It's not so simple [LWN.net]

It's not so simple

Posted Mar 2, 2011 12:49 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: It's not so simple by ESRI
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

I say give RH the benefit of the doubt here -- surely they've earned it?

No. Red Hat is a corporation whose primary duty is to its shareholders. It's no longer lead by the same people as the "old days" when it was an exemplary Free Software citizen.

Should we give SunOracle the benefit of the doubt because it opened OpenOffice? Nope... it's a completely different company nowadays.

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It's not so simple

Posted Mar 2, 2011 16:14 UTC (Wed) by ESRI (guest, #52806) [Link] (3 responses)

Oracle is a completely different animal than Red Hat. Red Hat's entire business model is built around free software and contributing back. Itss share holders are aware of that. Oracle has no such legacy (the only reason they "open" things up is when they're forced to play with the Linux community, in which you are essentially compelled to give back if you want to participate).

This seems to be more of a situation where you see a boogie-man whether there's one there or not... (in my opinion there isn't).

I think there are more important battles to fight than to take RH to task.

It's not so simple

Posted Mar 2, 2011 16:46 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

I think there are more important battles to fight than to take RH to task.

Maybe so, but we have a company that has traditionally grokked Free Software violating the GPL, in my opinion. That's very serious.

It's not so simple

Posted Mar 3, 2011 7:19 UTC (Thu) by airlied (subscriber, #9104) [Link] (1 responses)

Only serious in your opinion, you then have to ask the question whether a) your opinion matters at all, b) RH lawyers opinion matters more.

It's not so simple

Posted Mar 3, 2011 12:04 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

It's not just my opinion. And if Red Hat is bringing in lawyers against those who would use its patches, then it has withdrawn itself from the community of collaborative developers and should be shunned.

(For the record, I don't believe Red Hat has done that or will do it. I think it's using FUD rather than actual threats to prevent people from distributing its patches.)