I would like to know if anyone else out there is wondering if Red Hat network is going to put the screws to the open source community, If I am going to continue with Fedora, how am I reassured that once Fedora is popular, or mainstream that we the people who contribute to the project or to the people who are giving up there free time to help put together something that we all can be proud of is going to become another Microshaft
No one at Red Hat is "putting the screws" to anything. Red Hat Linux 9 is a product, not a philosophy. This product was scheduled to receive support and updates from Red Hat, Inc. from the date of its release until April 30th, 2004 and no longer; and this was made clear to everyone since the date of its release. There is no surprise and no reason for alarm here.
You don't expect them to still support Red Hat Linux 4.2 either, do you? Red Hat, Inc. has to spend money to continue to support products, and no company on Earth with a commodity product can continue to support it forever, especially when most of its users pay nothing for it. However, Red Hat Linux and all of its updates still are, and will continue to be, available for you to download, use, copy, and distribute at no cost whatsoever. How much more "free" (in any sense of the word) can you ask for?
The Fedora Core distribution, heavily sponsored but no longer "owned" by Red Hat, Inc., is a continuation of Red Hat's efforts and an opening of the development process to involve the community more and more. Its very objectives state that Fedora Core is to be developed and constructed exclusively from free software, which is clearly understood to be software which you can (again) download, use, copy, and distribute at no cost whatsoever, forever and ever. It will also attempt to move forward somewhat more rapidly than Red Hat Linux did, so that the future you speak of can come to us more quickly.
How are you reassured? By everything. The license to every package included in Fedora, the project's objectives and philosophy, the excellent (and consistent!) track record of Red Hat, Inc. in this area... *all* of this ensures that Fedora will continue to be Free (as in "libre") as well as free (as in "zero cost"). What could possibly make you compare Red Hat to Microsoft?
Cheers,
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
