On 10/20/2013 06:02 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: > Am 20.10.2013 12:52, schrieb Daniel Campbell: >> On 10/20/2013 04:24 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: >>> Am 20.10.2013 08:34, schrieb Daniel Campbell: >>>> hm, Redhat is one of the companies investing the most money into linux >>>> kernel, userland, graphics... if you 'don't trust them' you are pretty >>>> much 20 years too late. >>>> Investing money does not make them any more qualified or deserving of >>>> making decisions. Red Hat is not the sole user of Linux. They should >>>> consider themselves lucky that they are even able to profit from >>>> something that's free. >>>> >>>> You're right, though. They've been around for a while, and I've never >>>> trusted them or any other corporate interest in *nix. There's always a >>>> catch when dealing with a business. >>>> >>> 'have been around for a while' - replace that with 'are financing more >>> core developers than anybody else'. >>> >> That's less reason to trust, not more. That's like citing the popularity >> of something as proof of its quality, when oftentimes it's the exact >> opposite that's true. >> >> So they spend a lot of money hiring developers. The more important >> question is what is their agenda? What do they tell those developers to >> *make*? You don't hire people without a business plan in mind. >> >> > without Redhat, there would be no linux. gnu software would be massively > lacking and X would be without drivers. > > So calm down. > Linux was created and released in 1991, built with GNU tools. Red Hat didn't come along until 1993. Linux and GNU would both still be here; their quality without Red Hat involvement is speculative at best.
I maintain that motives matter more than money and that they (motives) should continually be audited, especially when receiving contributions from a company. They may already be; I don't know. Re: drivers, do you expect me to believe Red Hat is responsible for every X11 driver out there? How many of this list?[1] What of radeon and nouveau? nvidia's own driver? xf86-input-wacom (and linuxwacom)[2]? I'm sure Red Hat has contributed plenty to X11, but your statement is flat-out false. [1]: http://www.usinglinux.org/x11-drivers/ [2]: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/linuxwacom/
