Letters to the editor

usage of "Free" in RHEL article

Hi,
 
Most of the people in the free software and open source community will
use the capitalized word "Free" to emphasize that one is talking about
freedom over price, since the two words are the same in English.
 
The recent article about RHEL is entitled "Substituting RHEL with Free
Alternatives". I realize that it is normal journalistic practice to
capitalize words in a title. However, given that RHEL *is* Free
Software, I think it would have been better to recognize that most of
alternatives are actually just no-cost; i.e. "free".
 
And given that the article points out that several of these alternatives
aren't actually no-cost, it seems to me a much better title for the
article would simply have been something like "RHEL Alternatives", or
"Looking at RHEL Alternatives".
 

Comments (1 posted)

BBC faux pas

Hi, Stephen; I have no direct email address for you, so I post this here
in the hope of someone you know pointing it out to you. This is what I
wrote to the BBC about http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3457823.stm
in the hope of getting you to see past the barrage of misleading
stock-ticker news streams:
 
QUOTE
 
Stephen Evans has made some significant factual errors in his story
"Linux cyber-battle turns nasty" and may be exposing the BBC by his
consequent assertions.
 
"There seems little doubt that SCO was targeted" as a distraction to the
virus, apparently written by and for commercial spammers. Its primary
intent is to act as a relay for spreading more of those intrusive
offers of larger penises and mortgage solutions.
 
The virus is indeed about malice, and it was not written by the
creative, constructive Open Source community. It has been traced back
to Russian spammers.
 
It does not appear that www.sco.com was attacked in anger. The name had
been taken out of circulation before the due date, and the site
http://sco.com/ was reachable throughout, as were the sco.com email
servers, hosted nearby. It seems that The SCO Group (TSG) are crying
"wolf" yet again.
 
TSG have been accusing the authors of Linux of stealing their ideas, and
their code. IBM is being accused of giving TSG's code away (despite
IBM's licence agreement plainly stating that they can sell or give away
derivatives), and being asked for over $3 billion in "damages", yet TSG
won't tell anyone exactly what was "stolen".
 
Their story keeps changing, and whenever more exact information has been
leaked, the code has consistently turned out to be either written by
somebody else, or public domain.
 
Darl MacBride wants to sell Linux as others sell bottled water, which is
fine because Red Hat, Mandrake and other companies do just that. He
wants to do it not by bottling better water, but by making the
harvesting of rain and spring water heavily taxable.
 
Undertandably, the people who've built the software equivalent of dams
and rainwater tanks are outraged at his barratry, false claims and
blackmail. TSG is not "raising the possibility of internet blackmail",
TSG is carrying it out!
 
The Open Source community's response has been to provide evidence of
TSG's insanity, not to write viruses. None of the computers bearing the
virus run Linux. Zero. Nada. Not one.
 
It is impossible to read Stephen's story without interpreting it as
"Linux community members attacked a helpless corporation", which as a
member of the Linux community I find insulting and hurtful.
 
I require a retraction from the BBC and a public apology from Stephen. I
also want his word that he'll not carelessly abuse a news service to
pillory the champions of freedom and fair play ever again.
 
UNQUOTE
 
Cheers; Leon
 
--
http://cyberknights.com.au/ Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/ Committee Member, Perth Linux User Group
http://slpwa.asn.au/ Committee Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://linux.org.au/ Past Committee Member, Linux Australia

Comments (1 posted)

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