Cobb: Expensive Hats

October 03, 2004

Expensive Hats

I just read that Ret Hat just acquired some $23 million worth of security parts for their enterpirse operating system. Not long ago I seem to recall being told that Fedora is the way to go for the most serious applications. Now correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Fedora not free software? A cursory look at the Red Hat site, and of their comments to spite Sun Microsystems shows me that Red Hat is a bit less Linuxy than other Linuxes, in that almost nothing is free about it.

Sure there are other distros out there, but I think this is a significant departure from the philosophy of open-source & free software. I don't have a problem with that and in fact I predicted that it would happen or Linux would fail. This is a different licensing scheme, ie different business model. But Red Hat is no longer free software.

Posted by mbowen at October 3, 2004 10:23 AM

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Comments

"Red Hat", the commercial brand of the distro hasn't been free for a while now, but "Fedora", the semi-experimental open-source version is still free.

Linux will increasingly become more and more commercial, no doubt. The big players have been circling the bait in ever tighter spirals like sharks nosing for a new meal.

But as long as Linus keeps the kernel free, there will always be "hobbyist" distros about (Ubuntu's fast becoming a serious player).

Posted by: memer at October 3, 2004 03:08 PM

Linux is free. The packaging is what's costing.

Posted by: DarkStar at October 3, 2004 04:11 PM

Heh, Real Hackers™ use Gentoo anyhow.

Posted by: Abiola Lapite at October 4, 2004 02:18 PM