Red Hat CEO Szulik on business, SCO, and other topics (IT Manager's Journal) [LWN.net]

IT Manager's Journal interviews Red Hat CEO Matt Szulik. "The challenge is to be a good steward for the open source community. Most people understand Red Hat is there to make money. That said, the company contributes around 21 percent of its R&D back into the public domain to do public license. To contribute the kind of public functionality that Red Hat puts back into the public domain, the Fedora, which cannibalized $9 million of revenue stream that they had to make up -- Red Hat walks the walk and talks the talk."

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Red Hat CEO Szulik on business, SCO, and other topics (IT Manager's Journal)

Posted Jun 1, 2004 18:40 UTC (Tue) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469) [Link]

No this is very disappointing. The RedHat CEO apparently doesn't know the difference between public domain (i.e. not claiming copyright at all) versus licensing under the GNU GPL.

*sigh*

Red Hat CEO Szulik on business, SCO, and other topics (IT Manager's Journal)

Posted Jun 1, 2004 18:47 UTC (Tue) by pglennon (guest, #649) [Link]

look, you are just splitting hairs, here. Clearly Matthew Szulik knows the difference. Let's try not to be too rabid here on our allies, even if we don't 100% agree with them.

we are all a little to eager to eat our young...

Red Hat CEO Szulik on business, SCO, and other topics (IT Manager's Journal)

Posted Jun 1, 2004 21:44 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

The man does have a point though - it is indeed aggravating to see such
an idiotic blunder from a a representative of a leading linux company...

Linux is not now, nor has it ever been, abandoned to the "public domain"!

It may be the interviewer or editor, not Szulik

Posted Jun 3, 2004 1:08 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

The editing of the interview is atrocious. A lot of the sentences aren't English ("Microsoft has the envy of the economic model", "There is no difference between someone on the Fedora team or not"). Perhaps he said something like "to the public under a suitable license" and that got morphed along the way to the nonsense phrase "into the public domain to do public license".

RH and community

Posted Jun 1, 2004 19:34 UTC (Tue) by ccyoung (subscriber, #16340) [Link]

I remember all the negatives that came out when Fedora was launched. It has now become a staple of the Linus environment. I have paid them several $90, and their support has always been very good, but the more aggressive Fedora, less cost and less support, is really a great service for the community.

Much of the interview was addressed to stock analysts, and much to the FOSS community. Talk about trying to butter both sides of the same slice of bread. Did a fair job, I think.

Personally, I would like to read the un-edited version of the interview. Darth Vadar and Jabba slipped through.