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 Clint Bowman INTERNET: [log in to unmask] Air Quality Modeler INTERNET: [log in to unmask] Department of Ecology VOICE: (360) 407-6815 PO Box 47600 FAX: (360) 407-7534 Olympia, WA 98504-7600 USPS: PO Box 47600, Olympia, WA 98504-7600 Parcels: 300 Desmond Drive, Lacey, WA 98503-1274 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 >