[Novalug] Install/Tweak Fest at Oct Meeting?

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Tue Sep 29 21:15:28 EDT 2009


From: Daniel Chen <seven.steps@gmail.com>

> The intent was to point out that the Ubuntu distribution shares the
> blame only in terms of decisions made by Canonical staff (for
> accountability) corroborated by community members.

I would heavily argue that it's even worse for the Fedora Project and Red Hat.  ;)

People are still spewing a mis-quoted set of statements by Michael Tiemann
regarding the desktop, and even when Jim Whitehurst says basically the same
thing years later, people still will demonize both entities.  Heck, there are still
people who have X, Y and Z against Red Hat Linux 5, 7 and 9, before Fedora.

The funny thing is that what Mark Shuttleworth is saying about the barriers to
entry and access at the traditional distribution channels is basically no different
than what Tiemann said long ago, and has been re-iterated over and over.  So
I'd argue that Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu have had much more of a
"free pass" than the Fedora Project and Red Hat.

Also understand that a lot of people feel too many Ubuntu advocates are
throwing stones from inside their glass house.  I fully understand contributors
are different than advocates.  I also fully understand that some Ubuntu advocates
cringe any and every time Shuttleworth opens his mouth at the expense of
Fedora/Red Hat, SuSE/Novell, etc... as well.

So, in a nutshell, being touchy about what many projects have been dealing with
for some time is going to be viewed as over-reacting by many.  God knows I have
contributed to so many other projects far more than I ever have Fedora and Red
Hat myself.  So guilt-by-association is just something I ignore entirely.  The code
is all that matters.

Although, in all honesty, that doesn't bode well for Canonical and Ubuntu either.
I don't condone what GKH at SuSE has been spewing, but it does make for a
nice "reference" when some of us who are demonized for merely being associated
with Red Hat use as a defense.  I note a lot of my colleagues over in the Debian
project get pelted as well.

> We're all angling the same point: when we generalize, the more polar
> bits are emphasized. I don't take offense at Greg's comments, only the
> possible implication that somehow certain distributions are deliberately
> pushing their users toward non-Free software.

Aren't they at times?  Although it has been reduced in the past year, Canonical
had quite a number of closed source projects on-going.  I'm privy to some info
that I will not share, but that attitude (at least back in 2008) really chapped some
in the Fedora Project and Red Hat "the wrong way(TM)."  It seems to have
changed in 2009 though.

Over on the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) lists, I even had a Canonical employee
and Ubuntu contributor telling me that Landscape was open while Red Hat was not.
This was last year, well before the source code of Landscape was made available,
and months after Spacewalk had been released.  Granted, prior to 2008 June,
Red Hat Network (RHN) continued to be the sole, closed source solution offered
from Red Hat and that's one too many.

But understand Red Hat's continual attitude against any proprietary/closed source
is not because of anything holier-than-thou.  It's because it's a longevity and
sustainability nightmare.  Novell is still fighting the costs of SuSE maintaining 4 times
as many forks from the mainstream kernel than Red Hat does.  And Red Hat,
unlike Novell, makes all of its revenue off of subscriptions, training and services, in
that order of profitability -- absolutely no proprietary solutions or lock-in sales.
Novell had other sales to offset losses in Linux.

Heck, an HP consultant recently made the mistake of complaining that Red Hat
training should be free, that we could afford it.  I instantly came back with that and
said, "sorry, unlike you'all, we don't have a heafty mark-up on locked in
consumables like ink, so maybe you'all should offer to pay for free Red Hat training
'at cost' which some partners get for their employees."

We can play this game all day.  Some of the attitudes on Canonical and Ubuntu
are justified from the people who make them.  I'm sure others could argue about
Fedora and Red Hat as well.  The reality is that there are some things wrong with
how consumers approach the IT world, and there are some entities take real issues
with them.

It would be easy for the Fedora Project and Red Hat to give in, especially if you
ignored all of the legal details.  But it's not the responsible thing to do.

> I agree, and we should be mindful of jurisdiction when discussing these points.

Please explain this statement ... "we should be mindful of jurisdiction."

I hope you don't suggest that many of these laws only exist in North America?

Or did you mean something else?


-- 
Bryan J  Smith           Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:         http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
---------------------------------------------------------- 
Red Hat:  That 'other' American software company built on
open customer selection of options and value, instead of
controlled distribution channels of forced bundle and lock



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