On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 11:09, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Upholding the spirit of open source is one thing. Becoming a > profitable business is another. I understand the philosophical > reasons behind their decision, I just hope it doesn't come at > the cost of eventually going out of business because they continue > to fail becoming profitable.
They seem to be doing a pretty good job as it is: http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/press/2003/press_q4fy2003/ Red Hat has yet to set their sights on the "casual desktop" market - they've decided it's in their best interests to focus their resources on what will support their business over the long-term. So far they're being successful. The coming quarter will give an indication if they've made the right move with the two-tier enterprise push. MP3/DVD/etc support is not a deal-breaker for most corporate desktops, or even small-office settings. We're looking at switching our 20-seat office over to Linux in a couple of months, and our owner would prefer the users to *not* have mp3 capabilities (or ogg, for that matter - downloading music is verboten in the company policies). I'm probably going to recommend RH 9, as their approach to the desktop and application choice is a better fit for our environment than most of the other distros I've been looking at. > As great as OGG is, it is not viable at this time to the general > market. Maybe that will change but right now it's going to hurt > Redhat because all of the other distros, that also support the spirit > of open source, are offering mp3 decoding in their products. > > I'm on Redhat's side here, I just want them to succeed. > > Todd > > -----Original Message----- > From: William Hooper [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 11:03 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: early review of RH 9 (Shrike) > > > > > If it only costs a one-time payment of $50-60K to license > > mp3 decoding, why isn't Redhat doing it? If it's strictly > > to appease the GPL then couldn't they ship some type of "add-on" > pack > > that included this feature (and maybe the DVD encoding as well.) > This > > would be similar to the MS markets the Plus Pack and would still > allow > > Redhat to say the OS is shipped GPL compliant. > > > > Todd > > Why support software patents when OGG is Free (as in speech and beer)? > Your suggestion goes against the *spirit* of Open Source. Upholding > the > *spirit* of Open Source is something that Red Hat seems to do well. > > -- > William Hooper > > > > > -- > Phoebe-list mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list -- Michael Knepher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
