[SGVLUG] FC repository searches

[Dustin Laurence]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 12:57:03PM -0700, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> 
> Red Hat aperantly did not want that money. So I get there work for
> free from whitebox isn't GPL great. That is why I don't worry about
> Red Hat becoming a Monopoly as long as they have a company everything
> is GPL policy.

I agree with all that.  They *do* play by the rules, and that's why I'd
rather RHEL be at the top, as it is now, than anyone else.  We're
*never* going to get a corporate friend at that level of success
(certainly not publicly traded) who understands and plays by our rules
better.

They were, IMO very close to the edge, probably even with a toe over the
edge, when they sent lawyers after WhiteBox and/or CentOS (I forget the
exact deal) and gave them a hard time not just about the copyrighted
images but about even mentioning what it truly is--a rebuild of RHEL.

Thinking about it, I have to admit that they were over the line, because
they stopped them from telling the truth about the software.  That is
*never* acceptable in hacker circles.  I also strongly suspect it was
the kind of unfair bullying that proves that the US justice system (as
with all the others) does not produce justice at all.  I rather suspect
that anyone with the money to go to court could have proved they had the
right to say just the plain truth (it's a rebuild from RHEL source
tarballs), and RH knew very well that they had no legal standing (again,
this is my belief, but if I'm wrong it would only prove that US law is
more unjust than I am assuming now).

But that's still a pretty good corporate record.  I doubt any of our
other corporate "friends" of similar size could have resisted the
temptation to attempt to harass them out of existence entirely (in the
same position of dominance--Novell for example might not even want to in
it's current market position, figuring that the publicity is worth more
right now).

That said, I'm glad the end of RHL reminded me that none of these
companies, even RH, should get a free ride.

Dustin
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