RE: early review of RH 9 (Shrike)

On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 11:09, [email protected] wrote:
> Upholding the spirit of open source is one thing.  Becoming a
> profitable business is another.  I understand the philosophical
> reasons behind their decision, I just hope it doesn't come at
> the cost of eventually going out of business because they continue
> to fail becoming profitable.  

They seem to be doing a pretty good job as it is:
http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/press/2003/press_q4fy2003/

Red Hat has yet to set their sights on the "casual desktop" market -
they've decided it's in their best interests to focus their resources on
what will support their business over the long-term. So far they're
being successful. The coming quarter will give an indication if they've
made the right move with the two-tier enterprise push. 

MP3/DVD/etc support is not a deal-breaker for most corporate desktops,
or even small-office settings. We're looking at switching our 20-seat
office over to Linux in a couple of months, and our owner would prefer
the users to *not* have mp3 capabilities (or ogg, for that matter -
downloading music is verboten in the company policies). I'm probably
going to recommend RH 9, as their approach to the desktop and
application choice is a better fit for our environment than most of the
other distros I've been looking at.

> As great as OGG is, it is not viable at this time to the general
> market.  Maybe that will change but right now it's going to hurt
> Redhat because all of the other distros, that also support the spirit
> of open source, are offering mp3 decoding in their products.
> 
> I'm on Redhat's side here, I just want them to succeed.
> 


> Todd
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Hooper [mailto:[email protected]] 
> Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 11:03 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: early review of RH 9 (Shrike)
> 
> 
> 
> > If it only costs a one-time payment of $50-60K to license
> > mp3 decoding, why isn't Redhat doing it?  If it's strictly
> > to appease the GPL then couldn't they ship some type of "add-on"
> pack 
> > that included this feature (and maybe the DVD encoding as well.)
> This 
> > would be similar to the MS markets the Plus Pack and would still
> allow 
> > Redhat to say the OS is shipped GPL compliant.
> >
> > Todd
> 
> Why support software patents when OGG is Free (as in speech and beer)?
> Your suggestion goes against the *spirit* of Open Source.  Upholding
> the
> *spirit* of Open Source is something that Red Hat seems to do well.
> 
> -- 
> William Hooper
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Michael Knepher <[email protected]>



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