On Fri, April 3, 2015 22:54, Always Learning wrote:
On Fri, 2015-04-03 at 22:47 -0400, Digimer wrote:
No, people are speculating about the future of CentOS.
. . . The future is certain. To benefit from this free operating system, tolerate the RH control and desire to ensure Centos and RHEL are not exactly the same (including incompatible version numbers) or get another operating system. It is that simple.
Happy Easter to everyone.
. . .
There remain ClearOS and Scientific Linux. But, I am in no hurry to make any decision at the present time. I am not at all on-board with the "evil empire" takeover interpretation of recent events. I do not believe this to be the case.
However, the golden rule holds that whoever pays the gold makes the rules. I do not think this situation will prove any different in the long run. When a "volunteer" board becomes dominated by a single commercial entity who pays employees to "volunteer" the long-term results are decisions that tend to favour that entity over all members. I have seen this happen first hand and our firm no long belongs to that particular national organisation in consequence.
This is an interesting situation from a philosophical POV though. What are the ethics of attempting to monetize the intellectual property of others? What are the ethics of attempting to make use of the benefits that arise from that monetizing effort without paying for them?