On Sat, 2003-11-22 at 17:30, Derek Neighbors wrote:
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> Craig White wrote:
> |>It is Bruce Peren's reaction to Red Hat abandoning the desktop and
> |>others stating issues with GNU/Linux on the home desktop.  It will be
> |>Debian GNU/Linux based.
> |
> | -------
> | I think that the whole world is interested in this one...
> 
> | BTW - The statement 'Bruce Peren's reaction to Red Hat abandoning the
> | desktop' ... is that a paraphrase or is there some quote attributable to
> | Bruce Perens?
> 
> I did not say ONLY Bruce was interested in this .  I said, that Bruce
> was responding to things happening in the community.  Currently, the
> bigger vendors are shying away from the desktop or trying to build
> proprietary extensions to their distributions, thus opening a huge void
> ~ that a number of community projects have started to discuss attacking
> as well as pissing off a lot of developers.  The fact that this is
> happening is attributable, but I felt it so known in the community that
> it wasn't worth pasting a million links.  Has Bruce come out and said
> the reaction was purely a play against Red Hat's (and SuSE as well)
> move.  No.  Has he stated that he thinks its time that the community
> consolidates and moves to supporting one code base? Yes.  I am fairly
> certain that before Red Hat made some of it's announcements, SuSE got
> swallowed by Novell and UnitedLinux pretty much died that Bruce would
> *not* have made this play.
> 
> Also in the article I did attribute, Bruce specifically mentioned that
> the changing faces of SuSE/Red Hat as part of the solution.  That they
> need to be service organizations and use Debian....
> 
> <snip> [1]
> "Current Linux distribution vendors such as Red Hat Inc. and SuSE Linux
> AG will have to evolve into larger services organizations if Linux is to
> gain a toehold on the enterprise desktop, said Bruce Perens, co-founder
> of the Open Source Initiative.
> 
> Perens called for Linux distributors to unite behind a single
> distribution based on the Debian version of Linux, which he helped to
> develop. Enterprises will be willing to pay Linux companies to engineer
> the operating system for their specific environments, but the underlying
> code would remain free, he said."
> </snip>
> 
> He also specifically called out Red Hat as being licensed seat only as
> an issue:
> 
> <snip> [2]
> He said the companies will also welcome an alternative to Red Hat and
> other commercial versions of Linux, which come with "odious" terms,
> limiting the number of seats and requiring expensive service contracts
> that are voided if users attempt to modify the software.
> </snip>
> 
> The most telling is where Bruce doesn't say that he is necessarily
> reacting to a single bad news item (SuSE and Red Hat), but basically
> doesn't like the trend.  To me this is just politicking.  He is trying
> to not blame the people making the trend, but the trend itself.
> 
> <snip> [2]
> Perens said he is less discouraged by the recent news than he is
> motivated to stop a movement toward "proprietary open-source code," as
> vendors commodify the work developers have done for free.
> 
> "The people who develop open-source code," Perens said, "are getting
> tired of being told that they have to pay to use it."
> </snip>
> 
> So you are correct my original statement should have read....
> 
> It is Bruce Peren's reaction to multiple vendors trying to turn
> GNU/Linux Distributions into proprietary products with some of the code
> available on request.
> 
> Hope that further clarifies.
----
Indeed it did and I'm sorry that I made you defensive. You should know
that I value your opinion highly.

I get the point about the concern with commercialized distribution and I
think der.Hans expressed a point of view about Red Hat and SuSE - being
commercialized and where Red Hat has continually contributed some
significant code to the open source community (i.e., anaconda installer
which apparently will soon be integrated into the Debian installation
process if it isn't already) whereas SuSE has tight-fisted YAST.

While I am taken back by the shift of direction at Red Hat, since that
is the one distribution that I actually am getting quite efficient at, I
can see some interesting benefits for the Linux community at large.
Obviously, the software developed thus far that makes it into the RHEL
packages has been released as open source. RHEL has evolved into a
system that bundles support, long-term maintenance plans and the only
proprietary stuff that I know of are: 1. logos, legends and trademarks
of the Red Hat corporation and 2. 3rd party proprietary software such as
Java.

Maybe I just don't get it and if that is the case, I'm sure that you or
someone else will enlighten me but it seems to me that the Linux
community is well served by having a commercial success story as part of
the fold. Especially if that success story contributes code, supports
software developers of open source software and generally a good citizen
in the land of open source software in general.

It certainly makes it easier to get penetration of Linux into offices
where Windows servers might otherwise reign when these offices can
purchase a server from Dell/Compaq/etc with Red Hat and get support from
that company as well as support from Red Hat. 

It's curious that you would attribute the notion to Perens that the
trend is to 'commodify the work the developers have done for free' when
it always seemed to me that commodifying the work is exactly the whole
point of most distro's. I would understand if the concern was that they
were profiteering but not commodifying. 

I decided to wait and see how things turn out Fedora, Fedora-legacy and
RHEL - though if past history repeats - Red Hat is likely to keep
plugging along until their software sales soften and they get desparate
to keep up a particular income stream.

Craig