[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:

>> The TeX shipped with redhat is 'tetex'. Which as far as I can see
>> is GPL'ed. Am I missing something there?

Idris> Some teTeX packages are gpl'd by their individual authors, but
Idris> the core of TeX as licensed by D. E. Knuth is probably
Idris> incompatible with the GPL. Any changes to Knuth's source by
Idris> anyone other than Knuth cannot be called "TeX" or "METAFONT",
Idris> whether during his life or after his death;->

Idris> The LaTeX Project Public License is definitely incompatible
Idris> with the GPL. LaTeX is of course the most common TeX
Idris> macropackage. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

indeed. An excellent link. 

From: 
ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:/pub/comp/tex/teTeX/1.0/distrib/sources/LICENSE

The software contained in the teTeX-src-*.tar.gz package is covered by
several licenses (e.g. GPL, LGPL, X license). All of them are compatible
with the requirements defined for "Open Source Software".

remember that fsf takes a stricter line on license issues than the
general "Open Source" community. 

>> again, could you provide a cite for this?

Idris> The first stuff u asked me to cite I've done so in response to
Idris> J Paul; the other stuff would take some research since it's
Idris> ancient history but most of facts underlying my analysis are
Idris> common knowledge:

Idris> Fact1: RH refused to carry KDE in general, _ostensibly_ for
Idris> free-software concerns;

yes.

Idris> Fact2: The German version of RH carried KDE before the change
Idris> in the QT. license, _in spite of_ free-software concerns.

I would dispute this "fact". 

Since this is ancient history redhat seem to have removed the page
that would prove this. ;( 

Take a look at:
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1998-11/lw-11-skinny2.html 

Which seems to imply it was "scoop" from linuxworld that broke the
story about german redhat shipping KDE, and he retracted his comments
in that article. He points to:
http://www.redhat.com/redhat/qtlicense.html 
which redhat has removed and I can't seem to find a copy of. 

I think what happened is someone took the german redhat and added kde
and released it. It wasn't an "offical" redhat. So I think your facts
are wrong. :) I seem to remember this when it came out... 

kevin
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