Ben Russo

Virginia, USA

Sr. UNIX SysAdmin

"Red Hat’s decision to end support for its free software and the Novell-SuSE link-up have put the last nail in the coffin of the free software model..."

What rubbish. Microsoft really doesn't understand. RedHat Enterprise Linux is released under the GPL. As are almost all (about 99.5%) of the software packages that constitute RedHat Linux. They are freely distribut-able and modifyiable and re-dsitribut-able.

RedHat is just charging for support. Support was never free in the first place. RedHat just realized that the bandwidth was expensive and that they had made it too easy for freeloaders (people who use open-source community stuff without re-contributing) to use. So, RedHat changed the model a little. They still have all the source code available for free. You are still entitled to download it, compile it and give it away. However you just can't get the ISO's online, you can't download the binaries online and you don't get phone or e-mail support without paying for it.

What part of this is the "end of free software model"?? After a few obnoxious, ill-informed winers get their heads out of their asses and understand what RedHat is doing, they will realize that 99.9% of all the Linux users out there probably never called or e-mailed RedHat for support anyway. So what do they care.