On 03/10/04 18:02 +0530, Rishi wrote: <snip>
Also the fact that Red Hat has a tie up with non-free software organizations like Oracle to deliver a solution jointly to the enterprise clearly means they do not give a damn about ethical issues of freedom in free software.
The freedom to choose also implies the right to choose closed source software.
Bottom line.. Red Hat is a commercial organization and will never care about ethics. They misuse the word freedom to their advantage.
Huh? RedHat as a business is quite ethical. They offer the choice of application to their customers. If the customers want to stick to closed source applications, that is the right of the customer.
Creating and using free software is advantageous to their Business Model. They do not care about the freedom part about free software / GNU GPL.
Commerce comes first ... Ethics comes second.
That is why I have in the recent past tried to get people to switch to Debian...
And any business person will ask: Where are the applications? Businesses need not only the "geek" applications, but a lot of custom built software, which usually runs on Windows, or is closed source. I don't see too many business applications available from the Open Source world at the moment. Particularly applications suited to specific vertical segments like financials, or banking, or CRM, or cross division collaboration (think Exchange or Lotus Notes -- OGo and Kroupware are not quite there yet).
Devdas Bhagat