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More mature and bugfixed during the development, SLED 10 uses 2.12.

RHGD is based on RHEL 5. RHEL 5 use Gnome 2.16.

Red Hat goes for maturity over cutting edge. If you want cutting edge software (along with the bugs running such software entails) then go with Fedora. Enterprises who value up time and employee productivity will stick with tried and tested software, even if it's not on the bleeding edge.

I don't want to sound too harsh, but this kind of comment shows that some (I dare say many) Linux users have no idea what they are talking about when corporate Linux is discussed.

Unlike the enthusiast to whom Linux is cool enough for any random app crashes to be easily forgiven, people that *pay* for their FLOSS software are not that easygoing, and we should be stupid to ask it from them.

"This app crashed!"
"That's highly unusual, after all it's open source.."
"Well it just did! Damn, did I lose data?"
"Er.. well it *is* actually a bit on the cutting edge, you know, full of cool new features.. and you can file a bug report.. chances are it'll be picked up fairly quickly!"
"I paid a lot of money for this stuff!"
"Oh, I'm sure support will.."
"Now where do I find the latest version that I saved..?
"Let me have a look."
"Reminds me a lot of Windows."
"Er, well, it *is* a computer after all.. might have something to do with sub-optimal hardware too.."
"I want Windows back."

Then, I'm just as biased in favor of free software as the next guy. But let's practice some healthy self-criticism here, how often do we tend to glorify things, leaving some of the real issues out of the picture? How many of us are patient enough to file, say, a real bug report (this is different from posting on the distrowatch comments section that Compiz froze on your Ubuntu box)?

I could be running random editions of Mandriva, Suse, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian Testing (which I did to decide what works best for the school I was setting up a little Linux network in), and it simply does happen relatively frequently, deny it or not, that (graphical) applications crash or are in another way buggy, eat up all of your processor time. Some of the most lauded distros have annoying bugs that I tend to forgive as a Linux home user, but when you see other people using the programs, you'll notice how annoying they may be.

Running the latest Suse for one day and then writing a hundred blog entries on it, calling it a "review", ("I had no issues!") does not mean testing!
And saying that, 'well, MS Office crashes too, once in a while' is not a valid argument for or against anything.
Stuff is good if it's good, it's not good if it's (claimed to be) less bad than something else.

Let's be fair about that, nobody benefits if we proudly wipe our beloved bugs under the carpet.
Therefore, what Red Hat is doing makes perfect sense. Next to my Fedora laptop I'm running a CentOS 5 desktop which is the most stable (true, not the fastest) distribution I've ever run for a longer period of time, Debian Stable coming very close. Taking its version of Gnome as a base makes perfect sense too, therefore. Sure the latest Gnome has some very cool features 2.16 doesn't have.

Most users couldn't care less, can you believe that?

Codices is the plural of codex, a form of book invented by the Romans. You are right, codecs should br the plural of codec.

RHEL and so RHGD use Yum (like Fedora).

I installed RHEL5 and got a command not found when I ran yum update as root.

Sure ?
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Server/en/os/SRP...

No up2date.
There are :
yum-3.0.1-5.el5
yum-metadata-parser
yum-rhn-plugin-0.4.3-1.el5
yum-rhn-plugin-0.4.3-2.el5

... Including the full Fedora tool-chain (and extra repositories).
(Pirut, Pup/puplet, Yumex and EPEL.)

- Gilboa

This is exactly the kind of behavior the EU anti trust suits are trying to curb.

No, it's not. The EU is going after cases where MS is trying to leverage its dominance in one market to take over another (ie. desktop protocols to servers). There's no such dynamic here.

Sure, it's MS's 'IP' but to license the same codecs to two different companies on totally different terms hearkens back to the bad old 'force OEM's to install only our operating system' days.

Wrong. First, MS has no monopoly on codec technology. So, it's a simple licensing issue. All that Red Hat has to do to get the technology is agree to the license. Red Hat has chosen to put politics (ie. its relationship with the open source community) above pragmatism.

Well, thank the heavens there are alternatives.

Thanks for proving my point.

Maybe if MS was not so stingy on licensing their codecs and protocols, the EU wouldn't have to step in.

You clearly don't understand the dynamic here.

Judging by the reaction other people have had to your post, I'm afraid it seems like your tirade is not very popular. Could that be because you don't actually know what you are talking about?

MS not having a dominant position in the codec market is, at best, highly debatable. None the less, they are the sole copyright holder, and up until recently the only distributer, of the WM codec family.

RedHat wishes to license said codecs for it's own desktop operating system. MS tries to use it's ownership of said codecs in order to forced RedHat to sign a patent deal.

Thankfully, MS have already licensed out said codecs to a third party, namely Fluendo, with further distribution rights thereby enabling RedHat to still legally provide the desired codecs without having to capitulate to MS strong arm tactics.

The licensing deal with Fluendo can be easily trace directly back to the amount of pressure the EU has put on MS for it's anti competitive behavior (you know, that N version of windows?).

I think you'll find that I understand the dynamic perfectly. I also think that you'll find that you fail horribly.

Your inability to adequately reply to a single one of my points, in any valid manner, without resorting to juvenile oneupmanship is truly telling and as far as I am concerned, I will not be replying to anymore of your brain dead drivel.

No matter if you having anything even vaguely interesting to say, do the rest of us a favor and crawl back under that stone you come from.

Pardon? I don't know where you come off making that one. Quicktime and Real simply are AAC/MPEG4 wrapped around in a container.

WMV/WMA/ASF is here and a reality; if Red Hat refuses to sign an agreement with Microsoft - that is their choice, but at the same time they shouldn't run around trying to make out that they were a 'victim'. Its the equivilant of someone saying, "I'll give you a million dollars, and I won't kill you if you sign this contract" and the only reply is, "well, I don't agree with killing" - then refusing to sign the contract.

What I hope is that with Novell's relationship with Microsoft, we'll start seeing their desktop offerings comeing on stream to offer a complete solution to end users. Those who scream about 'evil Microsoft' sound like the same sort of view which communists took to Lenins 'new economic plan' - perish the thought that an ideology becomes polluted with a rational approach.

What would you rather have, Microsoft with 90% of the market place, or 50% because Linux vendors have recognised that Microsoft is here, faced reality and licenced the technology as needed to offer a reasonable level of compatibility.

Edited 2007-10-16 02:03

I have absolutely no problem with anybody licensing WM codecs and if you read over my comments again, you'll see that. In fact, I'm all for RedHat licensing whatever they want; If it makes their distro more attractive, all the better.

What I'm not a little bit angry at is MS trying to use the simple licensing of one of their technologies to force a competitor into an unwanted patent cross licensing deal, especially after that competitor has repeatedly stated that they had no intentions of doing so.

Why not sign a patent sharing arrangement; you're claiming to me that there isn't *one* single algorithm within a linux distribution that infringes on a Microsoft patent? I don't know about you, believing in god for some may be a leap of faith, but what you claim is more than a leap.

Heck, even OGG Vorbis has patent issues surrounding compression technology used - because it is almost impossible to actually develop something without infringing on a patent somewhere along the line.

With that being said, I'm not excusing patents - I think they're a bloody stupid idea to begin with when it comes to software, and given how pharmacutical companies use 'ever greening' patent techniquies, they've moved from protecting IP to allow the recouping of initial costs, to simply gouging the customer at every possibly opportunity.

Why doesn't Red Hat just suck up his bottom lip and sign an agreement? how is it going to hurt them? sign an agreement, which will cover *ALL* possibly patents, which range from their file formats to their video/audio formats. From operating system algorithms to 'user interface' improvements.

What you're bitching on about is the equivilant of being offered an arrangement which allows you immunity from prosecution and all you can sceam is, "BUT I'M INNOCENT! I'M INNOCENT!". Just sign the damn thing and move on with life.

You might ask this exact same question of Microsoft with respect to the patent sharing arrangement offered by OIN and the Patent Commons.



Precisely.

Microsoft are bing offered a patent sharing arrangement which grants them immunity from prosecution and all they can (in effect) scream is, "BUT I WANT TO DESTROY EVERYBODY ELSE, NOT WORK WITH THEM!".

The end effect would be the same as that which you complain of ... once Microsoft are the 100% true monopoly supplier of software that they want to become, then there is no point in anyone else having any patents is there? Microsoft could just do what they want ... and what Microsoft apparently want is to jack up prices, charge per-seat or even per-access if they can get away with it, and indulge in planned obsolesence and frequent forced upgrades.

Edited 2007-10-16 05:28

Why not sign a patent sharing arrangement; you're claiming to me that there isn't *one* single algorithm within a linux distribution that infringes on a Microsoft patent? I don't know about you, believing in god for some may be a leap of faith, but what you claim is more than a leap.

....all the rest of your comment

Ok, this is stupid. You first get your facts straight, then talk.

If MS would want fair cross licensing (or better, if MS would even want cross licensing deal), they could simply sign OIN deal. They would sign it with all companies at the same time. RH, IBM, Novell...

OIN protects every member, be it OSS or not. Just as long as he plays fair.

Please show me one single post of mine where I have said that Linux does not violate MS patents.

Please don't put words in my mouth, as It is rude, not constructive towards proper discourse or argument and I certainly don't do anything of the sort to you.

As for the rest of your post, I believe that I have already stated my opinions in other posts in this thread and certainly have no wish to repeat myself.

One word: principles.

Moral and legal ones.

Once you acquiesce to somebody's legal demands, you cannot retract that. Agreeing that Microsoft holds patents on Linux would be disastrous as it would open the floodgates for Microsoft and other vultures to run linux into the ground with constant patent attacks.

Therefore, a denunciation of software patents along with some strategic partnership to pool existing patents in defense of free software is a very sensible survival strategy in today's legal climate.

Moreover,, people who have worked hard on free software would hate to see Red Hat give in to the extortion that Microsoft patents represent.

Get your facts straight

Pardon? I don't know where you come off making that one. Quicktime and Real simply are AAC/MPEG4 wrapped around in a container.

This is only valid for qt4. qt3 was a proprietary sorenson codec. And it was already present in current extent.

WMV/WMA/ASF is here and a reality; if Red Hat refuses to sign an agreement with Microsoft - that is their choice, but at the same time they shouldn't run around trying to make out that they were a 'victim'. Its the equivilant of someone saying, "I'll give you a million dollars, and I won't kill you if you sign this contract" and the only reply is, "well, I don't agree with killing" - then refusing to sign the contract.

Redhat never tried to show them as victim. They were showing them as victor, since they didn't bend over like Novell.

What would you rather have, Microsoft with 90% of the market place, or 50% because Linux vendors have recognised that Microsoft is here, faced reality and licenced the technology as needed to offer a reasonable level of compatibility.

It is probably hard to understand for you, .... but.... MS with 90% and my linux clean. And so do most of linux users.

"""

"""

No. SReilly is focusing on the pertinent issue, and you seem to want to dance around it. MS would not license the codecs to RedHat unless they signed a totally unrelated patent cross-licensing deal. This would be like going into a grocery store and buying a gallon of milk. When you get to the checkout stand, the manager refuses to sell it to you unless you admit that you've been stealing stuff from the store. (Which you have not.) You ask what he thinks you have been stealing and the manager says "stuff", valuable "stuff". And will not sell you the milk unless you sign a paper admitting that you have been stealing the store's valuable "stuff", and entitling you to get more of that valuable "stuff" legally.

It may or may not be illegal. But it is most certainly quite seedy.

Edited 2007-10-16 06:24

"Judging by the reaction other people have had to your post, I'm afraid it seems like your tirade is not very popular. Could that be because you don't actually know what you are talking about? "

What "reaction"? The first one to respond to tomcat's post is you. I guess you're judging "reaction" by the fact that his post was modded down into oblivion but that doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's not like mod points have any relation to the quality of posts around here, for example, this very inane post made today has been modded to a 10:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=18773&comment_id=278445

As for this particular case, if Microsoft feels that Red Hat is violating its patents, and violating them *wantonly* and seemingly proclaiming that they are proud to do so, I fail to see why Microsoft should play nice with them. I'm not sure why Red Hat doesn't sign a cross-licensing agreement (Novell *made* money on their MS deal), like any other "grown-up" company would, other than to score brownie points with Microsoft haters. But I predict that Microsoft will release a Linux version of Office with a EULA stating that it's only legal for use on distros whose makers have agreed to patent deals with Microsoft. It would be interesting to see what Red Hat would do then, as it would be very tempting for business that run Linux to dump Red Hat for a distro that could legally run MS Office.

Speaking of "strong arm" tactics, how about Red Hat and the OIN coalition of which it is a part (the group of companies that formed a patent pool as "protection" against anyone that accuses a member of patent violation)? The OIN, it seems to me, has formed a patent "trust" which they can use to violate any patent they wish, secure in the knowledge that if anyone comes after an OIN member for patent violation, then OIN will file thousands of patent suits against the accuser. Whether they actually sue anyone is immaterial; simply the threat to do so (and they have indeed made such threats) seemingly gives them the power (though not the "right") to violate patents at will.

Why should Microsoft be allowed to conflate licensing of their Office product with the OS on which it is running?

If there is any licensing of Office, the end user should pay for the license to run Office via the purchase price of Office. This should be so regardless of what OS the user is running.

It really has nothing to do with the OS. There should be no leverage for Microsoft to strong-arm RedHat by putting illegal restraint-of-trade and anti-competitive anti-trust restrictions in its EULA.



The existance of OIN is driven purely by patent threats against Free Software in the first place. Threats of the type "we say your stuff violates our territory, but we won't say how or where". The fact that "we won't say how or where" is a sure sign that there is, in reality, no real (as in valid, true to the spirit of patent protection in fostering innovation) violation at all. It is a sure sign that Microsoft see patents only as a way to try to destroy competition, not foster it.

The OIN, it seems to me, has formed a patent "trust" which has a perfect record of not suing anyone over patents, and which has made its patents cross-licensed to anyone who wants to participate in the trust. OIN is a near-perfect antithesis of the concept of a "patent troll". It is a collective of organisations wanting to actually make products and not violate each-other patents in the process. A patent co-operative, if you will.

If Microsoft wants to avoid being sued by the OIN there are two very simple acts that Microsoft can take: either (1) don't sue Linux and don't use any of the technology covered by OIN patents, or (2) don't sue Linux, join the OIN and enjoy access to all of the OIN patented technology.

Since Microsoft have said repeatedly that they do not intend to sue Linux, and that they wish to enter cross-licensing deals with Linux, then clearly (2) is the way to go for Microsoft then, isn't it?

If Microsoft want to cross-license with Linux, then Microsoft should join the OIN. It is that simple. It is a no-brainer, really ... if we were to take Microsoft at their word. Doing (1) gets Microsoft nothing. Doing (2) gets Microsoft access to OIN patents.

There is only one conclusion to be reached if Microsoft don't join the OIN ... and that conclusion is that Microsoft actually want to destroy Linux, and not co-exist with it.

Edited 2007-10-16 04:46

You forgot: (3) gently suggest that this would be a great time for patent trolls to sue Linux vendors. These entities don't distribute any products of their own, so they are completely immune to patent non-aggression trusts like OIN.

In a sense, the OIN is a Cold War mentality in an era of "global terrorism". A nuclear arsenal is not an effective deterrent in the asymmetrical warfare practiced by patent trolls. The only things they value are money and patents, and it would be rather stupid to give them patents.

They are explicitly designed to have no vulnerable interests. No products to attack, no alliances to disrupt, no customers to lure away, no children to kidnap, etc. They fight dirty, and their mission statement is "get rich or die trying".

"""

"""

The framers of the Constitution did not allow the granting of limited monopolies by Congress, at its option, because they felt that people had a right to have a good idea and get rich off of it. The gave Congress that (optional) power because they felt that sometimes extending extra incentives to people with good ideas, to encourage them to develop them, would allow "We, The People" to benefit from those ideas which might have been had but not developed otherwise.

So *why* do patents allow people to have ideas, patent them, and then *sit* on them for years and years, providing *disincentives* for others to develop the ideas? Such activity is *quite* contrary to the purpose of those limited monopolies, as intended by the authors of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, I fear that if you went out of the street and took a survey, most people would think that patents are there to give people a chance at having a good idea and getting rich off of it. These would be the same people who are in line in front of you at the convenience store, wasting your time while they decide how many state lottery tickets to buy.

Edited 2007-10-16 18:22

LOL! I'll grant you that it seems like I am the only one who had any kind of reaction to Tomcat's post but if you had seen some of the mail in my OSNews inbox as well as having been voted down within about 10 minutes of posting...

As for people voting up daft or useless comments, gotta hand you that one as well. Some of my least favorite, not to mention least proud of, posts have been voted up to ridiculously high numbers but just because useless posts get voted up does not prove that the inverse is correct either. Sure the moderation system is sometimes abused but I find that people generally get voted down for a very good reason.


Nobody can tell if RedHat is 'wantonly' violating MS patents as MS refuses to detail which patents are being violated, so I'm afraid your statement on that issue is pretty much invalidated by MS's own actions.

Neither do I think that RedHat are proud of anything of the kind. They have stated that they would work with MS if MS decided to actually tell them which patents where being infringed yet MS has repeatedly refused to do so.

I'm certainly not going to pretend that I know why RedHat refuses to sign an MS/RedHat patent deal but I think it probably has much to do with any such deal breaking the spirit of the GPL. Scoring point with MS haters is probably an added side bonus ;-).


I, personally, doubt we will see a version of MSOffice ported to Linux for a very long time. Anyway, I doubt such a EULA is legally enforceable in most civilized legal systems.


I really don't see how setting up a patent 'trust' to defend ones self from patent trolls can be equated with strong arm tactics. The OIN is a collaboration between like minded companies wishing to help protect each other from what is rapidly becoming one of the largest hindrances to software innovation since the software industry's inception. The OIN does not threaten unless having been threatened in the first place. Furthermore, there is nothing illegal in businesses, and in this case even competitors, pooling resources in order to help each other out.

Nobody is forcing MS to join the OIN in order to protect themselves from OIN predation, yet if MS really wanted cross patent indemnification they would join OIN in an instant. Again, I'm not even going to pretend to actually know why MS is playing the patent game the way they are, but I suspect it has more to do with scoring marketing points then anyone actually violating their patents.

Edited 2007-10-16 11:15 UTC

Speaking of "strong arm" tactics, how about Red Hat and the OIN coalition of which it is a part (the group of companies that formed a patent pool as "protection" against anyone that accuses a member of patent violation)? The OIN, it seems to me, has formed a patent "trust" which they can use to violate any patent they wish, secure in the knowledge that if anyone comes after an OIN member for patent violation, then OIN will file thousands of patent suits against the accuser. Whether they actually sue anyone is immaterial; simply the threat to do so (and they have indeed made such threats) seemingly gives them the power (though not the "right") to violate patents at will.

This does not qualify as "strong arm", it is called "having your back covered". Last time I checked "strong arm" meant enforcing.

They never abused their position, they never claimed anyone is abusing their IP, in fact they encourage everyone uses it, be it member of OIN or not. The only thing they want in return from you is to "play fair" with others. You got something for free, so let other get some of yours too.

Anyways, patents are stupid anyway. They were created to protect small inventors, but they ended up as their guillotine along with executing small companies in their free time.

Like first, this post has nothing offensive so I modded it up, and hope some one will do that too.

As far as I understand "I don't agree" is not the reason to mod it down.

Hopefully, OSNews will classify this separately from offensive.

Wrong. First, MS has no monopoly on codec technology. So, it's a simple licensing issue. All that Red Hat has to do to get the technology is agree to the license. Red Hat has chosen to put politics (ie. its relationship with the open source community) above pragmatism.

Yes, it hasn't.
No, it isn't.
Problem is that it is not codec license they would need to agree. They would need to bow down and take off their pants.
Pragmatism is what you lack.

i wonder if any of the RHEL clones will clone the global desktop

... CentOS already includes most of the "workstation" software (They won't license the codecs for obvious reasons) - so I doubt that there's a need for CentOS RHGD clone.

- Gilboa

I expect they'd license the DVD codec if needed.

At present there's not many people in coporate office waiting to watch Transformers over tomorrow's luch hour. DVD video isn't that big a need on business workstations as of yet. Media related businesses where watching the final DVD product is a need probably already run osX, have a DVD reader box under the shared tv or can keep an old Win notebok around for such uses.

Fair enough.

Actually, RHEL desktop still exists. Red Hat Global Desktop is truely a different product. Look up more information on it. One primary difference is the channel distribution which means this is a product that is always OEM preloaded. Also the pricing, lifecycle, new features like codecs etc.