From: Tim Boyer 

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:15:17 -0500, "Geo."  wrote:

>"Tim Boyer"  wrote in message
>news:jhd8p2pvrvskj2manjb937ll5u5ltlnqbh{at}4ax.com...
>
>> Yeah, but Fedora is _supposed_ to be bleeding edge.  It's the hobbyists'
>> OS;
>> the one you play around with.  It's not supplied by any corporation.
>
>Ok, free software (ie no copyright) is sort of a special case.
>
>> It's what feeds Red Hat Enterprise.  RHE _is_ supported by Red Hat, and
>> they
>> promise version support for seven years.  IMHO, seven years for OS support
>> isn't bad.
>
>They want the copyright to last for 100 years, then they can damn well
>provide support and security patches for 10 years, hell they should have to
>provide it for the full 100.
>
>Geo.

What copyright?  You think this is Windows or something?  It's open source.
Red Hat has to offer all of the changes they've made for free.  Don't want
to pay them for support?  Get CentOS instead:

"CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources
freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise
Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors
redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly
changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) "

It's Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with the logo changed.  The only thing Red
Hat has copyrighted is the name and the logo.

George, it's _all_ free software!  You don't want to pay for support?  Then
don't pay for support.  I do - completely voluntarily - because I like Red
Hat support, and I want to keep them in business.

That's what the whole Oracle brouhaha is all about.  Ellison can grab the
same software that Red Hat has, and offer support for a lower price.  Red
Hat, thanks to the GPL, has no choice - it _has_ to publish source.

--
tim boyer
tim{at}denmantire.com

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