In a followup to his original interview, Jeremy Hogan discusses some of the reasons Red Hat had for EOL’ing RHL, future licensing options for RHEL (including free devel copies), the most common Fedora misconception, his take on UserLinux and more.
Interview with Jeremy Hogan of Red Hat
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Well, it would be nice if the article did not start out bashing MS. I get so sick and tired of the same old comments, I like Windows and Linux both. All in all, it is very biased towards how wonderful Redhat is, like a commercial. blah
$25.00 for Workstation
$50.00 for Enterprise AS
http://www.redhat.com/solutions/industries/education/products/
Currently, I have been using Slack9.1, but Red Hat was where i learned linux. At the time I found it to be the distro most likely to install successfully on various platforms. When Red Hat became more of a buisness they got branded as “The M$ of Linux”. I think that was an unfair assessment. Their ISOs were still pretty much freely available up until 9.
Now that Fedora is out, people are looking at is as abandoning their user line, and cashing in on the $$$ markets (business/server). If anything, Fedora is a strenthened commitment to the “community”. It will always be free, and it will be a hotbed for bleeding edge development. I’d like to think of it as Debian for Newbies.
Don’t count out Fedora. It may likely be the distro that finally gives windows a beating on the desktop.
I swear I read this exact interview a month or longer ago…
Are you sure you clicked on the second link which is the follow up interview?
My bad, thanks Eugenia.
Interesting interview. I like that you can get so much more honesty from leaders of the Linux community. Also far less bashing of competitors. All the anti-hype for Linux/Windows/Redhat/Gentoo/Anything gets old. It’s nice to hear;
LQ) What are your thoughts on the recent acquisition of Suse by Novell?
JH) It’s a great validation of Linux, it’s an interesting move for Novell. You can see where they’re heading with it, it’s execution time now.
“They can afford to feed their children. Linux is about choice, freedom of applications, using software that you can get from anywhere, lower costs (hardware and software). It’s a social movement, a crusade to free the users from the oppression of Mordor and Sauron.”
I don’t entire agree about the whole “free users from Mordor” bit, but I’m refreshed to see an important person in a software company who still has the balls to have some ideology.
“We are looking very hard at KDE and GNOME and how to rationalize the two environments for developers and ISV’s. They want one common tool base.”
I wonder how much the “I” in ISV is worth if there is only one development platfrom.
It’s a social movement, a crusade to free the users from the oppression of Mordor and Sauron.”
So what exactly are they trying to free us from? I mean, I don’t lose any sleep at night thinking about the price I paid for Windows XP. If you really want to ‘free’ me from the ‘evil empire’, then simply build better software that what I’m currently using. Do that, and I will be your bitch instead of Microsoft’s – it just doesn’t get any simpler than that.
>Well, it would be nice if the article did not start out
>bashing MS. I get so sick and tired of the same old
>comments,
You didn’t even read the right interview. You clicked the wrong link.
>I like Windows and Linux both. All in all, it is very
>biased towards how wonderful Redhat is, like a commercial.
>blah
This is an interview with a Red Hat employee talking about a new Red Hat project. What were you expecting?
The signal to noise ratio here is going downhill fast.
Several of you seem to be replying to the entirely wrong thread… The Mordor comment was made by Novell’s Vice Chairman, not anyone from Redhat.
This interview is of a Linux company executive on a Linux website. They make no claims of objectivity, and there is no reason to expect them to be so. Does MS refrain from bashing Linux? No! In fact, their website is even more egregious, because they publish blatent *lies* about the GPL.
It will be interesting to see what Novell does with the desktop and mono. I have nothing against KDE, but it gets a lot nicer for ISV’s if Suse and RedHat both have standardized on gnome. I see you’re from Germany, I would presume you are against this 😉
“Fedora was probably the most widely tested release we’ve done. So I don’t think any QA we got externally due to mass install of RHL was diminished. In fact it should grow.”
Yeah, right!
I am going to give fedora a test run when they release on the 2.6 kernel branch.
fedora a test run when they release on the 2.6 kernel branch.
Don’t bother, it will still be buggy.
“Kernel releases not related with distor releases.”
Actually Fedora Core 2 release *IS* tied to the release of the stable 2.6 kernel.
From http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/ :
Fedora Core 2
No dates set yet, but a driving goal or defining characteristic will be the 2.6 Linux kernel — unless the 2.6 Linux kernel takes too long to arrive. That is, we’ll shorten the schedule to accomodate an earlier release of the 2.6 kernel, but not lengthen it to accomodate a later release of the 2.6 kernel.
“but it gets a lot nicer for ISV’s if Suse and RedHat both have standardized on gnome. I see you’re from Germany, I would presume you are against this”
Yes, I am against a single platform because then the “I” in ISV becomes a “D”. Gnome is already more of a cathetrale then a bazaar.
And btw, there are no plans from Novel or SuSE to stanadardize SuSE on Gnome. Gnome was part of SuSE for many years and will be in the future, same for KDE.
Sounds like Redhat was shaken by the community’s reaction to their recent actions. I don’t think they thought there would be a reaction of this magnitude. I personally am looking around for a new distribution.
they [MS] publish blatent *lies* about the GPL.
Until the FSF publishes a “plain English” version of the GPL companies like MS are free to spin it how they like. This is business, pure and simple.
I have no love for MS, but you’ve yet to see a plain explanation of the GPL and you’re not likely to see one anytime soon. Because the FSF is _still_ controlled by RMS and his hysterical attitude towards IP. The real questions will remain about the GPL until the FSF drops the legalese and explains it to the layman. Cut the crap about “protecting the developers” and answer the legitimate questions raised. Watching debates on the meaning of certain portions of the GPL is like watching a conference of spiritual mediums, what with the dissecting of paragraphs, meanings of the long-departed faithful, blah, blah, blah.
It is pure hypocrisy to blame MS for spinning the GPL in a negative light when RMS and cohorts continue to dither and obfuscate on every issue about CORBA, dynamic loading, and IP (and THEN they go hide behind ‘the courts have to decide’). Stop the obfuscation and there will be nothing for MS to spin! Of course, should we get a “plain speak” GPL it would be clear what the GPL is REALLY about – not something that anyone except RMS is likely to enjoy explaining to a clear-minded programmer.
I’ll tell you what it is. It is out there for only one purpose. To make beta testers out of ALL the likes of us who are in constant search of an alternate world – a wonderland where Linux actually shines over Windows. And then Redhat sucks the good into RHEL and the bad thrown back at us for retesting. I tell you, it’s not worth the time and headache (heartache?) in finding and trying to fix bugs and have folks at redhat $benefit for it. Thanks but I think I’ll stick to slack from now on.
Until the FSF publishes a “plain English” version of the GPL companies like MS are free to spin it how they like. This is business, pure and simple.
I don’t think they are free to spin it how they like. The GPL is a legal document. So careful examination of its text is obligatory. If they (Microsoft) can not do that, they are not free to say anything about it. Otherwise, they do lie, blatantly.
And I don’t think this has anything to do with business or not. Why should it?
Have you read MS Licenseing 6.0? And you’re calling the GPL complex? Its a very simple and straightforward legal document. There is some ambiguity, but that’s not what MS is “spinning.” Microsoft has a history of just plaing lying about the GPL. They make statements that even a monkey could not construe was being legitimate.
For example, their mobile internet toolkit license disallows using it with GPL’ed code. It includes the following tidbit:
” (ii) not using Potentially Viral Software (e.g. tools) to develop Recipient software which includes the Software”
This means you can’t compile it with, say, GCC. Now, from clause 0 of the GPL:
“and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).”
How is this at *all* hard to understand? Even basic copyright law doesn’t apply the license of a tool to the output. By Microsoft’s logic, the output of Visual C++ belongs to Microsoft!
From the Microsoft GPL website:
If the licensee redistributes GPL code, it may not charge a licensing fee or royalty, but may charge only for distribution costs
————
Wrong. I guess RedHat’s and Novell are illegally shipping GPL’ed software for a cost?
If the licensee includes any GPL code in another program, the entire program becomes subject to the terms of the GPL
…………..
Wrong again. It only becomes GPL if you distribute it. This is a big deal, because most software is never distributed — its used inside a company. In that case, you’re perfectly free to keep it to yourself.
because it causes GPL terms to apply to, or to “infect,” software that incorporates or is derived from code distributed under the GPL, regardless of whether the program’s developer intended that result or even knew of the presence of GPL code in the program.
—————
Wrong again. Copyright law! If you are infringing someone’s copyright, you can only be forced to stop infringing, and to pay real and punitive damages. You cannot be forced to give up your own copyrights.
There is a lot of bullshit on that page about the GPL preventing commercialization of technology. That’s logically flawed — even if you say that GPL’ed software can’t be commercialized, you have to realize that GPL has no control over technologies, only implementations of technologies. The technologies themselves are the domain of patent law, not copyright law. So if a university releases software under the GPL, commercial companies are perfectly free to reuse any technology in there — they just have to rewrite the code themselves. Isn’t that what we f*scking pay them to do? Microsoft is basically saying that Open Source developers should write code for them for free, that they can reuse without the slightest extra effort in writing their own implementation.
But the above really is spin. It is entirely possible to interpret the GPL as being anti-commercial. The rest of it is far-fetched, but its just far-fetched spin. But the statements they made about the GPL are just false. There is a line between spin and lies, and I’m willing to give them a lot of slack, but some things just cannot be supported as fact.
meaning of certain portions of the GPL is like watching a conference of spiritual mediums,
(…)
From the Microsoft GPL website:
If the licensee redistributes GPL code, it may not charge a licensing fee or royalty, but may charge only for distribution costs
————
Its a very simple and straightforward legal document. There is some ambiguity, but that’s not what MS is “spinning.”
Maybe both sides are guilty.
Microsoft has stated many times that GPL is dubious, but the GPL license really isn’t clear in some aspects
(maybe because of some code sharing hermeneuthical tech difficulties – if you must redistrube the code you can’t charge a fee for the added code or this is juridically important you can charge a fee only in the proportion of the addition of code you made, if you made a small addition you can’t charge a full fee unless you prove your addition is important in a larger/bigger extension;
– since you do not own (and never will, according to the GPL) the previous code to which you added your lines you can’t charge for it unless in the due proportion!).
Law hermeneutics can be a diificult science I tell you.