RedHat, Fedora future?

Fri Feb 6 22:44:49 UTC 2004

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion, not my employer's.

On Fri, 2004-02-06 at 17:51, Tim Kossack wrote: 
> (sorry for the long response)
> i tried to verify your statement in looking what comes included with
> rhws, but i couldn't gather any info if it ships with those plugs
> installed. given red hat's general stance in regards shipping
> non-oss/free legally questionable whatever software as part of their
> products, quite frankly i would be very surprised if they do.
> as far as the "apples to oranges"-comparison is concerned, my critics
> was and is primarily aimed at their commercial desktop offerings - also,
> as i already stated above, plugins are just one part of the problem.
> reg. fedora, yes sure, i don't expect them to provide those plugs for
> free, although if red hat would finally change their stance and just
> license/include the stuff like lindows, suse, sun etc. do, i wouldn't
> complain if they would include them for free in fedora either...;-)
> it's just that i'm asking myself why they seem not interested at all to
> tackle the issues (let alone seeing that there's one in the first
> place), when their competition seems not having to have any problems
> acknowledging and adressing them... 

I guess the point you are missing is that Red Hat is an Open Source
Company. While we have shipped and do ship some proprietary stuff now
(if I'm not off track, it's only Java, but we're working on the java
issue as well), we (as in what I think, see disclaimer) have some
problems with "oh let's put all that stuff in 'cause the others do it as
well" -- probably we wouldn't be where we are today if we had done that.

Some points about proprietary software and its place (NOT!) in Fedora
(have you read the disclaimer already? ;-):

- We can't fix bugs in code we don't have. BAD.
- We (developers) don't want to "taint our eyes" with proprietary code,
"getting the code under an NDA" is out of the question.
- Besides that, we also don't want to pay licenses for stuff only a
fraction of our customers would use, even more so if they can download
it for free.

Some other points about (what even you called) "legally questionable",
patent encumbered software: We know it sucks not to include MP3, DVD,
... players. You (as in "everyone who did it") needn't tell us that it
sucks. We do already know.

If it were possible to legally include it, we would do it.
Unfortunately, the holders of the patent in question didn't issue a
patent waiver for OSS purposes or a royalty-free, perpetual and
transferable license, so at the moment it seems impossible to us to
distribute the software and a) still fully comply with the GPL under
which most of the stuff is licensed and b) not risk to be sued for
patent infringement. Mind that wilfully infringing patents can result in
triple damages convictions in the U.S., we as a publicly traded company
were extremely unwise (to put it mildly) if we did so. This might all be
different for companies not operating from or in the U.S., but I don't
see that many remaining...

> my impression is basically that red hat hasn't at all understood (or
> needs to show it yet that they have) what makes a really polished
> desktop distribution. i don't make any difference between a good desktop
> for home use and a good desktop for businesses. neither does market
> leader microsoft. neither does lindows etc.
> getting in danger to sound circular, a good desktop is a good desktop
> because it's a good overall desktop.

For me being polished is completely perpendicular to having this and
that application or plug-in. BTW, does Windows ship with Flash nowadays?
Just being curious.

> all i'm trying to communicate is that many other smaller companies with
> less ressources are (at least partly) pushing the status quo here, while
> red hat still seems to sit, basically waiting to for gnome, kde etc. to
> get the stuff done. i just miss them going the extra-mile which one
> should and could expect from the market leader.

I don't understand what you're trying to imply here... that we're
waiting for GNOME to include MP3? Well, there already are lots of MP3
apps we could ship but don't, due to the patent issues. Hey, we couldn't
even ship it legally (IANAL of course) if we coughed up the cash that
MP3 licensing wanted for that because the GPL isn't compatible with
non-royalty-free patent licenses (but I already told you that)

> and (not just) imo, if they will continue that way, they will get under
> increased pressure form smaller, more flexible vendors in the future at
> least as far as the desktop is concerned, because it's not so much about
> the big eating the small, but the quicker outperforming the slower.

Trust me, all what you complain about is not because of too much inertia
or lack of will on our side (as I have outlined above).

> then, besides certain undoubted advantages - i also see a problem with
> the "community-based" approach, namely because the community around red
> hat's testbed - fedora - consists mainly of geeks, means people who want

I flat out refuse calling Fedora "Red Hat's testbed" -- the QA a Fedora
release gets is surely equivalent to, possibly even better (through the
open development process -- all betas/test releases are public) than the
traditional Red Hat Linux releases. If you intended to offend the people
working on Fedora, congratulations.

> imo, it's time for red hat to act instead of reacting...

Instead of talking in platitudes, some people actually put their
"money", their efforts where their mouth is and prepared repositories
where people living in countries where there isn't (yet?!) such a patent
mess (pun intended) can easily download from and install all the
software you were rambling about. There is so much that can be done, I'd
say it probably isn't only time for Red Hat to act, eh?

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."     -- B. Franklin, 1759
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