thelinuxlink.net

I was listening to episode 137 where it was stated that Red Hat was backing the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 (IPPA), also known as the DMCA II.

Here is the word from Greg DeKoenigsberg at Red Hat. Apparently someone in the SIIA, an organization of which Red Hat is a member, said that there are some good things in the IPPA. This is not an official stance of the SIIA, Red Hat or anyone else.

So no one at Red Hat has stated they back the IPPA. The sky is not falling. Go back to reading slashdot.

Gomer_X wrote:So no one at Red Hat has stated they back the IPPA.

I never said that actually, I said that Red Hat is in a group that backs it, and the reason I say they're backing it is because anyone who thinks anything in this law is positive must have eaten a 10 ton crack-cake for dinner or something.

Gomer_X wrote:Go back to reading slashdot.

Nah, who needs Slashdot when you got digg.

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Gomer_X wrote:So no one at Red Hat has stated they back the IPPA.

I never said that actually, I said that Red Hat is in a group that backs it, and the reason I say they're backing it is because anyone who thinks anything in this law is positive must have eaten a 10 ton crack-cake for dinner or something.

Right, but the truth is the SIIA does NOT back this law. Per the comments in DeKoenigsberg's post, the SIIA has no official position, and probably never will.

Here's a quote:

I *just said* that SIIA does not, in fact, support IPPA 2k6.

As of right now, I'm guessing that they have no official stance *at all* -- largely because the SIIA is a heterogenous group, made of many industry players, who are probably still squabbling about what IPPA 2k6 actually *means*.

If you want an *unofficial* stance on how Red Hat *generally* feels about these issues, just go Google "Red Hat DMCA". I'm sure you'll find plenty of data to examine.

Well I just scheduled Max Spevack and Greg Dekoenigsberg from the Fedora Project for June 14th.

Patrick wrote:Well I just scheduled Max Spevack and Greg Dekoenigsberg from the Fedora Project for June 14th.

Awesome, finally some Red Hat guys, now that about 5 Novell/SUSE/Ximian guys have been on the show, it should be nice to have a few Red Hat guys, remember to ask 'em about how AIGLX is going.

Tsuroerusu wrote: Awesome, finally some Red Hat guys....

I've attempted to contact their people on several occassions with absolutely no response back from them. ZERO, NADA! I guess the Fedora guys are a lot more approachable. I'm also trying to get the Gentoo guys on as well. We goof on them sometimes but it's a solid distro. Their documentation is fantastic. I just need a faster machine to run it

Patrick wrote:I've attempted to contact their people on several occassions with absolutely no response back from them. ZERO, NADA! I guess the Fedora guys are a lot more approachable.

Well, since Red Hat dropped that Fedora Foundation thing, I kinda see Red Hat and Fedora as sort of the same thing, just so you know.

Patrick wrote:I'm also trying to get the Gentoo guys on as well. We goof on them sometimes but it's a solid distro. Their documentation is fantastic.

That's true, the documentation for Gentoo is very nice, indeed!

Patrick wrote:I just need a faster machine to run it

Are you kidding? Compared to something like Debian or FreeBSD, you'd need a quad Opteron.

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Patrick wrote:I just need a faster machine to run it

Are you kidding? Compared to something like Debian or FreeBSD, you'd need a quad Opteron.

You need a 8-CPU dual-core AMD Opteron 875 system with 64GB of RAM and over 1.2TB of disk space. Check out the machine they installed it on at LWE:
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20060 ... letter.xml

Patrick wrote:You need a 8-CPU dual-core AMD Opteron 875 system with 64GB of RAM and over 1.2TB of disk space. Check out the machine they installed it on at LWE:
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20060 ... letter.xml

They must have a shitload of money!!!

How about one of them Niagara chips from Sun?

Patrick wrote:Well I just scheduled Max Spevack and Greg Dekoenigsberg from the Fedora Project for June 14th.

w000tt!!!1!

Score!!

Should be interesting (I think).

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Patrick wrote:I've attempted to contact their people on several occassions with absolutely no response back from them. ZERO, NADA! I guess the Fedora guys are a lot more approachable.

Well, since Red Hat dropped that Fedora Foundation thing, I kinda see Red Hat and Fedora as sort of the same thing, just so you know.

Red Hat just decided there was no benefit to making the Fedora Foundation a non-profit. By law, a considerable amount of financial support must come from the community (75%?) in order to be non-profit. That means the community would have to replace the funding that Red Hat is now supplying ($1.2 million for hosting alone), and that's not going to happen.

There has been no move towards Red Hat having more control of Fedora. Fedora now has more community involvement than it ever did, with 50% of the board coming from the community and not Red Hat.

Gomer_X wrote:

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Patrick wrote:I've attempted to contact their people on several occassions with absolutely no response back from them. ZERO, NADA! I guess the Fedora guys are a lot more approachable.

Well, since Red Hat dropped that Fedora Foundation thing, I kinda see Red Hat and Fedora as sort of the same thing, just so you know.

Red Hat just decided there was no benefit to making the Fedora Foundation a non-profit. By law, a considerable amount of financial support must come from the community (75%?) in order to be non-profit. That means the community would have to replace the funding that Red Hat is now supplying ($1.2 million for hosting alone), and that's not going to happen.

There has been no move towards Red Hat having more control of Fedora. Fedora now has more community involvement than it ever did, with 50% of the board coming from the community and not Red Hat.

Okay, thanks for the heads up on that. I guess I'll have to think of Fedora as more of a seperate entity.

Tsuroerusu wrote: Okay, thanks for the heads up on that. I guess I'll have to think of Fedora as more of a seperate entity.

It'll be interesting to see what Max has to say. He was the one who wrote the announcement explaining the reasons Red Hat dropped the Foundation idea.

They've taken a long time to get Fedora to where the community has some control, but it's finally coming together. I think it's not because Red Hat wants control. I just think they weren't aware of how much work it would be.

It would be different if the Fedora Project had millions from Mark Shuttleworth, but all they have is Red Hat.

Gomer_X wrote:It'll be interesting to see what Max has to say. He was the one who wrote the announcement explaining the reasons Red Hat dropped the Foundation idea.

Yeah, how much money is Red Hat actually throwing into Fedora? Because if they were to do a non-profit organisation, wouldn't they need a crapload of donations?

Gomer_X wrote:They've taken a long time to get Fedora to where the community has some control, but it's finally coming together. I think it's not because Red Hat wants control. I just think they weren't aware of how much work it would be.

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing, I've never really seen Red Hat as "The Microsoft Of Open Source" as they've been dinged in the past for being. Hey, when Novell GPLed Ximian's Connector plugin for Evolution it was pulled into Fedora, and now they've adopted Mono, and Red Hat has contributed a lot of code to GNOME in general, the virtual desktop switcher is done by Red Hat originally just as an example, which Novell is now using as their default desktop. If Novell saw Red Hat as an enemy, why use GNOME? SUSE has contributed a big bunch of code to KDE in the past, so if Novell wanted to stick their head in the ground they certainly could.
As a lot of people, including myself, say: "Free Software and Open Source enables competition".

Gomer_X wrote:It would be different if the Fedora Project had millions from Mark Shuttleworth, but all they have is Red Hat.

Hehe, yeah no kidding, I could just imagine ......

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Gomer_X wrote:It'll be interesting to see what Max has to say. He was the one who wrote the announcement explaining the reasons Red Hat dropped the Foundation idea.

Yeah, how much money is Red Hat actually throwing into Fedora? Because if they were to do a non-profit organisation, wouldn't they need a crapload of donations?

Yes, that's the main reason they dropped the foundation. An E-mail was sent to everyone on the Fedora mailing list asking how people were willing to commit financially to the project. The result was that the community couldn't come up with even a fraction of the money and resources Red Hat was already poring into Fedora. Red Hat didn't didn't want to drop their support just so they could call Fedora a foundation.

Tsuroerusu wrote:If Novell saw Red Hat as an enemy, why use GNOME? SUSE has contributed a big bunch of code to KDE in the past, so if Novell wanted to stick their head in the ground they certainly could.

Could it be they selected GNOME because it's a better desktop? It does seem to be the choice of the enterprise distros.