Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore [LWN.net]

Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

Posted Oct 21, 2010 20:00 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore by ewan
Parent article: Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

"redefine the word to mean something other than what everyone else uses it to mean."

Actually, he's using it in the sense that it had before Microsoft redefined it. RHEL *I*S* proprietary - it's owned by Red Hat.

Who remembers the Windows NT advertising - "Windows is *open*, Unix is *proprietary*". That was the campaign that successfully redefined the word "proprietary".

And it's that redefinition that is now causing us grief with the "belief" that "Free Software isn't proprietary so anybody can help themselves to it and use it however they like".

Let's give the word "proprietary" back its proper meaning - Free Software IS proprietary - people own it. They just choose to share it rather than hoard it.

Cheers,
Wol

Definition of open

Posted Oct 24, 2010 9:47 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

That makes no sense. Under which definition is Microsoft Windows open? Because that definition is plainly wrong. Windows is proprietary in most senses of the word: proprietary code, development, API, filesystems, trademark, patents, you name it. Only the existence of free software clones and the fact that you can develop for the platform without telling Microsoft leaves a door to say "open" if you are cheeky enough. And only some aberrations such as Apple iOS (closed platform) or Oracle Java (reimplement and you are sued) can claim to be more closed.

From another point of view: in which sense are the old proprietary Unices more closed?