Well as long as we have a motivated and diverse audience (Hello Mr Barnes)
I'd like to take a moment on the soap-box for a mid afternoon ramble...
First of all, I'd like to give great thanks for those who have developed
the distributions of Linux to the level where it is today. Thank you all
most sincerely.
Linux is straddling what may be called (for lack of a real name) the
existing economy and a new economy. Companies like SuSE and RedHat and all
the rest must exist as businesses in the existing economy, yet Linux
itself is a catalyst for a new economy where the value (and product
differentiation) is pushed to a higher level.
It may not be immediately clear in the day to day business grind, but
applications that run on Linux (as opposed to those that run on RedHat or
SuSE or Debian or Slackware ....) is good for all companies and
applications that run only on one distribution has the net effect of
diminishing the viability of Linux as a platform.
RedHat alone does not have the credibility or impact of RedHat in the
context of the Linux community. The same is true of SuSE and all of the
distributions.
RedHat would not lose if an application were ported to Linux instead of
RedHat Linux. I believe the loss to the Linux community when applications
are targeted at a particular distribution will hurt all distributions. (To
be clear, I'm talking about applications that are tied in some fundamental
way to a distribution ... not just file layout or library version or other
core capabilities)
At the risk of gross understatement, we need to understand that reconciling
the 'gift economy' aspects of the 'free software' world with the need to
stay in business is not easy. It is up to us as a Linux community to hold
distributions and developers to the high levels of integrity, quality and
openness that have created this amazing environment. It is also our
continued responsibility to appreciate the work that is done by
contributing code, contributing support on lists, paying for products and
all of the other ways that have grown Linux into one of the few things in
the computer world that succeed on merit and quality as opposed to press
releases.
>> This is getting annoying it's good that linux is good support but I don't
>> like it when they favor one
>> distro over another. Just make a bloody linux port and let all linux
>> distro's pick it up. I don't like
>> the RH tactics very much and don't care to use their distro again it's not
>> that good.
>
>Opinions on good or bad aside, Red Hat doesn't use "tactics" to get companies
>to port to "Red Hat Linux". We don't sign exclusives or anything like that,
>nor do we try to sell them on doing it "Red Hat only." That's a decision
>companies have made on their own without help from us.
>
>
>--Donnie
>
>--
> Donnie Barnes http://www.redhat.com/~djb [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Bah."
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