[NCLUG] "red hat - the new redmond?" comment from mainstream online media

[Kevin Fenzi]

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>>>>> "Idris" == Idris S Hamid <ishamid at attbi.com> writes:

idris> ...
Idris> it", Red Hat certainly has shown tendencies in the Linux
Idris> community which, in their broadest outlines, are certainly
Idris> _reminiscent_ of M$. The best example is their abuse of KDE,
Idris> which they first tried to kill, and are now butchering in a way
Idris> which, while quite legal, is very clearly not in the spirit of
Idris> the community.

Well, the part where they tried to kill it was because it wasn't
GPL'ed. RedHat doesn't ship any non GPL'ed things. Would you want to
force them to ship a MS office if one was available?

How are they butchering it? I am running RedHat (null) (8.0 beta) on
my laptop. While I don't use either gnome or kde, I did log in and
look at them and play for a few minutes. My impression was that kde
looked nicer and was more responsive than gnome. 

Idris> Hiding behind the GPL does not make their actions any less
Idris> odious. It is perfectly legal to take GPL software, cripple or
Idris> near-cripple it, and then release it under the same name as the
Idris> original. This is a loophole in the GPL which allows a force of
Idris> market dominance to push its own software agenda, in this case
Idris> making KDE, if not unusable, then at least unappealing as a
Idris> desktop solution. Their dominance in American markets gives
Idris> them the leverage to have an impact in this regard. It is

I see what you are saying, but not sure there is a solution. :(

Idris> highly unlikely that they would have have dared do such a thing
Idris> if not for their market dominance. Red Hat's excuses in this
Idris> regard that they are acting in the best interests of their
Idris> consumers (a typical M$ line) are laughable given the
Idris> thinly-veiled hatred of KDE that permeates much of their
Idris> development team (the recent "kde-crapland" remark comes to
Idris> mind). When the lone KDE developer at RH pointed out that many
Idris> users would flood them with bug-reports and complaints for some
Idris> of their butchery, the response from higher powers was
Idris> basically ``tough''.

cites? urls?

I havent really seen anything bad from the RedHat people per KDE after
it was GPL'ed. It looked nice when I used it (admitedly for only a few
minutes). 

You do know that KDE was the main reason that the mandrake
distribution started? They wanted to take RedHat and add in KDE which
RedHat wasn't shipping. 

Idris> What amazes me is the number of Red Hat apologists who can't
Idris> see a spade for a spade, or the forest for the trees. While the
Idris> "RH=M$" remark is certainly an exaggeration, RH has shown
Idris> broadly similar tendencies, and I for one will not buy or
Idris> recommend the RH distribution.

I use KRUD which is based on RedHat. Perhaps since I don't use KDE I
haven't seen this problem, but over the last N years, RedHat has been
good IMHO. They release all their work (installer, etc) under the
GPL. They don't ship non-free things. They do ship lots of good
software. 

kevin
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