Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?

[Chris Croughton]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 01:13:40AM +0000, Ramanan Selvaratnam wrote:

> On Sat, 2004-01-03 at 23:38, Chris Croughton wrote:
> 
> > What I've heard about MS working conditions make me not want to work
> > there, for a start.  Far too "big business".
> 
> To associate most software related work with physically being in a place
> is fast becoming a thing of the past. I hope people are considering this
> while trying to plan for a better future.

I don't mean just physically, or even physically as a major part of
"working conditions".  The 'culture' of the company is more important,
and MS seem to be very into the "meetings culture" and against people
mixing much between teams (one hand not knowing what the other is
doing).  So I've heard from people who have worked for them both in the
UK and in the US.

But there aren't many companies yet who do "remote working" either.

> > Taking developer fixes and code from 'Fedora' and passing them on to the
> > 'Enterprise' version for sale?
> 
> Since you mention no licence terms are broken can I assume you are
> against the model Redhat has perfected to make money out of software
> itself.

As I said, the 'spirit' not the 'letter'.

> I would have imagined they are hoping to rake it in with Fedora support
> too.

No official or paid-for support for Fedora.  But of course anything the
users and developers do in Fedora will be fed back to their sold
'Enterprise' product.

> > I haven't been fond of RH for ages (try building a kernel with their
> > patches which is the same as the one they supply as binary, for
> > instance), but they seem to be going further into the idea of "let's
> > make money off the developers".
> 
> Kernel developers?

All developers.  Many of the core GNU/Linux kernel developers are lucky
enough to have employers who pay them for it, or they are enthusiasts
who do it "for fun", or are sponsored in other ways.

> > Which is of course allowed by the free
> > software licences, but if the developers get the impression they are
> > working "for free" for someone else to sell their work how long will
> > they continue to do it?
> 
> Maybe they committed suicide. Maybe you are correct in that Redhat will
> continue to show new ways to make money out of free software.

I don't have to like their ways, of course.

> > The "spirit of FLOSS" is that people put back into the community.  RH
> > don't seem to be much interested in honouring that any more...
> 
> Damn! http://people.redhat.com/ has also gone all upmarket!
> Maybe you are right. The developers all became rich and decided to
> retire.

I'm not keen on their marketing either.  For instance:

  Step 1: Understand your options
    Lists Red Hat Enterprise and Fedora.  Points to a table describing
    the differences (lots of entries in the Fedora column saying
    'None').
    
  Step 2: Make your choice
    Re-lists the two.  The link to the 'Enterprise' info points to a
    table containing the different versions of that.  The link to
    'Fedora' points to a text page about the project -- and that page
    also mentions and links to 'Enterprise'.
    
  Step 3: Make the move to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    So by step three your decision has obviously been made in favour of
    their commercial package.  What a surprise...

Other things: Fedora is only on x86, RHE adds Itanium, AMD64, IBM i, p
and z series and S/390.

It's pretty clear that they see Fedora as a 'lesser' system for
'developers' and other techie types, but they'll happily accept anything
that community come up with back into their commercial product.

Chris C