On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 22:22 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > I was just having a moment of nostalgia for the old days. Do you > remember the time when Red Hat was building their reputation and > building a free version of Red Hat Linux took exactly *no* extra work > by another team that might instead be adding value by packaging new > programs in their repository? Yes. And it nearly got "Red Hat(R)" declared public domain by the USPTO. No other commercial distributor has had their distribution with trademark so grossly modified and redistributed. Hence why Red Hat went with Fedora(TM). Everything else was already in motion. If you have a real problem with it, then run Fedora Core. Red Hat _never_ promised more than 1 year of updates with Red Hat Linux prior either. And Fedora Core is developed with the same model as Red Hat Linux. If Fedora Core's quality tanks, then Red Hat Enterprise Linux's will as well. > There are other distributions. Much of the value of this one comes > from that RPM-packaging work by others - much of which was started when > (and because) the RH base distribution was freely available. ??? I don't remember too many forks returning fixes to Red Hat. Most of them went their own route. And it became extremely frustrating for Red Hat at times to see heavily modified versions still bearing their trademarks. But they held steadfast until it became a real legal issue for them. BTW, a lot of people in the community contributed fixes for Red Hat Linux directly. And that is largely how Fedora Core continues to work as well. A project by Red Hat, but with community support. And Red Hat is basically the largest commercial employer of GPL software developers. -- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you to be anything but richer than you. Any tax rate that penalizes them will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below them). Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele- mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism. So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work. ;->