SolidIce and the SPICE protocol? [LWN.net]

SolidIce and the SPICE protocol?

Posted Sep 8, 2008 17:26 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: SolidIce and the SPICE protocol? by jspaleta
Parent article: Red Hat acquires Qumranet

> It's childish to put the concerns over Red Hat's plans for new acquired closed source software as a product line in context with what other companies are doing with regard to closed codebases which are important to their business plans? Really?

FFS. Do you have any idea how many closed source products Redhat has obtained via purchasing then turned around and open sourced them?

A few off the top of my head:

Redhat purchases Sistina. Now we have completely _Free_software_ cluster aware file system and clustering suite from Redhat.

Redhat purchases 'Netscape Enterprise Suite' products from AOL; namely Netscape Directory Services and Netscape Certificate Management System. Now we have completely _Free_software_ from Redhat in the form of Fedora Directory System (LDAP system that trounces OpenLDAP in many respects), Redhat Certificate Management System, and projects like FreeIPA. (which now means that Linux in the enterprise is starting to have a rival Active Directory)

Redhat purchases Jboss, and in response the Jboss becomes completely _Free_software_ moving away from their custom 'open source' license to things like GPL, LGPL, Apache, etc.

And Redhat spent a great deal of time, money, and effort, creating viable compiling Java implimentation and porting many applications over to it, which is probably one of the main reasons why Java is now moving towards Open Source/Free software.

etc etc etc.

Over and over again Redhat has a _proven_ track record of being willing to spend _millions_ of dollars purchasing significant corporations and open sourcing the software under Free software licenses. They have shown nothing but commitment towards Free and Open Source software that drives their support-based business model.

There is no doubt in my mind that whatever software related to SPICE that Redhat feels there is a need or a purpose for, they will open source. These sort of things are difficult as SPICE or other related software may have copyright owned by third parties or have have patent issues, but I have decent faith, built from historical evidence, that Redhat will open source what they can and not build anything for their customers that depends on closed source software.

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This 'Oh what about in the context of Launchpad' hand waving is complete crap. It is utterly unrelated and as far as I can tell is just a excuse for you to tie in a favorite subject that you like to harp on.

It has _nothing_ to do with Redhat and it has _nothing_ to do with this article.

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