's a valid place for some trolls.
  • Ignore it people...remember that this is a community, and anyone who recieves benefits, also benefits the community. As long as Red Hat stays a member of the Linux Community, we all benefit!

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • Personally, I don't think you talked to anyone. You read an interview with Patrick Volkerding, in which he stated that there was omce an agreement with SuSE that would prevent them from selling in the U.S.
  • I've been thinking about writing an open letter to Red Hat containing constructive criticism about its practices, business dealings etc. (Disclaimer: I use Red Hat, and I like it, but there are a few concerns I and many other users have) Anyone with any input (URLs of other letters, for example) feel free to email me (will try to respond, but have been occupied lately--no guarantee. Credit will be given if quoted).

  • Netscape is free as in beer, not speech (and it was one of the first "commercial" software to run in Linux).

  • I hope you know that Slackware is a commercial distribution (like Red Hat, unlike Debian).
  • Posted by stu vanderhoffenstoffen:

    They're nothing but a bunch of sellouts. Here in North Carolina, everybody who wants to be cool talks about how they're so into redhat. It's disgusting.

    The UNC computer science club toured their building a couple of weeks ago and it was the worst tour in the galaxy!! They had some former airforce cowboy lead us around, showing us empty cubes and let us watch a bunch of software developers play video games for 10 minutes. When we asked for some of their free software, they told us to go to the store and buy it! And one of our guys just happened to be wearing a faded red cap (which has been around longer than that lousy company), and that cowboy insulted him, trying to pawn off some really cheap, scsi blazing-red baseball cap on him.

    I've only been using linux for about a year now, and setting up and administering slackware 3.6 by hand was tons more fun and informative than setting up a red hat box.

    And RedHat SparcLinux especially sucks!

  • Posted by stu vanderhoffenstoffen:

    Coward, if it weren't for Slackware, there'd be no RedHat. Slackware is old, but I'd take it over selling out to RedHat any day. Have a little respect for the original innovators.
  • Posted by stu vanderhoffenstoffen:

    And you're just an anonymous coward. I know about SLS. I also know that Slackware is what originally brought Linux to the masses. And that's a good thing. What's bad is when self-righteous cowards like yourself decide to insult the very people you want learning about Linux (Linux, not RedHat, Linux).

    And while I may not be a math major, I do know that if SLS was ripped off by Slackware, and Slackware was ripped off by RedHat, then RedHat is no better a distribution than Slackware. So get off your high horse and lick me.
  • Posted by stu vanderhoffenstoffen:

    You missed my point. The tour is indicative of how RedHat treats the people who actually use their software. They'll suckle Netscape's and Oracle's teets and roll out the red carpet to get money and corporate prestige, but when faced with a bunch of college kids with no money but an earnest love for computing, they show us where the documentation people sit, where the gnome people sit, give us the honor to watch that rasterman dude play video games, and then boot us right out of the office after 20 minutes. And I'm not going to even talk about the effort that went into getting the tour in the first place. They won't send someone to come speak at our meetings, but they'll send someone to the local LUG meeting the next night. And they put off the tour for an entire semester!

    I'm sorry, but I was under the impression that it was the users who counted, not the big bad corporations. To hell with all this corporate acceptance bullshit. Why must Linux be validated on whether or not it's helping IBM exploit users?
  • There's always going to be turncoats who deride their once-favorite indie band that signs on with a major label. Debian & slackware will be the cool distros, and the tragically-hip can always roll their own, riding the unstable branch of whatever packages they care to, on top of freebsd even (if linux is just too mainstream for their tastes). World domination is still inevitable. ;-)
  • I've heard the same rumblings here at /., but I have taken it to be a handful of anonymous trolls trying to start a flamewar. (Red Hat's GPL'd contributions to the source-pool are "proprietary"!? These trolls know not of what they speak, obviously.) True: if I were a Gartner Groupie hanging out on slashdot, I'd have written the same article, but that's only because if I were a Gartner Groupie I wouldn't have the sense to tell the difference between the pulse of the community and a few saber-rattling flame-mongers.
  • Red Hat is still favorite distro but one major
    annoyance is that Red Hat sticks things in odd
    directories -- they seem to totally ignore the
    /usr/local directory and stick everything in
    /usr instead.

    Another RedHat-ism is this linuxconf tool --
    I don't like the smell of it, so I disabled
    it on all my boxes.

    I hope Red Hat doesn't try to bully new "standards"
    on Linux.
  • I think SuSE and PHT will do okay, no matter how large and successful Red Hat becomes. People tend to be nationalistic (not always a bad thing), so SuSE will continue to do well in Germany, PHT likewise in Asia.

    but it must really suck to be Caldera right now... :-|

    TedC

  • Why would you say "it must really suck to be Caldera right now"

    Well, it's not that you have a bad distro, it's that people are showing a strong tendency to 'follow the herd', and Red Hat is getting most of the media attention. As Bob Young would say, they're good at marketing catsup. :-)

    I happen to use OpenLinux as my main distro simply because it's stable and it came with KDE. I also use Red Hat 5.2, and I'm evaluating SuSE 6.0. I was disappointed with the 60 page getting started guide that came with 1.3; hopefully 2.0 will include a more extensive manual, and more than 30 days of installation support. I tentatively plan to buy OpenLinux 2.0 to get the 2.2 kernel and KDE 1.1.

    I don't have any real complaints with Red Hat; they have a good product and market it well. But I am concerned that the LSB is going to get run over in this sudden Red Hat lovefest.

    TedC

  • Shrug (Score:1)

    by mackga ( 990 )
    I use RH, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to see what Linux is about. It's a way in for newbies - fella at work installed 5.0 last night on his 98 machine (dual-boot), and was excited as hell about it. Thing is, once anyone who is using RH starts playing around and then participates in the community, he/she/it will realize there are always more choices. Don't like RH, roll yr own! Try Suse, Debian, Slack, Mandrake, Caldera, PacHiTech, Trinux, MkLinux, LinuxPPC, did I leave anyone out? Is Yggdrasil still around? Anyway, RH is leading the way for the exposure of Linux to alot of folks. Get 'em in the door; that's the first step. Once inside, they can figure out what's best for thier uses - this includes corps w/ IT depts that are slow to move. Hell, once folks realize they have control over their boxen, they might even realize that they are basically smart people who can figure things out for themselves - unlike what a certain large-but-unnamed-here company on the west coast would have them believe.

  • Michael Johnson, a Red Hat developer, came and gave a speech to my LUG as soon as Red Hat heard about us -- one of their marketing people, Lisa, apparently searches the LUG databases and contacts their founders. Well, she wrote me, said she and Michael were coming to Minneapolis, and would we like to hear him give a talk? And what's your address so we can send you 100 free Power Tools CD sets?

    In his talk, Michael stressed numerous times that everything coded at Red Hat is released under the GPL, and that they are committed to free software. Red Hat Linux is a quality product that is free-as-in-speech. That's all that matters, and I wish them well.

    And the Power Tools CDs? Into the hands of more than a few people who had never heard of Linux before. I defy any of you to say that introducing people to free software is a bad thing.

  • Infact I've been witness to it already, and am part of it. I began with Slackware, then switched to RH and used it for a considerable amount of time, but now I'm moving to Stampede. Other than RPM being a terrible package format, my primary reasons are that it feels like RH is getting branded with Linux. They can make all the money they want, but these days it seems like I can't visit a Linux/OSS related site without being hit by several mentions of the company (not to mention VA Research banners being everywhere as well, which I'm also quite sick of. Every site is hosted by VAR now.)

    Every GNU/Linux "review" now is really just a review of what RH has done lately, and how it compares to NT this week. Maybe if you're lucky you'll see SuSE or Debian mentioned, or a reference to slackware being "the true hacker's" distribution, but that's rare. They're definitely starting to alienate people, and they better start paying attention to that, otherwise they *will* be the next slackware.
  • Apparently lots of people are misunderstanding what debian is all about. It's not about only GPL, it's about DFSG free software (In other words, the stuff that gets OpenSource [tm] branding).

    And, wrt to 'ease', I saw someone mention SuSE as making things easier for the 'old user' ... I've been using Linux for 3 years, so I guess I would be old, or at least middle aged. I don't find GUI all-in-one-place config tools to make things any easier, though. If I'm doing system administration remotely (which is usually), those are a distinct hinderance. I forward the notion that debian makes it easier for those 'old' users, by providing a well-tested stable distribution, by setting up sane defaults (rotating log files nightly, for instance), by gearing itself toward administration-from-anywhere, and by providing an all-encompassing upgrade between distributions.

    So far, nothing else I've seen has been as easily upgradable as debian ... Part of it stems from each package being responsible for any special cases that might occur between releases, and part from the fact that there *are* so many packages, that everything most people would have installed is packaged. And, the only time I've needed a reboot as part of an upgrade was when the utmp format changed between libc5 and libc6 in the Debian 1.3 -> 2.0 upgrade.

    To put my comments in perspective, I've used Slackware and Redhat, and still use Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Solaris.
  • Mail might otherwise go in /var/spool/mail
    or directly to the user's home directory.

  • I find that hard to believe... were you born with all the knowledge you have now?

  • Bob Young owned a bookstore, and was on the Slackware mailing list. At some point he bought a CD burner, started selling slackware disks at a cheaper price, and spammed everyone on the Slackware list about it. He then included glibc as a way to make other distros incompatible.

    ...

    (btw, I learned the info in the first paragraph of this post from someone closely involved in Slackware whom I met at LinuxWorld; any innacuracies are my fault.)

    Uh huh. Tell me another one. I'm sorry, but I've been in the Linux community for a very long time (since Slackware 1.0 in fall of '93), and I remember nothing of the sort.

    Red Hat's been its own distribution as long as it's been around; it was never based on Slackware. (Anybody else remember *.rpp files?) Red Hat's package management scheme has always been better than the rather lame way Slackware handles things. The glibc claim is ludicrous, given that that's the direction the libc architects (including H.J. Lu) are encouraging people to go.

    Your acquaintance may be horribly misremembering how Slackware got started. Slackware was originally a set of patches for the SLS distribution, which was the very first commercial Linux distro on floppy and CDROM ('92-'93). Everything in SLS was freely available, but the media was extremely pricey, even for the time. Pat Volkerding made Slackware originally as a patched version of SLS, but then the SLS guy (whose name escapes me) threatened to sue Pat for using the SLS install scripts, which the SLS guy saw as his proprietary property. This was widely seen (or at least seen by me) as an attempt to keep Slackware from cutting into SLS sales, but it failed miserably. Pat wrote his own install scripts and SLS died a slow death over the following year or so. By mid-'94, Slackware was in the position that Red Hat is in now in terms of percentage mindshare.

    Care to name your source? Didn't think so.

    --Troy

  • Look, email Pat V., or find the old Slackware mailing list archives (if they're still around), either one of these would either verify what I was told.

    You made the claim. It's your responsibility to back it up.

    I was there, and I remember nothing of the sort. Slackware doesn't maintain any sort of mail archive that I can find. A Deja News power search for "bob young slackware" in comp.os.linux.* over 1/1/1994 - 1/1/1996 confirms my memory, as it turns up zero hits.

    As far as the libc thing, Slackware still carries libc instead of glibc.

    So? This proves what, other than the fact that Slackware's libc is horribly dated, not thread-safe, and no longer maintained by the libc developers? Debian ships with glibc too, ya know.

    --Troy
  • Would you rather we didn't host them? I'm a total push over for hosting, I admit, but this is important for linux that these projects get hosted, I'm proud to do it.


    Chris DiBona


    VA Research Linux Outreach Guy


    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • Humm, I use ee on my Debian 1.3 system. Guess I am just special.

    /mill
  • Red Hat's rise to Linux power is a perfect example of modern day Darwinian Selection. Eventually one
    distribution *has* to win. Just as Microsoft Windows won the DOS/OS2/Mac/Amiga race of the
    80's/90's, Red Hat is winning the Linux race of today. One team comes up with a solution that's better
    than the rest, and then everyone start standardizing on them, and then anyone who doesn't is left up the
    creek without a paddle. Is this a bad thing?

    Yes. I don't want to be forced to use something that I consider to be technically inferior. If Red Hat abuses its power (which it hasn't yet) we could very well see other distros being forced to adopt their way of doing things. I already have enough trouble with stuff that's only distributed in RPM form (alien helps, but it can only do so much)

    Daniel
  • Debian uses glibc. :-)

    Daniel

    [ neither Gnome nor KDE is the 'official' Debian 'desktop environment' AFAIK. I suspect Potato will have a choice between them in installation if a kosher version of Qt is released by then. But what do I know..? ]
  • Personally, I love all the distributions. I myself chose Debian, and I'm planning on sending them a big fat donation in SCSI adapters and cash. However, I think the Linux movement is the coolest thing to happen in the computer industry since porn. Anyone who is contribution in any way, however minor, is my friend. Red Hat hasn't bitten us yet, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt. If they betray the community, well, we have ways of dealing with traitors. If they don't, then we haven't alienated anyone now have we?

    --Defiler.
  • Wait a second, on all my RedHat 5.1 and 5.2 boxes it _is_ /var/spool/mail . In fact, I think it has been since 4.0 (I would have to check to find out).
  • If there is one thing that ticks me off about KDE, it is the Harmony project. Geez, you would think that after all this time the Free Software Community would get it through their heads that they needed a widget set of their own. The Harmony Project will almost assuredly end up like Lesstif perpetually close but not done. GTK, on the other hand, is clearly Free Software. It can't be co-opted, embraced and extended, and it doesn't have to spend eternity trying to mimic some other toolkit's bugs.

    This is not to say that KDE isn't good software. I was impressed, and I am sure that Harmony has some talented people working on it as well. It just pains me to see talent being wasted on a toolkit when it could just as easily be used on a widget set that it already free software. The fact of the matter is that GTK development (and Gnome development as well) is moving along at a frightening pace. Troll Tech had better look lively if they don't want to get completely outmaneuvered.

    In the world of computers (especially in Unix) the most open standards tend to win out, and there is no more open standard than GTK.

  • yeah (Score:1)

    by mattdm ( 1931 )
    You know, like Yahoo, or MSN, or AOL.

    --

  • As far as I can see, Red Hat has always been a Pro Linux anti-proprietary type of company. As long as whatever they produce is still GPL people will back them. OF COURSE this could be a low power scare tactic for suits. (beware!)

    Don't shun Red Hat ... Help Them!

    Have any suggestions on how they could make Linux better, easier, cooler? Write them!

  • The others are full of proprietary crap, including shareware and half-assed Open Source. If you want to write an open letter of complaint, try SuSE, Slackware, EasyLinux, or Mandrake. All of those are far worse behaved than Red Hat is.

    Disclaimer: I may be considered a bit biased. But whatever.

    Explain thyself? How is Slackware, for instance, worse than a distro (Red Hat) that renames their libraries and kernels so that they appear to be full releases when in actuality they're pre-releases? How is it worse than a distro whose install often ignores the user's wishes, and which actively presents and promotes itself as the Linux? How is it worse than a distro that is far, far more marketing and hype than QA and careful testing?
  • This is a wee bit inaccurate, save for the title.

    And no, I do not care to elaborate.
  • Apache, like pretty much everything else in Slackware, is installed according to the author's defaults.
  • The problem with this is mainly on the corporate side. As companies begin to develop on and invest in Linux, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that a distribution does not grab all the support and run away with it. Think about it: for many people, the sole reason for not running Linux right now is that certain programs are not supported. Now suppose the current trend of "Red Hat as corporate Linux" continues, accelerated by their presence in the corporate world and the support of commercial software companies. Now suppose they decide to rename some pre-release library, and badness ensues. Do people say "Red Hat fooked up on me?" or do they say "Linux fooked up on me?"

    Maybe it sounds paranoid, but then again maybe it deserves some consideration. Because the first half of that scenario is already occurring, and the second half (based on observations of Red Hat's past behavior) seems not at all unlikely.
  • Slackware, besides being obsolete shit, is not completely free software. Worse yet, there are no plans to change this. Slackware does nothing to help develop Linux. Slackware is a parasite.

    What in Slackware is not "completely free"? Patrick Volkerding himself has written a fair amount of Linux software, some of it without credit, and provided us with a traditional unix-like distribution at the same time. How can you say Slackware contributes nothing?

    Kernels must be renamed because some of the tools can't tell them apart otherwise. I think the modules stuff has problems.

    Kernel packages do not need to be renamed, under any circumstances. I am not talking about your vmlinuz image, I'm talking about the actual package it originally comes in. If you download and install a tarball named 2.2.3, it damn well should be a 2.2.3 kernel, and not a 2.2.3-pre2 or some such thing. (Note: this is an example. I am not accusing Red Hat of distributing 2.2.3-pre2 and passing it off as 2.2.3, specifically.) Such practices have also been noted in the realm of libraries.

    Marketing is good. Excessive QA lets the software get obsolete. Red Hat generally ships with the most recent kernel they can find, and then some.

    Marketing is all well and good, yes. But your point about "excessive QA" puzzles me. You would rather have a system slapped together the day before yesterday from whatever was lying around than one that was put together and tested over a period of the last couple of months? There's a reason it's called "bleeding edge."
  • You've made an unsafe assumption when you say that applications will "of course" run on all distributions. This is not so. Because Red Hat is sometimes a bit funky with the placement of directories, any application which hard-codes a filesystem structure may only work on Red Hat. Of course, applications shouldn't do that, but they do and they will continue to do so for some time.

    The single biggest problem with the dominance and commercial acceptance of Red Hat is that support deals are only being announced for Red Hat installations. There may be exceptions, but in most cases these new support contracts don't cover Debian at all, so from that point of view Red Hat will become the de facto Linux standard.

    Whilst I wish Red Hat all the luck in the world, and acknowledge that they've done a huge amount for the Linux scene, this recent turn of events is dangerous.
  • Reminds me of the type of economy that exists with the cigarette makers (I wish my friend who told me about this had remembered what it's called): Many vendors competing, not on price or features, but mostly on "imaginary differences in quality."

    Of course I won't say the differences between, say, Redhat and Debian, are imaginary, like say the difference between Marlboro and Camel (if that were the case, I wouldn't have recently switched from RedHat to Debian on both of my boxes), but from the average corporation (or even software developer) point of view, all of your software should work on any distro anyway, so they might as well be imaginary differences.

    Don't worry if RedHat becomes the preferred distro of PHB's, you'll always be free to choose what works for you.

    -Jake
  • As long as Red Hat uses their power for good, I don't begrudge them their success.

    IIRC, redhat can be credited for:

    The first Alpha distrubution (no longer the only one)

    Championing E and Gnome (And employing Carsten the Rasterman)

    RPM (though I like dpkg and apt better)

    Kind of a swank set of installation systems that have been adopted by several other distro's.


    Once they stop creating and start leeching, then I will have good cause to hate them.


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • Anyone can make a pair of jeans. They're not frightfully hard to reverse-engineer, so people buy them based on looks and by brand name.

    Redhat may end up the "Levis" of Linux, but how many different profitalbe brands of jeans can you name?


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • How is Slackware, for instance, worse than a distro (Red Hat) that renames their libraries and kernels so that they appear to be full releases when in actuality they're pre-releases? How is it worse than a distro whose install often ignores the user's wishes, and which actively presents and promotes itself as the Linux? How is it worse than a distro that is far, far more marketing and hype than QA and careful testing?

    i also have beefs with redhat's installation procedures and also alot of the defaults suck but i still think they're good for the linux "industry". i think they will be the "for dummies" version of linux while people like us move to suse, debian, stampede or tom's.

    "The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."

  • >They're nothing but a bunch of sellouts.

    Making $$==selling out? If you've ever written code for money, then I guess you sold out too. If you haven't, then maybe no one would hire you?

    >Here in North Carolina, everybody who wants
    >to be cool talks about how they're so into >redhat. It's disgusting.

    So being popular means it "sucks". By that logic, you yourself are either "popular and suck", or are "unpopular and don't suck". Wonder which it is.

    > The UNC computer science club toured their
    > building a couple of weeks ago a
    > was the worst tour in the galaxy!!

    Well hell! I would NEVER use a product from a company that gives BAD TOURS!!

    > I've only been using linux for about a year now,
    > and setting up and administering
    > slackware 3.6 by hand was tons more fun and
    > informative than setting up a red hat box.

    I think thats great that you use and enjoy slackware. I did at one time too. Please don't dog on us who use red hat now, though. To each their own, I say.
  • [...]should die.[...]
    • They don't GPL or LGPL everything they write
    [...] Only Debian has a perfect record.

    You sound like a case of "more catholic than the pope".

    Perhaps you should read the Debian Social Contract [debian.org] and the Debian Free Software Guidelines it contains.

    There are more free licenses than GPL and LGPL. (And if you refer to e.g. BSD-licensed code as "half-assed Open Source", you should include LGPL in that as it could encourage development of non-GPL-ed software).

    In my book, there are valid reasons to use a different DFSG-free license than (L)GPL:

    • When contributing to existing code under a free license other than (L)GPL, e.g. BSD or public domain.
    • When writing documentation. The (L)GPL is for code. Documentation is quite different from code.

    I happily put changes I made to public domain crypto code in the public domain and happily used the BSD license for a manpage I contributed to a BSD-licensed project, because that was the way in which I could improve that free software (more so than GPL-ing my modifications, and cutting them of from many in the development community involved. I used the FSF documentation notice (which is not GPL) for manpages I contributed to a GPLed project.

    I use (L)GPL on new code I write myself, as I don't want to encourage proprietary software development too much.

    I believe in respecting the license an author chooses for her code. When I believe an author should have chosen another license (e.g. because of lack of sufficient understanding of licensing issues (as is often the case with "non-commercial use only" licenses)), I don't think she should die, I try to reason with her.

    If you don't like the license an author chose for his code, reason with him. It's going to get you much further than telling them to die. And if he doesn't change the license, you still have the freedom not to use his code.


  • The only other distribution that is as free as Red Hat, Debian, is unable to really support Linux.


    Would you care to explain what you mean by "support Linux"?


    If you're referring to support Linux users, I'd strongly suggest you check out Debian's support options [debian.org]. If you're referring to having an unsurpressable urge to pay for support, check out the Debian consultants [debian.org] page.


    If you're referring to supporting the development of Linux, I'd ask you to reflect on what a fellow Debian developer said: Debian supports free software development the old-fashioned way, by writing it. And of course there's the license lobbying/politics that got ncftp free, got Rocks'n'Diamonds free etc. And let's not forget
    where the first donation to GNOME development came from.

  • I suspect Potato will have a choice between them in installation if a kosher version of Qt is released by then.

    QPL 1.0 [troll.no], the license under which Troll Tech will release Qt Free Edition 2.0, is a DFSG [debian.org]-free license.

    But the problem with KDE's licensing is more subtle than that. Debian can't at the moment distribute KDE at all (not even as part of "contrib"), because Qt's license isn't GPL-compatible. (See the news item [debian.org] for details)

    Even when we have a DFSG-free Qt, there is still the issue whether its license is GPL-compatible. If it is (I haven't seen an analysis of QPL 1.0's GPL-compatibility status, so I really don't know), KDE can be included in Debian's main. If it isn't, the licensing issue continues until KDE's licensing changes (e.g. by an explicit exception clause to the GPL allowing redistribution of KDE binaries linked against a QPLed Qt [1]), or the QPL is made GPL-compatible.

    [1] A similar exception clause for non-free Qt would have made KDE suitable for contrib. Unfortunately, the KDE project refused to take the licensing issue seriously, and did not chose to fix it this way, unlike for instance the LyX [lyx.org] developers. With LyX, there was a similar situation of GPL-ed software linked against a GPL-incompatibly licensed (binary-only non-system) library (xforms). The LyX developers explicitly added an exception to the GPL's requirements wrt. libraries, making it possible for Debian to distribute it in "contrib".

  • The developers would most likely write the same stuff without Debian.

    I can't speak for all of us, but in my case, I'd strongly doubt I'd have learned anywhere near as much about UN*X systems and free software development if I hadn't become involved in Debian development.

    Cosider Alan Cox. He would have to work at a normal place if Red Hat didn't support him. His free time to hack would be more limited. Were he with Debian, he could only do half as much as he does now.

    Being employed by a Linux distributor that's dedicated to free software is hardly the only way to spend a large amount of your work time developing free software. Consider Linus' position at TransMeta, independent free software consultants like Jim Pick, people working for companies like Cygnus, Cyclic and Signum, sysadmins and programmers in certain university and ISP environments etc.

    Working for a commercial Linux distributor is but one way to pay a free software developer's bills.

  • Until you start citing reasons why Red Hat isn't as good as SuSe or Debian,

    Discussing the differences between distributions is difficult enough, without getting into which is better (or even if "better" means something in general).

    In any case, if you're genuinely interested, there's a lot of material from debian users' perspective(s) in one of this months threads on the debian-user@lists.debian.org mailing list; see the archives [debian.org].

    Debian's dedication to free software, the openness of it's development model, the responsiveness of the developers, the flexibility of the package management system, the stability and integratedness of releases, the finishing touches (automatic menu updates for all window managers, automatic mailcap updates, handling of the slight incompatibilities between some Athena-using binaries and the various enhanced Athena libraries (e.g. neXtaw) through xaw-wrappers) etc. are what make it the right distribution for me to use and to work on, but choice of distribution is a case of YMMV.

  • Second of all, yes, somebody (Red Hat or Debian) must ship a free desktop.

    Debian 2.1 ships GNOME (albeit a prerelease, as there was no release available before the start of the code freeze); Red Hat does so too (GNOME is in RH 5.2, right?).

    It is very important to provide an unquestionably free desktop NOW. There is no time to waste. We have a parisitic company to fight. If they get control of critical libraries, Linux users will have lost their freedom.

    I've been critical of Troll in the past, and I've been extremely annoyed by their dismissal of the importance of freedom. But since then, Troll have made what I think is a sincere effort at improvement in this area. They've worked on a DFSG-free license to be used for the forthcoming Qt 2.0, the QPL 1.0 [troll.no], and they've been quite responsive with regard to the input they've received from Debian's Joseph Carter.

    Whatever Troll's failings in the past, in my opinion they deserve at least the benefit of the doubt for this change.

    Let's worry over the remaining issue wrt KDE: is QPL 1.0 GPL-compatible, and if not, how do we get KDE to take licensing issues seriously, and get them to put in an exemption clause in their license to allow binaries of their code linked against Qt 2 to be redistributed (similar to how the LyX folks fixed the LyX license [lyx.org].


  • Do you tell an artist who has spent months of his or her life engaged in the creation of a work of art that he cannot sell his work to a museum without losing the artistic dignity and pride? Certainly not. The artist is offering a valuable service to the community by creating beauty and enlightenment through hours of hard work. As long as the money does not dictate the art, then the artistic integrity is maintained.

    And so with RedHat. While what they do is not necessarily art, there is still the respect of the community at stake in this discussion. While they may not have completely designed and coded Linux, they do a valuable service to the community by promoting, supporting, and distributing Linux, and if they can get paid for it, more power to them. As long as they don't attempt to change Linux in an attempt to take control of it, or in any other way violate the agreements which our community is founded around, then they are right to make a living selling Linux.

    Listen, as a developer in an ever changing software world, I am glad to see that the open source community has a place for people like me to survive. I don't want to have to develop Windows software to do what I love- and I don't want to do what I love for free! I have to pay my rent and so do the people at RedHat. If there is such a problem, then don't buy RedHat. If Caldera is struggling because of RedHat's support, then Caldera needs to get on the ball and get some support of it's own.

    Just make sure that RedHat doesn't get like Microsoft (especially with licensing deals). Other than that- leave them alone!
  • Red Hat's current policies are very advantageous to free software. They GPL everything they write. They give their distribution away. They don't distribute much non-free stuff at all. They support good free software efforts like GNOME. As long as their policies stay the way they are now, they are fine with me.

    Bruce

  • I agree. I don't understand why people get their undies in a wad over a particular distro. I primarily used OS/2 for 6 years because it did cool stuff for me. Now I use Linux for many of the same reasons. I also have more control over the Linux machine.

    Too many people define their computing need as "I need to use Word 97" instead of "I need a word processor." Darnit, define a need and select a good tool. If you select RedHat as a Linux distro then fine. If you don't then fine too. Bitching about a Linux distro is a waste of time. At least you are free to select another distro.


  • Sweeping comments like that don't alienate me from Red Hat... Just the Gartner Group.


    Sorry no dice, success dosn't automaticly make someone suck.

  • The Debian project is part of the Software in the Public Interest (SPI). SPI participates in several projects including:

    Berlin
    Debian
    GNOME
    LSB
    Open Source
    Open Hardware

    These volunteers are supporting Linux and related software by donating the time to organizing projects to write software and writing said software.

    Have you ever heard the saying, "Time is Money". You don't think all the time these people have spent in contributing time counts for nothing, do you?

    Please think before you type.

    Troy
  • Would some of the anti-Redhat types please explain your concerns? As I see it, a product that by legal license cannot be owned by Redhat is in no danger of being co-opted by them. It can't be embraced and extended, patented, claimed to be theirs, etc. All they can do is package a version, support it and make the source of that version freely available. Is this about dislike of corporate power in general (certainly understandable, given history), or is there some more direct reason for worry?

    Kythe
    (Remove "x"'s from
  • Sooner or later, the IT industry will realize that this firm produces more fluff than anything else. Take a look at their stock and earnings the past two years? You get the picture. They are a bloated and arrogant organization and rarely publish anything of deep substance. They are still regarded as tops in the industry, but (hopefully) that will change. As in most IT consulting firms (I work for one, whose boss has Gartner envy ever since they fired him 15 years ago...), there's more mental masturbation going on than anything. Funny thing is, people pay a lot for it....
  • -----
    No serious professional uses Linux. Sure, a bunch of dorky students in LUGS install it, but they dont matter.

    Serious, professional, users choose NT. The use it because its better than anything else.
    -----

    I hope you can see now why your "argument" is pretty worthless.
  • :: It is indeed an old argument. Good arguments live forever and crappy ones die out.

    Go spend a few months on alt.atheism or talk.origins and you'll see just how wrong you are. The crappiest arguments are not only the longest-lived, they're also the ones most often cited.

  • Don't worry about the LSB, Red Hat is a participant and I'm sure they'll try to abide by it. Red Hat is actually one of the most FSSTND/FHS compliant distributions which is why they rebuild packages to install in what some people consider "the wrong place" (which in their opinion is anywhere other than where a package's make install shoves stuff). Basically, some people get pissed off whatever you do...

    I think Linux really does "level the playing field" in the OS realm. I suspect that Caldera will do just fine.

    --

  • Sorry, I don't buy it - Redhat is still pretty cool. And with the GPL, there's simply NO WAY they can ever "dominate" linux. they might be the de facto standard, even have majority market share - but unless they invent some proprietary "redhat-only" software, they can't ever have a monopoly.

    And to redhat: If I see anything "redhat-only".. your distribution will go the way of the dodo.. and I'll rm -fr / faster than you can say "what was your username again?".



    --
  • As far as I can see, Red Hat has always been a Pro Linux anti-proprietary type of company.

    Hmph. Never saw source code for the Red Baron browser. Would sure like to see more openness in Applixware, for instance.
  • People need to live, ok?

    right. But I was calling foul to the
    argument that RH is "ANTI-proprietary"

    That's Debian's role.

    RH has bundled more proprietary stuff
    with their distro than anybody. Not that's
    a bad thing, just not deserving of "anti-proprietary" appellations.

  • You should understand that trademark law forces them to act that way. If you don't enforce your trademarks, they get declared public domain and you lose them.

    Also, by putting Red Hat's name on the box you may damage their reputation if you screw up. Why should they put up with that?

  • SuSE actually does GPL the tools they develop, like SaX, which is a really neat program. And their distribution is based on rpm's too.
    YaST - SuSE's installer - is just a powerful frontend for rpm and other things. You don't have to use it when you are running SuSE Linux.
  • Gee, sounds kinda like what's happening to poor 'ole KDE.

    Speakinsawhich, I'm installing Linux Mandrake 5.3 tonight, all of the bonuses of RedHat, none of the problems.(No KDE, no x11amp, no xemacs)

    I am presently using RH5.2 and have downloded and installed all of the above, but lets face it, that's a pain.

    Honestly, with distros like SuSE, I'm supprised that RedHat has the share it does.

    Ben
  • Well, every package in SuSE 5.3 worked, which can't be said by RedHat (Try tkmc)

    SuSE has more WindowManagers (FVWM, KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, CDEsim (FVWM, I know) and a whole slew of others like TWM)

    SuSE is easier for the new user
    (YaST, SaX, easy WM selection, easy PPPsetup, you name it...)

    SuSE doesn't "Look" like a cheap Win95 out of the box, like RedHat 5.2 does (I know you can change it, but you have to admit that redhat is ugly by default)

    SuSE has More (5CD's with everything under the sun, like JDK, XEmacs, WINE, x11amp, StarOffice, jx, xcdroast, vnc, and all those other programs we all download)

    Now, what RedHat has going for it is its leanness and marketshare. Everything comes out for RedHat first, that's why I use it.

    If Linux is about choice, then I think that RedHat limits that choice.

    Ben
  • In any market where the products are very similar, two products eventually domintate the market, with other getting only a small percentage. It may take three or four years for it to shake out, but it eventually will happen.
  • First they said Linux would never enter the Fortune 1000 space BECAUSE it had no support from top software vendors.

    Now they are saying Linux inroads into Fortune 1000 space will backslash BECAUSE of the top software vendors support.

    The problem is that Fortune 1000 PHBs really listen to these guys (they listen because Gartner reports are very expensive, so they must be true).
  • not everything works fine out of the box with SuSE 5.3 either. case in point, their Apache comes with mod_perl, but a simple mod_perl program that tries to use a module that involves loading a shared lib (like MD5, i.e a simple "use MD5;" at the beginning of your perl file) produces a heap of linking errors in the error_log.

    not that I really blame them for it, it's a specialized thing and it takes 10 minutes to rebuild an Apache w/ mod_perl once you've done it once and written down the config options.

  • eggs-actly! that's why it's called "local", duh. distros should put their stuff under /usr. and why the fsck do some packages get special treatment and go into /opt? it's not because Sun came up with a dumb idea that Linux actually needs to copy it...
  • There are alot of things about RedHat that should be applauded. They have greatly advanced the development of GNOME with RHAD labs, and they have brought corporate support to Linux by way of a company to back up the free software. However, some things about their distribution could be changed. For instance, their implementation of X (in the form of AnotherLevel) is rather byzantine, and alot of things they do come close to breaking the Linux File System Standard. However, they do put out pretty solid code. I'm not a RedHat user (I'm partial to Debian, being a developer myself) but I do believe that they are remaining true to the Free Software model. Otherwise, the community will turn against them faster than you can say restrictive license.

    -Andrew
  • Actually, Debian filters bug reports, packages software for distribution, contributes fixes back upstream. It supports free software the old fashion way, it writes it, debugs it, and distributes it.

    Debian: We do free software the old-fashioned way, we write it.

  • i had a video card that didn't work with redhat so they told me to use suse instead.
    could you imagine microshaft doing that?
    if it weren't for redhat, linux would have half the users it has now, if that.
  • Red Hat's rise to Linux power is a perfect example of modern day Darwinian Selection. Eventually one distribution *has* to win. Just as Microsoft Windows won the DOS/OS2/Mac/Amiga race of the 80's/90's, Red Hat is winning the Linux race of today. One team comes up with a solution that's better than the rest, and then everyone start standardizing on them, and then anyone who doesn't is left up the creek without a paddle. Is this a bad thing? Maybe. But it's something that we have to accept if we want Linux in the corporate/commercial arena.

    I've already been experiencing "Red Hat Monopoly Syndrome", albeit minor, when a very large program (that I'm not willing to compile on my slow computer) is distributed only in Redhat binary packages, and for some reason or other the rpm's won't install under any other distribution except Red Hat. I'm pretty sure all the packages on Red Hat's CD's were purposely built this way to discourage installing them in other distributions.

    Red Hat also appears to be using it's weight to kill KDE. We all know the Qt story. Redhat wants to control the desktop. And they will no doubt encourage/force (whichever is your choice of words) its users to use Gnome and Enlightenment (the stuff it's putting money/time into) by making all of it's proprietory software Gnome compliant. And since most people will probably standardize on whatever Red Hat uses we will be stuck in a world full of mostly Gnome and E. Not to speak harshly about Gnome or E though, they're kinda cool. I can live with that but I don't want KDE, WindowMaker and others to shrivel up and die.

    These issues should concern us. We can learn what not to do by observing Microsoft. They have a monopoly, and eventually all monoplies must come crashing down. We can already see the walls holding up Microsoft starting to buckle. And I certainly don't want RedHat to become the next Microsoft.

  • Troll (Score:1)

    by falser ( 11170 )
    Well propriety wasn't what I meant - rather the software that it produced. Yes any GPL'd software is open source and such. But by using it for all their software, we'll have to install Gnome and such to take advantage of RedHat's software (I like linuxconf/netcfg etc, which were by RedHat were they not?). It's just a simple example of how a big company can influence everyone. Good thing for the GPL though it will help moderate this influence.
  • Could you please elaborate a bit? What practices (business or otherwise) are you concerned about - everything RedHat does is GPL'ed, this is a very very good thing. In fact, RedHat is a wonderful example of how corporations should make money off of OSS, they give their software away and sell the services (sure, a CD from them is US$50, but it's legal to copy that CD as many times you wish). I for one am tired of people complaining about RedHat. So I ask again, give me a good reason to fear or dislike RedHat and I'll shut-up. So far, all the complaints I've heard seem to be from those that think RH is getting too popular (and the popularity of Linux is a *bad* thing?) or from those that feel RH is making Linux too easy to use and thus they don't feel elite enough - to these people I say get a life. I use RH and I *really* appreciate what they have done for Linux. I used to use Slackware, Power Linux, and FreeBSD. They all worked great, but it took so much longer to set them up than my RH box and the RH installer is so much easier to use. So unless someone can present some very convincing arguments I will continue to believe that RH bashers are working against the open source movement.

    BTW - I've heard LT say, more than once, that he is pleased with what RH is doing for Linux.

  • xemacs? (Score:1)

    by pivo ( 11957 )
    What the hell's wrong with xemacs?

  • Let's say that you've convinced your skeptical IS manager to put some boxes on Linux, but only if you have a support contract, just so everyone feels better.

    Here's your options:

    (1) SuSe (Who?)
    (2) Some local consultant that will vouch for Debian or Slackware (Right.)
    (3) Red Hat (evil)
    (4) Caldera (more evil)
    (5) All of the above (bzzz. Not an option.)



    --
  • Red hat putting out 5.2 and a bunch of patches the same day. 5.1 was worse and should never have been released. The fact that many older apps will not compile under red-hat but will fine under slackware. Red-hat is great for the home user.. Slackware is best for Servers and deban rules all the way around.

    Red-hat is fine for a newbie, I give redhat copies out to newbies all the time. It's just that Slackware has more "compatability".
  • Did you folks notice a couple of blatant lies. Like the fact that R00tH4t is the only Alpha distributions (what about Debian then...)

    I do not like this... Seeing is believing... And I see what actually a lot of people see:

    I see that all BIG GUYS are trying to team behind a single distribution in order to tame us.

    And I strongly dislike this...
  • Read debian site. I am getting tired of people that do not read. Supported are:
    x86, Sparc, Alpha, m68k.
    In between I am buring the Sparc CD's at the moment...
  • My thoughts, exactly!
    How can people here that should know better pay any heed to that sort of "report"?
    The message thses people are trying to convey is that the Linux community is intrinsically anti-business and will shy away from any commercial effort involving Linux.
    If you scream loud enough, you will just prove them right.
    I am all for free software, and Redhat has done nothing so far to spoil their image of a free software supporter. That is good enough for me?
    Is it good enough for you?
  • Anyone else notice how news.com / C|Net, etc are all jumping on the Linux bandwagon? There seems to be article after article coming out of these places that have either nothing important to say or are totaly wrong but mention Linux once or twice. I think these news mags are just trying to take some of Slashdot's many hits.. I imagine that a fair amount of regular readers to those older "tech" sites now check here far more often (or exclusively). They probably are starting to see some ad revenue losses and they want them back. So, what do they do? They pump out a ton of articles on Linux so that they might get posted on Slashdot (or other community sites) so they can make more money. Seems fishy to me.
  • Really? He included glibc in slackware to make it incompatible w/ other dists? Funny up until 5.0 I think it was RedHat used libc5. glibc2 was released sometime around 4.xx, RedHat simply migrated as soon as it had stabalized because glibc2 is better than libc5, and many other dists did the same thing. Get a clue.
  • I figured out the RH install program my first time through in no time at all. Solaris x86, I had to install about 5 times before I gave up and half of the questions made no sense, or I just had no clue what the answer. RH is really nice for easy installs. Also, w/ autorpm it makes upgrading beyond simple. I just have my box check every day at 2am for any new updates. It automatically installes updated rpms and sends me an email about new rpms. Not a bad trick. It's really nice to read an email about a new security hole only to find out that your system updated itself 3 days ago.

    I personally can't find any problems with RH's bussiness practises. They have a dist that's almost 100% GPL (Netscape and xv are the only exceptions I can think of off hand). They are paying people to code stuff for linux which is being released as GPL. I like redhat.
  • This will probally change once mozilla has staballized. I think the final goal is to have a free mozilla, and a non-free netscape w/ code that they aren't allowed to release. It's still not gonna be GPL, but it's pretty damned good.
  • He said "excessive Q and A"
    not Q and A.
  • IMO, both of you need grow the fuck up.
    Sometimes using a other distro to help boost your production speed is not a bad thing.

    While RH might (i donno) have ripped from slack, RH is not a clone of slack.

    Mandrake is an example of a distro clone.

    Be nice to each other.
  • I definitely agree, Mr. Wookie. I think that Redhat still has the confidence of the community, and if it can do things right, will maintain that trust.

    But Redhat is enterint a new relationship -- a relationship with businesses -- that both parties have to adapt to. I think there are some good people at the helm, and so I'm not worried.

    Thanks to the FSF, we don't lose out on the success of a brand name Linux distribution company.

    -- Duane

  • The unwillingness to join the LSG has me more than a bit concerned. It appears that RH is taking the "...we don't need to adhere to any standards..." mantra that is so deeply rooted in the MS mentality.

    I'm not sure about that. The critical standards are things like Posix, X11, the various RFCs, the FSSTND, things like that that are already there and RedHat seems to follow those either deliberately or by default. The LSB seems to be going in the direction of "This is the standard window manager and desktop, this is the standard X11 widget set, and so on.", and RedHat seems to be saying that that's not useful. I agree with Redhat: there should not be a standard window manager as such. There should be one like twm that you can expect to have on all distros, but you select the window managers, widget sets and such depending on what software you want and what it needs and then select a distro based on which one provides what you need with the least fuss. And if you like the rest of Redhat but want KDE, you just buy RedHat and install KDE, confident that RedHat follows all the standards KDE needs it to follow.

  • So what about that software and the distribution would lock you in to a particular distribution? What precisely is it that would be incompatible between distributions? Maybe this would help clarify what the problem is that needs solved.

  • Why would you say "it must really suck to be Caldera right now"?

    ...we are going to be releasing a new distribution that has features the rest of the distributions will most likely be emulating eventually.

    I admit I was a little surprised to see that Novell had invested in RedHat, not Caldera. Even if they're your future investors, this doesn't look too good since you add the most integration for them.

    Anyway, I bought the retail (big $$) 1.3 distro for the Netware integration and was more than a bit disappointed. No glibc, netware utils keeping me at 2.0.35, and all mostly oldversions of software and rather useless documention. Trying to upgrade any of the pieces (such as netatalk to a recent asun version) led to total dependency hell.

    I ended up reinstalling my Cheap Bytes CD from #1. Sure, I'm back to using ncpfs and no admin utils--but at least I'm happy now.

    I sure hope the next distro is better....I will say, though, that it was well done (lisa is nice; the OpenDos Dosemu was great--and everything worked unlike the average redhat install); it just seemed to be a year out-of-date.

  • Why are we talking this crap? RedHat may not be your favorite distro but come on.

    I can't help but think that because of RedHat's presence, Linux is closer to becoming a Windoze killer. Before RedHat we didn't even have a package manager (tgz were it), now we have several, but Redhat was first. RedHat was the first to shrink wrap Linux and put it on the store shelves across the country. But most of all, Redhat has put a face on Linux, a presence. Did they write Linux, no and I don't think they are saying that. All they are doing is packaging Linux in a way that is more useful to the consumer. I can't help but think that if it weren't for Redhat pushing Linux, Linux wouldn't be nearly as far as it is. Maybe someone else would have stepped up.

    Also commercial vendors like IBM, Oracle, Sybase, etc want a "corporation" to work with. Right now it's Redhat, next year it may be Caldera, who knows. You can't expect Linux to succeed at gaining massive market share without it, I'm sure some do.


    -dubbs

  • I think it needs to be remembered that Redhat is trying to bridge the gap b/n Commercial and Open Source software. We all know Redhat is only as strong as the users of its distro, but I think they're simply selling it to the suits, which _can_ be a good thing.

    Help me /. http://www.ci.vista.ca.us

  • So nice to hear from someone who's never been a newbie...

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