RedHat and software patents

[Joerg Schilling]

>From alex at conostix.com Mon May 27 10:28:20 2002

>> The sourcecode definitely has now been published so it is covered
>> by the GPL. For this reason, the author grants royalty free use
>> by anybody. He cannot earn money from this idea.
>>
>> BTW: Red Hat in general is not very GPL friendly...
>>

>	Are you sure of that ? I think RedHat is one of the only
>GNU/Linux vendor that take into account the GNU General Public License.
>Every part of code done by RedHat seems to be under the GNU General
>Publice License. (from the installer to the tmpwatch command ;-)

Let us call it this way:

They are definitely _not_ _going_ the Open Source / Free Software way:

-	They are Open Source -> Yes

-	The software they create  benefits from OSS/FS development
	paradigms -> NO


The main improvements with OSS/FS is (intended to be) the fact that 
other OSS/FS development efforts can/will be used to enhance
a specific program. 

If RH insists in not integrating other OSS/FS parts, they are definitely
not a OSS/FS company but only just another company that makes 
Source available.



Jörg

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