Linked by Robert Trembath on Wed 18th Feb 2004 01:29 UTC
Couldn't stop myself from trying the new Fedora 2-test1 release, even if it is an alpha! The 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.5 all in the same release was just to much candy to turn away from; too bad it's more sour rather than sweet at this (beta) point than I would have expected.
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"Who is hurt by not including these items ... certianly not the companies who make them."
Red Hat is not trying to punish companies for creating proprietary software, nor are they trying to prevent users from using it. They just don't want to distribute it. They think they will not make enough money off of it to pay the licensing fees, or will open themselves up to litigation for redistributing it otherwise. For example, they can't control how many people download Fedora and don't want to have to someday pay a fee for some hypothetical number of MP3 "customers." Other companies manage their profits and risks differently - many have a lot less to lose.
Fedora solves the problem anyway by making it easy to use third party repositories. It's easier and cheaper than going to the store and buying equivilent software for Windows.
Furthermore Red Hat encourages the development of Free software alternatives, with money and talent as well as rhetoric. The more Linux users stick to (and create demand for) Free alternatives, when we can, the more Free alternatives will come to be and be developed.