Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: [...] > > I'd want to ask a question here. How does the entity paying these > > programmers make their money? Do they do it with proprietary > > software, in which case would not it be objectionable to you? > > Red Hat doesn't do it with proprietary software.
Red Hat does it by turning GPL'd software (majority of which is created by others, may I note) into pretty proprietary (copy use "licensed") software... a fee based Freedom Zero, so to speak. Red Hat locks in its clients my means of its certification programs with other proprietary software vendors like Oracle, IBM, etc. http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/partners/subscription_center/RedHat_Subscription_Center_Guide_na.pdf ------- Red Hat Subscription Agreement Subscription agreements are the cornerstone of our business and are required to: Provide access to our software offerings Set forth the appropriate service level agreements over time Recognize revenue, collect cash, and maintain our business model Ensure the appropriate open source license (General Public License (GPL) based End User License Agreement (EULA)) is transferred to the client Minimize legal risks to Red Hat Red Hat Subscription Terms Installed System Customer agrees to pay Red Hat the applicable subscription fees for each Installed System. An "Installed System" means a system on which the Customer installs or executes all or a portion of Red Hat software (may be a server, work station, virtual machine, blade, node, partition, or engine). Trademarks No trademark rights granted under agreement Cannot distribute Red Hat software with Red Hat marks (must remove) ------- http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/download.php?repo=tenk&ipage=5210480&format=PDF ------ Our subscription-based contract model may encounter customer resistance or we may experience a decline in the demand for our products. The subscription agreement used for many of our products, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, requires customers to agree to a subscription for our services for each installed system on which they deploy our subscription based products. At the same time, the subscription agreement places no restriction on the customer's right to redistribute the products. While we believe this practice complies with the requirements of the GNU General Public License, and while we have reviewed this practice with the Free Software Foundation, the organization that maintains and provides interpretations of the GNU General Public License, we may still encounter customer resistance to this distribution model. To the extent we are unsuccessful in promoting or defending this distribution model, our business and operating results could be materially and adversely affected. ------ No wonder that RMS/FSF doesn't approve Red Hat's distro and urges that we should all resist and stick to gNewSense and Utoto instead. I bet that any attorney without a stake in "FOSS law" consultancy business (so to speak) will tell you that Red Hat is just pretending to sell support services for free software while actually contracting expensive proprietary (copy use "licensed") software with some level of free support. regards, alexander. -- "The revolution might take significantly longer than anticipated." -- The GNU Monk Harald Welte _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss