The RedHat threat: Buying the Linux community (Score 1)

Red Hat has chosen, knowingly and specifically, to remove all non-open source software from their distribution. If you review the contents of 5.2 you will note that the BRU backup software, Metro-X, and all other commercial software has been removed from the package.

Even most of the books related to the distribution are copylefted, and available for download. Want the installation guide? Download it. Want to learn more about the RPM packaging system? Download a copy of "Maximum RPM" by Ed Bailey. Follow the links for more documentation.

They've funded open software. They've started paying creative people so they can spend full time hacking Linux, like Alan Cox. The work done by these people goes directly to the communit, not to Red Hat first.

You make a big deal out of the desktop wars and Red Hats actions related to that issue. What Red Hat did was not to denegrate KDE, but to take a simple, consistent position that no Red Hat distribution would include non-open source software in the core distribution. Period. Then they contributed money, personnel, time, and web space to Gnome, the open source alternative. You also choose to ignore the fact that a lot of people, myself included, have tried KDE - and don't like the approach. I applaud the effort of Mattias Ettrich and the KDE group. I regretted the choice of Qt until they started opening up the license for the libraries. But even if KDE had chosen to use GTK+ as a library, I still don't like the look and feel.

What's so evil about having choices? What's wrong with having Gnome and KDE?

Like the Grinch, I suspect your shoes are too tight, or your heart is two sizes to small. Take off your shoes, open a good beer, remove the necktie, join those who let their karma trample selfish dogmas. 8^)