Mike McCarty wrote:
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Mission to provide a community oriented completely Free and open
source operating system.
This answer is perhaps not incorrect, but is at least incomplete,
by comparison to what you stated in your long missive. AIUI, there
are four (at least) reasons Red Hat is contributing to Fedora...
(1) community good will
(2) good will among a possible customer base for RHEL
(3) "free" contributions to testing, defect finding, and defect repair
(4) building a base of people who are accustomed to using the
Red Hat formula for install/maintenance etc, i.e. "brand
recognition and familiarity"
So, not all motives are altruistic. That's ok.
If you look at the prior announcements it has always been open that the
benefits is going to be mutual. Red Hat has used its business
justification to calm down concerns that it is not merely code getting
thrown over the wall with Fedora.. As long as there is a good section of
the users getting benifitted from Fedora they dont have to complain
about Red Hat sharing some of it. Anybody could build a commercial
product out of a part of Fedora just like Red Hat has. The foundation
makes everyone a equal opportunity player. Red Hat can hope to get more
benefits perhaps only by participating in the process more than others.
Establishment of the foundation would mean that you dont have to just
trust Red Hat's word on it and it provides a legal bond that the
community contributions are going to remain free (in both senses)
forever among several other defined goals.
--
Rahul
Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers
