Remember, every corporation has a legal responsibility to its shareholders 
which usually looks like (and I quote from 
<http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0119-04.htm> because the author has 
experience as a corporate securities attorney and I am a physical 
scientist with no legal training),

"the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers 
and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation 
and of the shareholders"

In essence that means, "the people who run corporations have a legal duty 
to shareholders, and that duty is to make money"

It seems to me that Red Hat has achieved a balance between that 
requirement and their social responsibility to the community.

Clint

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On Wed, 15 Jan 2014, Jos Vos wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 09:45:01AM -0800, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
>
>> RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making
>> money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action,
>> ever -- is motivated by that goal.
>
> This sounds as if this is bad: are you a communist?
>
> The world runs because companies exist, trying to make money.  I even
> dare to say the open source world in its current form does only exist
> because companies like Red Hat and many others contribute a lot of work.
> So, we should not attack them, but support them.
>
> In general, yes, companies exist for making money.  The way you talk
> about it ("literally every single action, ever") makes the statement
> IMHO formally not true, but in general, yes, money is their motivation.
>
>> The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this
>> move is going to make them money?
>>
>> Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion.
>
> The best way of debating is saying your statements are "facts", yes,
> but that does not make them real facts.
>
>> Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat
>> sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting
>> them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being
>> in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind.
>
> As someone else already pointed out: no, you do not get "the same thing
> Red Hat sells".  But for some people it may be ok for what they need.
>
> And there are other ways to look at it: the fact that clones like CentOS
> are used a lot is an indirect advertisement for the quality of Red Hat.
> The fact that there is (AFAIK) no SLES/SLED rebuild does not help the
> SUSE brand at all.  So, there are also arguments against your theory.
>
>> SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat
>> will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial
>> releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific
>> Linux will be collateral damage.
>>
>> I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am.
>
> It is not obvious.  Instead, it is a very, very unlikely scenario.
> But I might be wrong.  I hope I'm not.
>
> P.S.
> There are a lot of companies abusing the open source paradigm, stating
> their product is open source, providing just a tag-less git repository,
> no documentation, etc. and just selling their product for money as
> open source (which is in fact the only workable choice you have).
> Talking bad about those companies is ok for me too, but don't judge
> too early...
>
> -- 
> --    Jos Vos <[log in to unmask]>
> --    X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV   |   Phone: +31 20 6938364
> --    Amsterdam, The Netherlands        |     Fax: +31 20 6948204
>