Re: [PLUG] CentOS

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 11:46 AM K.S. Bhaskar via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> Neither Red Hat nor any other developer or enhancer of copyleft
> software has any obligation to provide their changes back to the
> community. That most choose to do so is because it is good for
> business, including in the extended sense that goodwill can be good
> for business.
>

Agree.  I'll go a step further.  People seem to go crazy anytime some
piece of FOSS they like gets "taken over by" something they don't
like.  For example, udev becoming part of systemd.

The thing with FOSS is that once it is out there it is out there. The
last commit to udev pre-systemd is still floating around out there,
under its original license, and anybody is welcome to make use of it
for as long as they wish.

These sorts of complaints basically amount to "I don't want this new
company/group to give me free stuff - I want this other person/group
that used to give me free stuff to keep giving me free stuff without
the involvement of the new org."  Nobody has taken anything away from
anybody else - the only thing that has changed are the conditions
under which you might receive new stuff, usually free of charge.

Ultimately the solution if you want free stuff to still be available
under the old model is go get your hands dirty and keep making the old
free stuff yourself, or hire somebody to do it for you and give it
away to everybody else.  I think we get a bit spoiled by the FOSS
ecosystem and it can turn into a sense of entitlement.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I'd love to see a talk on RHEL at
PLUG North sometime.  I don't really use linux in my day job so
haven't really looked into it too deeply but it is obviously hugely
influential and I'd love to hear the pitch for why this is.  Is it
really about having somebody to sue, or is there a real value-add that
drives large organizations to hand over their cash to license it?  I
know how the IT organization at my large employer loves to spend money
and how they're always interested in being generous with our vendors
(and the last time I checked we preferred RHEL for our Linux
platforms)...  :)

-- 
Rich
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