Fwd: Possible GPL violation by Red Hat/Dell alliance

[rek2 at linuxbusca.com (rek2)]

On Fri, 2002-12-13 at 19:10, Robert L Krawitz wrote:
>    From: rek2 <rek2 at linuxbusca.com>
>    Date: 13 Dec 2002 14:00:23 -0500
> 
>    I understand. and you are right, but there is more chances of them
>    doing it, and they have already show they are willing to change
>    things for their own needs like the KDE/Gnome desktop look(not
>    saying if is good or bad) but they did it at their own, a company
>    needs to survive and make money.
> 
> Which is absolutely their right under the GPL (and indeed, this kind
> of "freedom" is a big part of what free software is all about -- the
> right to make changes and redistribute them).
> 


Of course it is their right. I was not talking about breaking the GPL
here but about the road they are taking, when they start not to ask  the
original developers for "courtesy", but yes they can do it legally with
no problem and to be honest I don't really care much cause I only use
RedHat at some places I work for.

To be positive here. I am not saying that I hate redhat ,I rather Redhat
100 times that other non-gnu/linux/BSD OS, just that I rather use other
distro for different rearons, RedHat have done good things also for the
community, I am just saying that they may not be like that forever they
are a company :-) and like you say they don't have to give back to the
community if they don't want to as long they don't break the GPL. 
They already have software that is only available under their
profesional edition(like the clustering monitors I saw at the
conference). what about us the guys that are not corporate, and want to
run it at home? I guess we need to use other distro then :-)

ReK2



> "There are more chances of them doing it" is presuming them guilty;
> they have a right to be presumed not guilty unless proven otherwise.
> 				     
> 				     example. if RedHat goes bankrupt
>    .... Debian will still be there :-) were RedHat may not, I don't
>    know if they will be willing to give you or me the name RedHat for
>    free so we can follow it and keep developing on it, I know Debian
>    and others will always pass the flag to another guy if they can't
>    support it anymore. is a community not a company they have
>    different needs, etc.
> 
> The name is irrelevant; even if Red Hat goes out of business, their
> successor can't prevent you from developing on it.
> 
> -- 
> Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>      
> 
> Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
> Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
> Project lead for Gimp Print   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net
> 
> "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
> --Eric Crampton