[Gllug] Discussion: Is Enterprise Linux a lock-in

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 12:28:17PM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> 
> Richard Jones writes:
> 
> >> 1. RMS suggested that "all the companies that distribute GNU\Linux also
> >> distribute non-free software, which is unethical. Some even develop
> >> non-free software which is worse"
> >
> >Not true for Red Hat.  They have a fanatical devotion to freedom of
> >software which in some ways is quite damaging to them.
> 
> That was my first instinct, too. But it's not actually true. Although
> their core product is 100% free software, the Enterprise product ships
> with a number of non-free packages on an extras CD, such as IBM's Java
> Virtual Machine, and BEA's JRockit.

Where ever possible, there are equivalent open source packages 
shipped - in these cases GCJ+associated libs and Tomcat. gcj 
doesn't support the whole of JDK class library yet, but RH is 
putting a large amount of resource into developing gcj to address
the gaps. So enterprise customers have a choice of which they
want to use.

> There are also other products like the Red Hat CMS system that include
> non-free components, IIRC.

Red Hat CMS and associated components are all distributed under an open 
source license[1]. The nightly builds are freely available from our
FTP site. 

Dan.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/licenses/ccmpl.html
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|=-   berrange at redhat.com  -  Daniel Berrange  -  dan at berrange.com    -=|
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