2 ms·

I guess there's just no pleasing some people. RedHat aren't obligated to donate anything to anybody. They could even take the Apple KHTML/Webkit approach and

I guess there's just no pleasing some people. RedHat aren't obligated to donate anything to anybody. They could even take the Apple KHTML/Webkit approach and make it difficult to incorporate their code changes back into the original code bases. If anybody releasing open source code feels cheated by this it's their own fault for choosing to release code using an open source license.

_delirium 15y ago
I'm generally supportive of RedHat, and think they do pretty well by the open-source community. But I don't agree with the latter part of your comment on principle: not everything that is legal is a good idea or something we should cheer. I think there is a general ethical requirement to give something back to people who got you where you are, even if you aren't legally obligated to do so. (And RedHat does in fact do so.) Things actually work better in the case where there's an ethical but not legally codified understanding, imo, enforced informally through community pressure rather than lawsuits. If you try to add it into legal obligations, complex licenses start piling up; the old BSD advertising clause, for example, was an attempt to turn the ethical principle of "you should prominently acknowledge the work you built on" into a legally enforceable license, which in retrospect most people agree was misguided. But you should still prominently acknowledge the work you built on, anyway, and it's fair to call people out on it if they aren't giving sufficient credit. You can't sue people who don't give sufficient credit (past the bare minimum copyright statement), but you can criticize them and apply community pressure.
drostie 15y ago
I tried to be clear in my original comment that I'm not displeased with this action of Red Hat, and that I view it as an issue with myself that I do these strange numeric comparisons. I certainly don't blame Red Hat and I was very careful to avoid saying that Red Hat was obligated to donate anything to anyone, since I agree with you that they are not. Obviously my intent was not well-communicated in my comment. I apologize, but I don't really know how to make it better. :-( With all that said, those words still ring a bit hollow for me. If the person giving dimes to the homeless were to say, "hey, I wasn't obligated to donate anything to them," that still doesn't quite ameliorate the sheer numerical discrepancy, which is still the point where my brain goes, "wait... what?" Another comment did: it said, "oh, they're just talking about revenues, not profits." That's a much more important distinction. If Red Hat's costs are very high, then it might not be four dimes but four $100 bills. That's a much more substantial donation given what you got.

_delirium 15y ago

I'm generally supportive of RedHat, and think they do pretty well by the open-source community. But I don't agree with the latter part of your comment on principle: not everything that is legal is a good idea or something we should cheer. I think there is a general ethical requirement to give something back to people who got you where you are, even if you aren't legally obligated to do so. (And RedHat does in fact do so.) Things actually work better in the case where there's an ethical but not legally codified understanding, imo, enforced informally through community pressure rather than lawsuits. If you try to add it into legal obligations, complex licenses start piling up; the old BSD advertising clause, for example, was an attempt to turn the ethical principle of "you should prominently acknowledge the work you built on" into a legally enforceable license, which in retrospect most people agree was misguided. But you should still prominently acknowledge the work you built on, anyway, and it's fair to call people out on it if they aren't giving sufficient credit. You can't sue people who don't give sufficient credit (past the bare minimum copyright statement), but you can criticize them and apply community pressure.

drostie 15y ago

I tried to be clear in my original comment that I'm not displeased with this action of Red Hat, and that I view it as an issue with myself that I do these strange numeric comparisons. I certainly don't blame Red Hat and I was very careful to avoid saying that Red Hat was obligated to donate anything to anyone, since I agree with you that they are not. Obviously my intent was not well-communicated in my comment. I apologize, but I don't really know how to make it better. :-( With all that said, those words still ring a bit hollow for me. If the person giving dimes to the homeless were to say, "hey, I wasn't obligated to donate anything to them," that still doesn't quite ameliorate the sheer numerical discrepancy, which is still the point where my brain goes, "wait... what?" Another comment did: it said, "oh, they're just talking about revenues, not profits." That's a much more important distinction. If Red Hat's costs are very high, then it might not be four dimes but four $100 bills. That's a much more substantial donation given what you got.