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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"This might be 'saner' for Debian but Red Hat has millions in the bank and that makes them a target for the gif, mp3, sco, and stories like this"
Your chosen example (Eolas versus Microsoft) actually undermines your argument rather than backing it up.
The Eolas patent came out of nowhere; Microsoft knew nothing about it until they were being sued over it. There is no similarity between this and RedHat's pre-emptively dropping software they *already* know to be patent-encumbered. Their actions in no way lessen the likelihood of their being torpedoed by an unknown submarine patent ala Eolas.
"If you could sue any distro, which would you pick? The one with $500,000,000 and is hit by US patents. or the one based in the EU that has yet to profit?"
Logical disconnect here. "Yet to profit" != "has no money". For instance, SuSE is owned by Novell, who have a revenue of around $1,000,000,000 dollars a year (http://www.novell.com/offices/americas/canada/pressroom/q3_2003_res...). They're a far juicier plum than RedHat, and yet Fraunhofer hasn't sued them.
Besides, which EU-based distribution are you referring to? It can't be SuSE, since it's now just a subsidiary of Novell, an American company. The only other one that comes to mind is Mandrake, and they're already profitable (http://mozillaquest.com/Linux_News04/Mandrake_Profit_Story01.html).
As for refusing to accept Mono on grounds of patent fears, I fail to see how they can hold this view whilst continuing to distribute Wine.
"If I'm going to pay money for linux I want it to be someone who releases ALL software they develop under the GPL"
Mandrake does this, too (http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/flicensing.php3).
Whilst I disagree with pretty much all of the rationale you posted above, I *do* agree that it's their right to decide how cagey they want to be around legal issues. I personally think they're being over paranoid, but then, I'm not the one potentially opening myself up for a lawsuit.
Nonetheless, the main thrust of my last post still stands: that they're disadvantaging both themselves and their users by following this path. It's not a big deal, but it's still an inconvenience particular only to their distro.