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> However I will say that there are many people who use these clones and do not give back to the community in any way, shape or form who I consider to be “freel

by davidw 3y ago

> However I will say that there are many people who use these clones and do not give back to the community in any way, shape or form who I consider to be “freeloaders” Yes, however that's always been something you just kind of accepted with free software. That's part of what giving something away for free entails: not everyone is going to give something, or anything at all, back.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>not everyone is going to give something, or anything at all, back. I would extend that to almost noone. 99% of people are going to not give anything back. 0.9% will file complaints or bug reports or donate money or whatever. 0.1% will actually give back any functional code.
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  I'd say far less than 0.1%. For many projects I work on it's closer to 0.001%
- prox 3y ago
  It’s the same with comments really. Only a small percentage actually comments, most people are natural lurkers. Don’t know why people are very passive when it comes it.
  - wazoox 3y ago
    It's the same with absolutely everything. How many people give money to charities, how many help them by volunteering. How many people actually take times in politics to get involved into parties, march the streets or leafleting. Etc.
    - prox 3y ago
      Your comment reminded of something I was taught by my economics professor, he told us about small things can add up and gave the example of giving to charities. So when I started working I started giving like a couple percent of my income to charities. Now over the years it really has added up in total.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      > How many people give money to charities In US, depending on who you ask / how you count, the number is anywhere from 50% to 75%.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  Reminds me a bit of the 1% rule: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
bonzini 3y ago
With the context of the previous and subsequent sentences he's saying that "freeloaders" are a subset of those that don't contribute: "the people who sign a business agreement with IBM/Red Hat and then do not want to live up to that agreement".
- LikelyABurner 3y ago
  Yeah, if you read later, he mentions that something as simple as telling your company “hey, maybe we should try using open source” is sufficient to be giving back to the community in his opinion. “Freeloader” here really means someone like the IT guy that occasionally spins up a microservice in a Linux Docker container because that’s what he saw suggested on Reddit, but is otherwise proudly promoting his Microsoft certs on LinkedIn.
  - bonzini 3y ago
    No, that's not enough to renege on the business contract. It's someone who installs 10 RHEL instances that generate an insane number of tickets, because the issues with the other 10,000 CentOS systems are redirected to those 10 RHELs.
Spooky23 3y ago
That’s what everyone one does with FreeBSD. Most network gear is some stripped BSD variant. The difference with say Oracle Awesome Linux or whatever is that they are selling RH’s value add work and ecosystem as a service. As in they literally come in “Buy this stuff to be supported with our other stuff, we ship whatever RH ships.” IMO, Red Hat’s changes are really making it more expensive to create exclusive “Oracle Red Hat for X” or similar business models. The people who can’t afford RHEL for their academic HPI still can’t, and just pick something else. People here quacking about Fedora are just quacking - Fedora is a project with a commercial purpose that serves the company’s needs. It will exists until it doesn’t. RH isn’t Microsoft - everyone acknowledges that lots of distros exist and many are excellent. You can start a distribution today. But “fine, I’ll just use Debian” isn’t really a valid answer either. Debian is an awesome project and product, but if you chose Red Hat in the first place for reasons other than “I got a CD with a magazine in 1998”, Debian probably isn’t ideal without you doing alot of work. Then it’s a money discussion. (Cost of humans doing stuff vs paying RH to do stuff and humans to do other stuff)

by davidw 3y ago

Dalewyn 3y ago

>not everyone is going to give something, or anything at all, back. I would extend that to almost noone. 99% of people are going to not give anything back. 0.9% will file complaints or bug reports or donate money or whatever. 0.1% will actually give back any functional code.

geerlingguy 3y ago
I'd say far less than 0.1%. For many projects I work on it's closer to 0.001%
prox 3y ago
It’s the same with comments really. Only a small percentage actually comments, most people are natural lurkers. Don’t know why people are very passive when it comes it.
- wazoox 3y ago
  It's the same with absolutely everything. How many people give money to charities, how many help them by volunteering. How many people actually take times in politics to get involved into parties, march the streets or leafleting. Etc.
  - prox 3y ago
    Your comment reminded of something I was taught by my economics professor, he told us about small things can add up and gave the example of giving to charities. So when I started working I started giving like a couple percent of my income to charities. Now over the years it really has added up in total.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    > How many people give money to charities In US, depending on who you ask / how you count, the number is anywhere from 50% to 75%.
KronisLV 3y ago
Reminds me a bit of the 1% rule: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule

bonzini 3y ago

With the context of the previous and subsequent sentences he's saying that "freeloaders" are a subset of those that don't contribute: "the people who sign a business agreement with IBM/Red Hat and then do not want to live up to that agreement".

LikelyABurner 3y ago
Yeah, if you read later, he mentions that something as simple as telling your company “hey, maybe we should try using open source” is sufficient to be giving back to the community in his opinion. “Freeloader” here really means someone like the IT guy that occasionally spins up a microservice in a Linux Docker container because that’s what he saw suggested on Reddit, but is otherwise proudly promoting his Microsoft certs on LinkedIn.
- bonzini 3y ago
  No, that's not enough to renege on the business contract. It's someone who installs 10 RHEL instances that generate an insane number of tickets, because the issues with the other 10,000 CentOS systems are redirected to those 10 RHELs.

Spooky23 3y ago

That’s what everyone one does with FreeBSD. Most network gear is some stripped BSD variant. The difference with say Oracle Awesome Linux or whatever is that they are selling RH’s value add work and ecosystem as a service. As in they literally come in “Buy this stuff to be supported with our other stuff, we ship whatever RH ships.” IMO, Red Hat’s changes are really making it more expensive to create exclusive “Oracle Red Hat for X” or similar business models. The people who can’t afford RHEL for their academic HPI still can’t, and just pick something else. People here quacking about Fedora are just quacking - Fedora is a project with a commercial purpose that serves the company’s needs. It will exists until it doesn’t. RH isn’t Microsoft - everyone acknowledges that lots of distros exist and many are excellent. You can start a distribution today. But “fine, I’ll just use Debian” isn’t really a valid answer either. Debian is an awesome project and product, but if you chose Red Hat in the first place for reasons other than “I got a CD with a magazine in 1998”, Debian probably isn’t ideal without you doing alot of work. Then it’s a money discussion. (Cost of humans doing stuff vs paying RH to do stuff and humans to do other stuff)