6 ms·

Red Hat is one of the most prolific single-entity contributors to open source in the history of open source. I find it really odd that some FOSS people regard R

Red Hat is one of the most prolific single-entity contributors to open source in the history of open source. I find it really odd that some FOSS people regard Red Hat as some sort of evil corporation that should be the target of said FOSS people's flung shit. By the way, what did Firefox do to live down its IceWeasel[1] infamy? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat

cookiecaper 13y ago
The Firefox trademark dispute is not the same thing. Red Hat was attempting to keep their product from the open-source homebrew market -- they wanted to charge money for their software, and did this as far as the license would allow. Red Hat was as hostile as legally permissible to anyone trying to circumvent this, like CentOS. Mozilla simply claimed that the Firefox trademark cannot be applied to any codebase that Mozilla, the trademark owner, hadn't officially sanctioned. They began to actively prosecute those cases because some people were modifying the Firefox source to contain malicious code and calling it "Firefox", misappropriating Mozilla's trademark. Because Debian issues a version of Firefox that contains unofficial patches, they cannot legally call their distribution "Firefox", since Mozilla hasn't officially blessed that exact codebase. tl;dr Red Hat was trying to make money from users, and Mozilla wasn't Disclaimer: I personally fully support making money from users and reject freedom 2 as a true fundamental of "free-as-in-freedom software". I'm just explaining why some people in FOSS dislike Red Hat, as it pertains to the CentOS backstory, and why nobody cares about Mozilla's brief trademark dispute with Debian.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  "Red Hat was attempting to keep their product from the open-source homebrew market " Nothing would make Red Hat happier than having every hacker under the sun using Red Hat - what they were attempting to do was keep the enterprise customers, who were currently paying $1000+/CPU (or so) go with a free alternative and kill their company. Simply removing three things allowed them to do that: (1) No RHN/Up2Date available for Centos, (2) No Support, (3) Most importantly, absolutely no mention or reference to "Redhat" Trademarks. Centos had everything else.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    (3) Most importantly, absolutely no mention or reference to "Redhat" Trademarks. This is evil, because the law is supposed to allow referential use of trademarks as a fair use. Otherwise, RedHat's existence is highly beneficial to Linux.
    - blueskin_ 13y ago
      That's a self-imposed policy on CentOS' side, not something they were forced to do.
  - tedchs 13y ago
    Yes, and the other big advantage of RHEL in enterprisey environments is their compatibility certifications with other vendors (e.g. Oracle Database).
- gsnedders 13y ago
  Note that having patches from upstream doesn't stop Mozilla from being willing to license the "Firefox" trademark — they will still license it provided they are happy with all the patches. The bigger issue in the Debian case is that while they could distribute a modified version as "Firefox" (under license), some downstream couldn't then take that, modify it, and still call it "Firefox".
  - YokoZar 13y ago
    Ubuntu, meanwhile, was willing to accept this tradeoff and distribute blessed Firefox, as Ubuntu also has trademarks that downstream modifiers (like Mint) need to remove. It would be nice if it was easy to remove said trademarks by something as simple as uninstalling a package, however unfortunately most marks are spread throughout the archive.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      I thought there used to be such a package called firefox-branding that would turn Firefox into IceWeasel if removed?
      - YokoZar 13y ago
        At some point, yes, but the Ubuntu marks are still spread throughout dozens of different packages.
- crististm 13y ago
  '...were modifying the Firefox source to contain malicious code and calling it "Firefox" ' - You put a little load in there. Not every Firefox patch is obscure, malicious or both.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    He didn't say that - you conveniently left out the "some people" preceding your quote.
- cturner 13y ago
  Because Debian issues a version of Firefox that contains unofficial patches, they cannot legally call their distribution "Firefox", since Mozilla hasn't officially blessed that exact codebase. There's a lot of sense to this. Consider the hacked up configurations of vim that ship with redhat and debian. The maintainers code intrusive personal-favourite settings into /etc/vimrc (e.g. settings that reformat your code). People get annoyed by the behaviour and think "vim sucks" whereas the default vim distro is conservative about intrusive behaviour. Mozilla are happy for distros to put out their code - just not hacked up versions of it with the same name. Good for them.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    There are some parallels, but I think customizing a default config is subtly different than code changes. Redhat and Debian likely have both, of course...
- dspillett 13y ago
  IIRC there was not any animosity between the firefox an dDebian teams though (there was plenty reported by people who saw the matter and misreported it, and Stallman waded in as is his style which didn't help the mis reporting ("RMS ponders whether Firefox is truly free" was reported as "entire open source community vs Firefox, fight at 11" by some)). They started user the trademark thing to force some distributors who were adding patches they did not want to be associated with (either because they were just plain malicious or because they didn't want thie bug tracker filled with reports about code they had nothing to do with), the Debian people scanned the relevant legal details and decided that they either needed to stop using hte name or work put together an agreement that covered them. The latter would have been easy enough but was against their preferred WayOfThings(tm) as it would mean downstream of them would (legally speaking) need to make changes or separately arrange an agreement, so they chose a new branding instead. Neither the Firefox team protecting their name or the Debian team stucking to their mission statement is wrong IMO (though of course some may desagree, depending on definitions of "free" and so forth, so they could be said to be wrong), but without the branding change the two are incompatible on a legal point that was only enforce to stop the malicious. With the branding change the "conflict" is resolved, and no one is really unhappy or otherwise reasonably put out. The RedHat/CentOS case is a bit different: the way CentOS were using the name in no way implied that RedHat was responsible for CentOS but did accurately represent how CentOS was built, so CentOS were probably on good legal ground but capitulated because they didn't want that particular fight. This, IMO, made RadHat somewhat bully-like in this case - though to be honest it takes more than one iffy commercial/legal wrangle to undo the pile of good that Redhat has (directly and otherwise) done for Linux and related projects over the years (and continues to do).
veidr 13y ago
> I find it really odd that some FOSS people regard Red Hat as some sort of evil Why do you find it odd when it is succinctly explained in the comment to which you are replying?
- justinmk 13y ago
  GP doesn't "explain" why RH is evil. Discomfiting legal maneuvers do not cancel their thousands of commits to the Linux kernel, init.d, GWT, Cygwin (!), etc.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > GP doesn't "explain" why RH is evil. It explains why some people in the FOSS community think of them that way. There seems to be a problem here of people not being able to understand that it is possible for people to have a different point of view, and no amount of "explaining" is going to fix that.
    - rplnt 13y ago
      There are more reasons. For example http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/03/04/1550231/red-hat-stops-shipping-kernel-changes-as-patches http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/03/04/1550231/red-hat-sto...
  - Terretta 13y ago
    An attempt to "explain" why is in GP's 3rd link: http://www.pnaelv.net http://www.pnaelv.net
ams6110 13y ago
I find it really odd that some FOSS people regard Red Hat as some sort of evil corporation Indeed, the success of Linux in the enterprise owes a lot to Red Hat, as they gave enterprises the sort of consistent, corporate-buzzword-compliant support agreements that removed a lot of the scariness that would otherwise impede use of Linux for "important" services.
- mattzito 13y ago
  It's not just the support agreements (though support agreements didn't hurt). It's that RHEL provided the sort of stable path for patches and upgrades that Linux traditionally did not, moving as quickly as it did. It allowed ISVs to certify their software packages against a consistent OS built, hardware vendors to utiliza a long-term consistent driver interface, and end-users to not have to worry about upgrade cycles, sudden performance changes, and so on. Basically it gave enterprises that had been dependent on Solaris and the like a comparable Linux alternative.
- Theodores 13y ago
  This was true in 1998. Cowardly companies that insisted on being able to pay support for anything they deployed were able to hand over $$$ to RedHat then tick the box of 'support'. However, as we all know, you get a Linux user/expert to fix the server, you don't call RedHat. Due to the success of Ubuntu you have user/experts in small to medium sized companies that have 'given Linux a go' and got some good experience of Ubuntu. They might prefer the Ubuntu ways of doing things, e.g. the 'no root' security model, the modern, up to date packages (e.g. latest version of PHP), the ultra easy firewall and plenty else. However, due to the perception that Red Hat is 'enterprise' and that small to medium companies re cheapskate, the CentOS rip-off gets specified by micro-managers because they have heard it is more 'enterprisey'. 'They know best' and go with the turgid CentOS regardless of whether any developers on the team would prefer something else. You then have a lot of hosting companies pushing CentOS because they think it is more 'enterprisey' and what their customers want. Non-technical managers listen to them and then blame their team for any server problems. Sure, if you know your way around Red Hat it is the greatest thing since Windows 3.0, you can get it to do what you want just fine. But, actually, if you are not an expert yet then very little about Red Hat is obvious. Far too many answers to common problems are guesswork in forum answers that you come across. Furthermore any serious claim to better security goes out the window as soon as you add random repositories that you might need just to get your work done. Red Hat has had its day. CentOS has been a mere rip off of Red Hat and it has not added to the state of the art. I know it has its fans but I wish it would just go away.
blueskin_ 13y ago
Debian modify Firefox and so can't package it as an official build.
dec0dedab0de 13y ago
True but Redhat ditching support for home users was pretty lame. I had bought a boxed copy with support two weeks before they made the announcement. I had already downloaded it, I just wanted to support the company. Luckily I knew the manager at best buy, and she let me exchange it for Suse. That being said, I think much of the resentment towards Redhat comes from memories of dependency hell before yum was reliable. As far as IceWeasel, I asked a Mozilla employee about it a few years ago. He said they generally approved of it, and were just glad that people were using the code.

cookiecaper 13y ago

The Firefox trademark dispute is not the same thing. Red Hat was attempting to keep their product from the open-source homebrew market -- they wanted to charge money for their software, and did this as far as the license would allow. Red Hat was as hostile as legally permissible to anyone trying to circumvent this, like CentOS. Mozilla simply claimed that the Firefox trademark cannot be applied to any codebase that Mozilla, the trademark owner, hadn't officially sanctioned. They began to actively prosecute those cases because some people were modifying the Firefox source to contain malicious code and calling it "Firefox", misappropriating Mozilla's trademark. Because Debian issues a version of Firefox that contains unofficial patches, they cannot legally call their distribution "Firefox", since Mozilla hasn't officially blessed that exact codebase. tl;dr Red Hat was trying to make money from users, and Mozilla wasn't Disclaimer: I personally fully support making money from users and reject freedom 2 as a true fundamental of "free-as-in-freedom software". I'm just explaining why some people in FOSS dislike Red Hat, as it pertains to the CentOS backstory, and why nobody cares about Mozilla's brief trademark dispute with Debian.

ghshephard 13y ago
"Red Hat was attempting to keep their product from the open-source homebrew market " Nothing would make Red Hat happier than having every hacker under the sun using Red Hat - what they were attempting to do was keep the enterprise customers, who were currently paying $1000+/CPU (or so) go with a free alternative and kill their company. Simply removing three things allowed them to do that: (1) No RHN/Up2Date available for Centos, (2) No Support, (3) Most importantly, absolutely no mention or reference to "Redhat" Trademarks. Centos had everything else.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  (3) Most importantly, absolutely no mention or reference to "Redhat" Trademarks. This is evil, because the law is supposed to allow referential use of trademarks as a fair use. Otherwise, RedHat's existence is highly beneficial to Linux.
  - blueskin_ 13y ago
    That's a self-imposed policy on CentOS' side, not something they were forced to do.
- tedchs 13y ago
  Yes, and the other big advantage of RHEL in enterprisey environments is their compatibility certifications with other vendors (e.g. Oracle Database).
gsnedders 13y ago
Note that having patches from upstream doesn't stop Mozilla from being willing to license the "Firefox" trademark — they will still license it provided they are happy with all the patches. The bigger issue in the Debian case is that while they could distribute a modified version as "Firefox" (under license), some downstream couldn't then take that, modify it, and still call it "Firefox".
- YokoZar 13y ago
  Ubuntu, meanwhile, was willing to accept this tradeoff and distribute blessed Firefox, as Ubuntu also has trademarks that downstream modifiers (like Mint) need to remove. It would be nice if it was easy to remove said trademarks by something as simple as uninstalling a package, however unfortunately most marks are spread throughout the archive.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    I thought there used to be such a package called firefox-branding that would turn Firefox into IceWeasel if removed?
    - YokoZar 13y ago
      At some point, yes, but the Ubuntu marks are still spread throughout dozens of different packages.
crististm 13y ago
'...were modifying the Firefox source to contain malicious code and calling it "Firefox" ' - You put a little load in there. Not every Firefox patch is obscure, malicious or both.
- vidarh 13y ago
  He didn't say that - you conveniently left out the "some people" preceding your quote.
cturner 13y ago
Because Debian issues a version of Firefox that contains unofficial patches, they cannot legally call their distribution "Firefox", since Mozilla hasn't officially blessed that exact codebase. There's a lot of sense to this. Consider the hacked up configurations of vim that ship with redhat and debian. The maintainers code intrusive personal-favourite settings into /etc/vimrc (e.g. settings that reformat your code). People get annoyed by the behaviour and think "vim sucks" whereas the default vim distro is conservative about intrusive behaviour. Mozilla are happy for distros to put out their code - just not hacked up versions of it with the same name. Good for them.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  There are some parallels, but I think customizing a default config is subtly different than code changes. Redhat and Debian likely have both, of course...
dspillett 13y ago
IIRC there was not any animosity between the firefox an dDebian teams though (there was plenty reported by people who saw the matter and misreported it, and Stallman waded in as is his style which didn't help the mis reporting ("RMS ponders whether Firefox is truly free" was reported as "entire open source community vs Firefox, fight at 11" by some)). They started user the trademark thing to force some distributors who were adding patches they did not want to be associated with (either because they were just plain malicious or because they didn't want thie bug tracker filled with reports about code they had nothing to do with), the Debian people scanned the relevant legal details and decided that they either needed to stop using hte name or work put together an agreement that covered them. The latter would have been easy enough but was against their preferred WayOfThings(tm) as it would mean downstream of them would (legally speaking) need to make changes or separately arrange an agreement, so they chose a new branding instead. Neither the Firefox team protecting their name or the Debian team stucking to their mission statement is wrong IMO (though of course some may desagree, depending on definitions of "free" and so forth, so they could be said to be wrong), but without the branding change the two are incompatible on a legal point that was only enforce to stop the malicious. With the branding change the "conflict" is resolved, and no one is really unhappy or otherwise reasonably put out. The RedHat/CentOS case is a bit different: the way CentOS were using the name in no way implied that RedHat was responsible for CentOS but did accurately represent how CentOS was built, so CentOS were probably on good legal ground but capitulated because they didn't want that particular fight. This, IMO, made RadHat somewhat bully-like in this case - though to be honest it takes more than one iffy commercial/legal wrangle to undo the pile of good that Redhat has (directly and otherwise) done for Linux and related projects over the years (and continues to do).

veidr 13y ago

> I find it really odd that some FOSS people regard Red Hat as some sort of evil Why do you find it odd when it is succinctly explained in the comment to which you are replying?

justinmk 13y ago
GP doesn't "explain" why RH is evil. Discomfiting legal maneuvers do not cancel their thousands of commits to the Linux kernel, init.d, GWT, Cygwin (!), etc.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > GP doesn't "explain" why RH is evil. It explains why some people in the FOSS community think of them that way. There seems to be a problem here of people not being able to understand that it is possible for people to have a different point of view, and no amount of "explaining" is going to fix that.
  - rplnt 13y ago
    There are more reasons. For example http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/03/04/1550231/red-hat-stops-shipping-kernel-changes-as-patches http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/03/04/1550231/red-hat-sto...
- Terretta 13y ago
  An attempt to "explain" why is in GP's 3rd link: http://www.pnaelv.net http://www.pnaelv.net

ams6110 13y ago

I find it really odd that some FOSS people regard Red Hat as some sort of evil corporation Indeed, the success of Linux in the enterprise owes a lot to Red Hat, as they gave enterprises the sort of consistent, corporate-buzzword-compliant support agreements that removed a lot of the scariness that would otherwise impede use of Linux for "important" services.

mattzito 13y ago
It's not just the support agreements (though support agreements didn't hurt). It's that RHEL provided the sort of stable path for patches and upgrades that Linux traditionally did not, moving as quickly as it did. It allowed ISVs to certify their software packages against a consistent OS built, hardware vendors to utiliza a long-term consistent driver interface, and end-users to not have to worry about upgrade cycles, sudden performance changes, and so on. Basically it gave enterprises that had been dependent on Solaris and the like a comparable Linux alternative.
Theodores 13y ago
This was true in 1998. Cowardly companies that insisted on being able to pay support for anything they deployed were able to hand over $$$ to RedHat then tick the box of 'support'. However, as we all know, you get a Linux user/expert to fix the server, you don't call RedHat. Due to the success of Ubuntu you have user/experts in small to medium sized companies that have 'given Linux a go' and got some good experience of Ubuntu. They might prefer the Ubuntu ways of doing things, e.g. the 'no root' security model, the modern, up to date packages (e.g. latest version of PHP), the ultra easy firewall and plenty else. However, due to the perception that Red Hat is 'enterprise' and that small to medium companies re cheapskate, the CentOS rip-off gets specified by micro-managers because they have heard it is more 'enterprisey'. 'They know best' and go with the turgid CentOS regardless of whether any developers on the team would prefer something else. You then have a lot of hosting companies pushing CentOS because they think it is more 'enterprisey' and what their customers want. Non-technical managers listen to them and then blame their team for any server problems. Sure, if you know your way around Red Hat it is the greatest thing since Windows 3.0, you can get it to do what you want just fine. But, actually, if you are not an expert yet then very little about Red Hat is obvious. Far too many answers to common problems are guesswork in forum answers that you come across. Furthermore any serious claim to better security goes out the window as soon as you add random repositories that you might need just to get your work done. Red Hat has had its day. CentOS has been a mere rip off of Red Hat and it has not added to the state of the art. I know it has its fans but I wish it would just go away.

blueskin_ 13y ago

Debian modify Firefox and so can't package it as an official build.

dec0dedab0de 13y ago

True but Redhat ditching support for home users was pretty lame. I had bought a boxed copy with support two weeks before they made the announcement. I had already downloaded it, I just wanted to support the company. Luckily I knew the manager at best buy, and she let me exchange it for Suse. That being said, I think much of the resentment towards Redhat comes from memories of dependency hell before yum was reliable. As far as IceWeasel, I asked a Mozilla employee about it a few years ago. He said they generally approved of it, and were just glad that people were using the code.