Red Hat Forms non-Profit Open Source Group 73
shawnb writes "Wired has an aticle describing Red Hat's new Non-Profit Open Source group. The group's aim is to 'sponsor, support, promote, and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public.' "
Red Hat is trying to be Debian (Score:1)
RHCOS (from the link in the story):
SPI (from the bylaws, at):You know, I used to be fairly confident that Redhat wouldn't try to take over other distributions, but now I'm not so sure...
Re:This is aimed at "General Acceptance" of Linux (Score:1)
Re:Now who's naive? (Score:1)
Okay, who's being naive now? Redhat *IS* commercial software. Perhaps you were typing too fast and meant proprietary instead. In this day and age of enlightenment, do you seriously continue to believe the superstition that Windows users "sign away their life" to Bill Gates? Get real!
I'm sorry, I can't use Linux.
Why not?
I signed away my life to Microsoft.
Nonsense! Just switch over.
You don't understand. They have my life. If I use Linux I'll be a soulless zombie...
Gah (Score:2)
Therefore - how will this group help increase their stock price?
Sorry to be slightly more optimistic, but another way to increase stock price is to actually do tangible and profitable things, not just good marketing. So another alternative is that this group increase Open Source acceptance and awareness to the PHB out there. Who knows? But a coporate minded entity to promote Open Source doesn't sound like a bad idea when it's targets may included other corporate entities that don't Get It(tm) as regards to Open Source.
In the end it may indeed be a flash in the pan and a simple marketing move. One cannot discount the idea that it could be more substantial, either.
-AS
Re:..? (Score:1)
no sig? damn (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Red Hat is trying to be Debian (Score:1)
You know, I used to be fairly confident that Redhat wouldn't try to take over other distributions, but now I'm not so sure...
Maybe not take them over, but do their level best to make people ignore other members of the Linux community. Consider Bob Young's remarks in the past that directly imply that the developers and users of other distributions are not part of the Linux community, and Red Hat's penchant for failing to acknowledge authorship of security fixes when they don't originate within Red Hat. (Yet they never pass up an opportunity to blow their own horn when they do author a security fix.)
Red Hat are not communitarians. Read Bob Young's chapter in Open Sources. His vision of the Linux community is Red Hat's business partners and consumers. Red Hat Linux. Heinz ketchup. The writing is on the wall, and in the hand of Red Hat's CEO.
Red Hat wants control. Developer mindshare, raw market share, control over the allocation of funds to devlopment projects, etc. Anything they can do to increase the amount of control they have, they will.
Does Red Hat care if Mandrake dies? No.
Does Red Hat care if SuSE dies? No.
Does Red Hat care if Debian dies? No.
Does Red Hat care if the FSF dies? No.
Does Red Hat care if free software developers with any affiliation whatsoever to any other organization stop coding? No.
If you're not promoting Red Hat's name or agenda, you're irrelevant to them at best and a threat at worst.
This is life in corporate America. This is the culture. It's not particularly Red Hat's fault. They're (probably) no worse than any other corporation.
The question is, can Red Hat's corporate culture thrive without doing damage to the culture of the free software community? That remains to be seen. They will tell us, "yes, of course". But I suggest we consult more objective sources for an answer to that question.
A more pertitent question for the moment is: what have the existing non-profit bodies failed to accomplish that Red Hat's little enterprise stands a significantly greater chance of achieving? If anything, is it worth the price that will be paid? And believe me, there will be a price. Red Hat will milk every success for its own self-aggrandizement. "This project funded by the Red Hat Community Project." Or whatever moniker they choose.
How much Heinz ketchup do we really need in the world, anyway?
The Center's Mission (Score:2)
The press release about the Center was purposefully vague. One, because it was written by lawyers, and two, because we want to leave the door wide open for the Center and its board of directors to decide how it will go about its business. Certainly, the Center will fund software development. It will be done in cooperation with, and very likely *through*, organizations like OSI, SPI, FSF, Linux International, etc.Who said this has anything to do with software?
They plan "... to study how to apply the open source movement to a broader range of uses."
In other words, why does it cost 10,000s of dollars to get a college degree?
Why can't an instructor teach the same class at a different university without getting sued by his previous employer? Can education be open-sourced?
What about an automobile engine? Can its design be open-sourced? What about its manufacturing process?
But the real mission of the Center is to facilitate Open Source-style thinking in fields outside of software development. There is an incredible amount of interest and confusion about this topic that increase as you move further away from coding. What the Center hopes to accomplish is to cause people to realize that Open Source is not as radical or "niche" as it may seem to the untrained eye. In fact the opposite is true: Open Source is founded on principles that are the bedrock of a free society. Principles that are not new. Principles that have been driving segments of our society for hundreds of years, in science, the law, governance, etc.
In the end, all of us in the Open Source community are trying to do the same thing: help other people understand, benefit from and become part of our incredible community. The Red Hat Center for Open Source is going to try to do this in a unique way - by showing people they already believe in Open Source!
-Marc
PS - The Center's Board is now in the process of figuring out exactly what it will do and how it will go about it. Stay tuned for announcements from the Center in the next month or two.
A bit naive... (Score:1)
better product than everyone else.
This is an incredibly naive statement. In the real world (that thing where people don't read
People need to be taught what is a better product. Not everybody can judge whose kernel has a better scheduling algorithm...
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
If Red Hat were to pour this kind of money into any of the established groups, they would in effect be buying the group (by being by far the largest contributor).
So it's just as well that they start a separate group. Their foundation is free to make donations to the FSF, Debian, SPI, LSB, etc.
Does Redhat really care???? (Score:2)
However, this is not to say that I completely agree with your stated position. In fact, WRT Redhat I think they've done a spectacular job at riding the razor-thin line between competitive corporate self-promotion and FUD, one the one hand, and complete community sharing of code on the other. Frankly, they've been much better than SUSE or Pacific Hi-Tech (Turbo Linux HA clusters, anyone?), for example, when it comes to GPLing their internally written projects, and they have consistently funded many large projects over the years, all of which they've given away under the GPL. This is not the behavior of a corporate wolf in a sheep suit... they've done much good for the Linux community.
You may point to Debian as the pinnacle of community self-organization and development, and I think you're right that Debian is the best organized and most advanced Linux distribution out there as far as number of packages and stability of the core tree. But I note that they never did get around to resolving serious installation problems until a corporate giant -- Corel -- moved in and decided to use Debian as a base for their distribution. And it's Corel that finally written an easy to use installer for
This is not to say that we should expect perfectly gentleman like behavior from them as the Linux market heats up... especially as a service vendor. Honestly, I think Redhat realizes that funding free development projects is purely an R&D expense for them, and that their returns will have to come as service sector sales. I note that VAResearch is going down this very same route, which makes sense considering the thin margins available in the x86 hardware assembly market. The money in building "Redhat" mindshare among the general public comes back through service channels and not through direct product sales, unlike most proprietary shops. This means that Redhat has little incentive to "kill" competitive distributions as they can simply make money selling service for sites running the "other" linux distribution as well (should the market drift to another distribution).
I'd like to quickly go through your points:
But as I wrote before, unlike a traditional proprietary shop where developer mindshare around a closed API actually counts for something, just what would such an approach buy Redhat? They're just selling a prepackaged version of all the standard tools and libraries... along with a few internally written kickers. Having a well known name does help them sell service though... and I note that the $80 cost of a boxed Redhat is really just the implied service cost of providing installation support. Nobody at Redhat shit a brick when I FTP installed my machine across a cablemodem. Welcome to the GPL.
I'm right there with you until you hit those last two lines... "Does Red Hat care if the FSF dies?" and "Does Red Hat care if free software developers with any affiliation whatsoever to any other organization stop coding?" this is absurd. For exactly the same reason Microsoft fears the Free Software avalanche, as noted in Halloween, Redhat could never outflank the entire Free Software development community by forking off and maintaining an entire OS code base. They need the FSF, Linus/Alan Cox, Cygnus, XFree86, Eric Allman, and all the developers of smaller tools scattered around the distribution. This is a specious argument.
Regarding the other Linux distribution developers -- Why should they care??? The only distribution in this list which is community developed is Debian... and I don't fear Debian going tits up any time soon. They've done a wonderful job at self organization both politically and at software development.
So what? It's not like you have to buy Redhat... HELL, THEY GIVE IT AWAY! Go ahead and download it... or don't. Install Debian... actually, I suspect you may find it a more stable (if composed of slightly older components) distribution. Once you get past the installation, it rocks.
Hmmm (Score:2)
Why do we need another group to act in our best interests? The people that most want to lead the community are usually the ones least likely to be able to do it (the right way).
--
Direction is good! (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:3)
Sorry, I think that Debian, FSF and SPI are *much*, *much* better at demonstrating what Open Source is and means to the public than a corporate sponsored think tank would ever be.
How can publically traded corporations really be honest when they try to promote a philosophy of software that is so opposed to thier way of doing buisness?
This is aimed at "General Acceptance" of Linux (Score:2)
DURHAM, N.C. - November 1, 1999 - Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ:RHAT) announced today the formation of a new non-profit organization, the Red Hat Center for Open Source (RHCOS), that will sponsor, support, promote and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public.
"The open source software movement has been successful because it has provided unprecedented control and quality to users, and at the same time enabled a model for cooperative development of technology that leveraged the expertise of the global community," said Ewing. "The implications of this model when applied outside of software development are enormous, and the benefits to society will be huge. Advancing this global cooperative model for the development of technologies and ideas is what RHCOS is all about."
I guess this means that Red Hat is going to try and focus now on getting all those windows (l)users to at least try Linux. Mostly they want them to try Red Hat, of course, but this move is meant to make sure that whatever they come up with can benefit everyone.
Frankly, I don't know if they really needed to do this. It might be a PR move rather than any kind of a technical move. (I know that sounds kind of obvious.) A lot of people, especially around here [slashdot.org] have been bashing Red Hat for "selling out." This could be the first part of their answer to those critics.
Strange Manifesto (Score:1)
What the hell kind of manifesto is that? That's the same thing that *every* non-profit organization is ultimatly supposed to be doing.
Don't get me wrong, I like Red Hat. I like their business methods. I even like the products. The problem is that this is just a Bad Thing. I have a religiously held belief that a for-profit organization shouldn't have full rule and rein over a non-profit one.
I think a much better solution would be to put the money back into the community. There are groups that would love to have some real funding. Debian and the FSF, to name a couple.
Also, to any tax-minded types, wouldn't this make for a nice loophole? You move $1,000,000 to your non-profit group, and now it's non-taxable. Or even have your company "lose" money while your non-profit group "gains" it?
Or do I just have my head firmly planted up my ass?
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
It doesn't look like their trying to
The more people on board the better I say.
Not a bad thing... (Score:1)
Whether this is useful or not I couldn't say. Perhaps this is just what happens when you are community minded with too much cash in your pockets. <grin>
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Probably a good guy but I agree the other groups are better.
-cpd
Vague details.. (Score:2)
The article itself is very vague, and I think we'd all be extremely interested to get more information regarding this 'venture'..
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Therefore - how will this group help RedHat increase thier stock price?
Probably just a marketing move. Probably to combat the impending popularity of SuSE by trying to increase thier mindshare. After all, when some web based 'content generator' (I don't call them journalists any more, for lack of anything resembling journalism) wants to whip up an article on Open Source/Linux, what better person to talk to than a group of Open Source 'experts', comprised of industry leaders.
It's all just marketing. What are they going to produce for the community, other than a bunch of interviews for lazy reporters.
Re:Hmmm (Score:1)
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage [linuxsupportline.com]>
Re:This is aimed at "General Acceptance" of Linux (Score:2)
Re:A bit naive... (Score:2)
I'm not arguing that Redhat shouldn't be marketing themselves. But if they're going to publish opinion and position pieces intending to add to the laws that I have to live under, I must forcefully disagree.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Plenty of publically traded corporations engage in activities that do not directly come back as share price increases. Look at all the corporate funding of public TV, or the common practice of companies matching employee contributions to charity, or the long standing practice of support by corporations for the United Way.
Whatever it is they're up to ... (Score:2)
... must be no good. I mean, what has Red Hat ever done for anybody, let alone the open source community? You just know that, now that they're corporate, they've turned evil, or, more likely, since they set out to make money off of GPLd software that they were evil all along.
</sarcasm>
Hey, before anyone flies off the handle (too late!) and asks "what can this group do that the FSF/SPI/LSB can't do?" (see, too late!) you need a bit more information as to what they're up to. A vague snippet of a press release does not a vision make. One thing I can think of is that the perception (yes, perception) of the GNU project as inherently anti-corporate might scare off potential open-source allies from that quarter. So un-knot your knickers, wait, and listen.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
There are a rare few, posters so enlightened, so well-spoken, so insightful that Slashdot detects their loquacious missives and instantly grants them a 2. Note, of course, that this posting is among them.
Seriously, though, if you post and your comment gets moderated up, your personal "karma" will increase. A 30+ karma (I think) gets a default 2 for every posting. You can see your (or anyone else's) karma rating by clicking on the name, anonymous cowards excepted.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Yes, but a tax "write-off" generally just means you don't pay taxes on that much of your income. Since the taxe rates are nothing like 100%, it's still a net loss for the company, just less than it would be without the writeoff.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
First, let me say that IANAL. However, I don't believe you are correct that a publically traded corporation is mandated, in everything they do, to increase their stock price.
Officers of a corporation are only under an obligation to not make misrepresentations or mislead shareholders and to not work against the interest of the shareholders. It's particularly egregious for the officers to work against the interest of the shareholders and in their own interests instead.
There are some other obligations of an officer, like to hold regular meetings, produce regular reports and hold elections of board members by shareholders.
If a company has as it's stated mission to perform many community services and the shareholders can reasonably be expected to know this then I don't think there would be basis for a shareholder suit based on the fact that they are performing community services at the expense of increasing share price.
In addition, there are companies that specialize in producing dividends for the shareholders. An investor might have the basis for a successful shareholder suit should a company that promises steady dividends chose instead to invest the profits back into the company in an effort to increase share price.
We could form a corporation who's stated mission is to employ technology workers and offer shares for sale. I don't believe that shareholders would have the basis of a winning case if they were try to sue based on the fact that the corporation was employing people to the detriment of the share value. However, if these disgruntled shareholders became the majority stock holders, they could change the company mission.
I think that the primary difference between a non-profit corporation and a for-profit corporation is the tax status of the investments made.
re: Score question (Score:1)
In addition to being able to start with a score of 2 as a "High Karma Logged in User", there are also the moderation catigories "Underrated" and "Overrated" that allow moderators to increase or decrease a post's score without adding a descriptor to it.
Re:This is aimed at "General Acceptance" of Linux (Score:2)
What Red Hat does may be directly releated to improving/selling Red Hat Linux, but as long as they release all the software that they make under the GPL, and promote RH Linux by means other than bashing the other Linux distros, they're also helping the entire Linux community.
If they can help the world by helping themselves, that's good. The problem comes when they help themselves by harming others... and Red Hat has never done that.
Political Rhetoric (Score:2)
This is political rhetoric, pure and simple. If it came from a government, it would terrify me. If it came from a political organization it would make me nervous. But coming from a distributor of sofware, it confuses me. I want Redhat to distribute software that doesn't suck. I don't want Redhat supporting a "cause".
"Advancing social principles" is a strange phrase. I can only assume it's the "freedom" of Open Source. But this freedom doesn't exist as a social principle. It is not emancipation, liberty or even free speech. It is merely a permission to use and share. "The greater good of the general public" is much more troubling, and I must reject it with every fiber of my being. It presupposes that Redhat is knows what it best for billions of people it knows nothing about. It's also the common prelude to onerous laws and the destruction of liberties.
Get off the political bandwagon, Redhat, you're not running for office. If you want to help society, then put out a better product than everyone else.
Paranoid fools (Score:2)
Oh, it's a tax break.
Oh, the goals are too vague.
Oh, everything Red Hat does is evil.
Jesus, people. WAKE UP!!! The company is doing something nice with it's cash!!! For chrissake, RELAX!
why the negative reaction? (Score:1)
So what?
I for one am happy that RedHat is giving MORE back to the Open Source community; if they get some free advertising out of it, good for them.
The bottom line is that they will be spending $$$ to sponsor more free software.
RedHat History (Score:2)
2) Tools such as AutoRPM appear, allowing users to update seamlessly through the web.
3) Establishes a non-profit organization towards the betterment of Free software.
The transformation is almost complete....
4) Add 3500 more packages and a little better quality control.
5) Changes name to "Debian".
;-)
RedHat is a business. (Score:1)
RedHat is out to make money, if it were not then it shouldn't have had an IPO. RedHat is not afraid of competition, but it doesn't need to support it!!!
Steven Rostedt
I think this is a good thing. (Score:2)
In short, I think this is wonderfull news and applaud Redhat for what they have done and am glad for their success. They have always been and I believe they will continue to be a Good influence. Anyone that blabers on about Redhat being the next MS is either a troll or a fool.
Hurrah for the wonderfull news!
Re:Political Rhetoric (Score:1)
Companies tend to have political goals. Red Hat's political goals are to the benifit of the world in general.
Would you rather they instead have *harmful* political goals and *not* tell us what they were?
Re:Paranoid fools (Score:1)
They don't like it 'cause it says "social" in the article. Most
Of course, it is good news. Couldn't agree more. In fact I think the government should put a 1% tax on hardware to fund the FSF. No, seriously.
Re:Paranoid fools (Score:1)
Oh, so you want everyone to hate the FSF and never use FSF software?
We have too many lame laws and taxes already, we don't need more.
You "Ignorant Socialist Lunatics" have to understand that just because *you* support something is no reason for *everyone* to have to pay to support something.
Re:Red Hat is trying to be Debian (Score:1)
Does Red Hat care if SuSE dies? No.
Does Red Hat care if Debian dies? No.
Does Red Hat care if the FSF dies? No.
Does it matter?
Isn't question rather, should Red Hat care? Do they have to?
Where in the GPL license does it say that Red Hat has to care about the community?
If you don't like Red Hat, don't buy their product, don't buy their support. And if you really hate them, use another license which explicitly forbid them to use your app.
Freedom is not just about behaviour you like. Freedom is also tolerating behaviour you don't like. Don't like it? Don't make it free.
Consider what they would want to "buy" (Score:2)
This begs the question of whether the Debian folk would find this to be of any value... For the most part, Debian doesn't consume money. If they suddenly had $8M to throw around, this would enter "monied politics" that could have pretty shattering effects.
And, in any case, why would anyone consider it appropriate for RHAT to need to sponsor a project that is quite directly competitive?
The FSF actually has offices, budget, and some experience in hiring programming staff. Which makes it a more sensible idea, in some ways, to throw "ludicrous amounts of money" at the FSF than it would have been for Debian.
But even still, $8M is on the order of 30 times the recent amounts of annual funding of the FSF.
Again, dumping $8M on the FSF would be not unlike pouring a truckload of chocolate syrup onto an ice cream sundae. Interesting to see, but likely rather messy and even wasteful.
I'd rather see RHAT hire a bunch of people and build software that is released under free licenses, with CVS archives to allow external contributions as well. The costs will be as "tasty" a tax writeoff as anything else; the benefits include that if they regard the results as valuable, perhaps others will find them similarly valuable.
Strange, how that sounds a whole lot like RHAD Labs...
..? (Score:1)
Pardon me, but uh, how do you figure? If say, for example, I donated 5 billion dollars to the FSF, would I ``own'' it? Would Bill Gates if he did? Donating money to a special interest group, non-profit organization, or whatever isn't exactly the same as buying stock in a company. And with RMS at the helm, I sort of doubt you're likely to alter the aims of the FSF by offering him money. He could make tons of money just by being a programmer.
Your argument, therefore, does not compute. Are you holding back some critical detail, or, ah.. what?
I, for one, see absolutely no need for yet another ``open source'' group. And that's not just because I object to the usage of the term. It's just a idiotic practically (to anyone with sense) speaking as it is philosophically (to me).
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
However, by eliminating the middlemen, Red Hat will get more of the publicity and goodwill. Which I believe they deserve.
John Gillmore is not a company man (Score:2)
John Gillmore [toad.com] is a long term nerd and free software supporter, from way before the phenomen became mainstream with Linux and Mozilla. He was one of the people starting Sun, which made him a lot of money, but I doubt he is involved with that company anymore. He spend some of the money starting cygnus [cygnus.com]. He is also very interested in electronic rights, helped start EFF [www.eff.org] and have put a lot of work in the cypherpunks movement.
He is one of the people /.'ers should know and respect, but he is not really into self-promotion. I think he is ideal for the post.
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
As to why RH isn't dumping fundage... (Score:1)
If I had my own company and I had the oppertunity to throw $8mil into a non-profit group, I'm going to make sure the group is founded and run by my idea an open source project should be.
Please understand that I'm not saying that Debian of the FSF aren't doing a good job. I'm just saying that if I were in the same situation as RH, I would probably start my own project, just so I could have at least some input into the finished product.
Why not let them put their own efforts into a community project, instead of just watching someone else use their donations?
BTW-- I'm one of those few who think that RH is actually doing something good for the free software and open source movements. They are NOT MICROSOFT, and don't plan to be. They aren't hell-bent on distruction of every other Linux Distro. They're just trying to make a little money (like everyone else), and showing appreciation by giving some back to the community that gave it roots.
Re:Not a bad thing... (Score:2)
As far as I'm concerned (and I have a sizable essay to this argument [hex.net]), the more organizations trying to do cool stuff the better.
It would be nice to see some funds get "thrown" at organizations like the FSF, SPI, XFree86, and so forth. Unfortunately, "throwing" money at them doesn't forcibly accomplish useful things. It is a joke that "Mathematicians are nature's way of turning coffee into theorems."
Frankly, I'd rather see RHAT take the simpler tack of hiring more programmers to write software that gets GPLed. Note that that happens to be just as much of a "tax break" as a contribution to a charitable organization.
The merit of having a separate organization may be the goodwill that results from having what may appear to be a bit more independent organization.
Alternatively, they may (and this is a bit of a reach, I'll admit) be founding an organization so that they can encourage others to contribute to it.
Consider: I'm not in the market for a "fully supported $80 RH Linux boxed set." But I might be game to help contribute to development efforts. If RHAT spins some/all of the development effort out to a separate organization, that may encourage people like me to contribute to that.
This could be a step towards transforming RHAT, the commercial organization, into the service organization that represents where IPO documentation has indicated that their revenues were expected to come from in the long term.
They roll development into a "charitable" organization, which:
Perhaps I'm being dramatically overoptimistic here; it's still possible that this be quite a good thing.
Re:Strange Manifesto (Score:1)
Funny, the IRS agrees with you. :-) Now you know one of the reasons that Red Hat's representation on the RHCOS board is decidedly minority.
As far as funding goes, I suggest that you take your example and ask the FSF which companies have provided the most financial support to them in the past few years. RHCOS is not a replacement for funding appropriate groups and people, but an addition. Wait until you see what RHCOS does before deciding whether to condemn it.
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Don't they get tax writeoffs for most of that stuff? I doubt promoting open source software gets many tax breaks.