Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source [LWN.net]

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 1, 2011 19:37 UTC (Tue) by kolyshkin (guest, #34342)
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

It's making a mountain out of a molehill. My guess is Red Hat is using one big tarball instead of a set of patches just because it's easier for them that way, not because they want others to stop modifying their kernels.

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 2, 2011 2:31 UTC (Wed) by rriggs (guest, #11598) [Link] (2 responses)

Red Hat has been very clear with their customers for at least the last 6 months that something like this was going to happen because certain competitors were taking advantage of their openness, repackaging Red Hat's work as their own.

We were expecting something along these lines. It is unfortunate. But I don't know what I would do were I in Red Hat's shoes.

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 2, 2011 14:10 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

Excuse me??? Isn't Red Hat's entire business built around taking advantage of the openness of thousands of Free Software developers and repackaging their work?

I'm not saying it's wrong of Red Hat to build a business around that. It clearly isn't; those thousands of Free Software authors have consented to allow this by licensing their works under the GPL. It's just a bit rich for Red Hat to complain that others are doing to its work exactly what Red Hat has been doing for 15+ years.

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 3, 2011 0:32 UTC (Thu) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link]

To give RH its due, it is also the largest contributor of code to many of the software packages found in every GNU/Linux distribution. Their work goes well beyond repackaging.