The Fedora-Red Hat Crisis
Submitted by srlinuxx on Wed, 09/10/2008 - 03:58.
A few weeks ago, when I wrote that, "forced to choose, the average FOSS-based business is going to choose business interests over FOSS [free and open source software] every time," many people, including Mathew Aslett and Matt Assay, politely accused me of being too cynical. Unhappily, you only have to look at the relations between Red Hat and Fedora, the distribution Red Hat sponsors, during the recent security crisis for evidence that I might be all too accurate.
That this evidence should come from Red Hat and Fedora is particularly dismaying. Until last month, most observers would have described the Red Hat-Fedora relationship as a model of how corporate and community interests could work together for mutual benefit.
Although Fedora was initially dismissed as Red Hat's beta release when it was first founded in 2003, in the last few years, it had developed laudatory open processes and become increasingly independent of Red Hat. As Max Spevack, the former chair of the Fedora Board, said in 2006, the Red Hat-Fedora relationship seemed a "good example of how to have a project that serves the interests of a company that also is valuable and gives value to community members."
Yet it seems that, faced with a problem, Red Hat moved to protect its corporate interests at the expense of Fedora's interests and expectations as a community -- and that Fedora leaders were as surprised by the response as the general community.
A response to "The Fedora-Red Hat Crisis"
I'd put this response as a comment to the article on the place where it was published but the site doesn't appear to have a comment system... but given all of the ads there, perhaps I missed it. Anyway... Bruce is inaccurate in a few points that I feel must be addressed.
Perhaps I should have done a better job with my references and as time passes I'll try to improve this... but I wanted to get it out there ASAP.
Corporate Interests before FOSS?
Bruce claims that Red Hat put corporate interests in front of FOSS interests. Ok, how did they do that? They have kept details of the Red Hat and Fedora break-ins private and have said that they have done so for legal reasons. It would appear that Red Hat is protecting themselves as well as the Fedora project. How exactly is that anti-FOSS? Part of the "legal" reasons is because there is going to be an investigation (probably already in progress) and perhaps, if the culprit(s) can be caught, a prosecution. It is like the police keeping certain details private until they are ready to file charges. That may or may not happen but it is understandable.
One of the differences between this and the Debian case was the nature of it.
Rest Here