Re: RedHat attitude

> >  Reading RHDB manuals, the screenshots in [4] make me think
> > that actualy any user installing it is clearly adviced of the
> > PostgreSQL presence.

Hi guys,

Do you realize RedHat is a company? I own two companies myself and Business is
Business. Therefore, IMHO, RedHat attitude is not difficult to understand:

Take RHDB for example : the source code is GPL, but it receives only RedHat
employee contributions. I would be very surprised if non-RedHat employees had
access to their CVS. Of course, you can always send patches, but these
patches become RedHat propriety and are then incorporated into RHDB.

RedHat owns RHDB completely. At any moment, it deserves the right to change
RHDB license completely. RedHat has the right to do so.

Do you really think RedHat are a philantropic company? These guys have and
need to earn money to continue operation. On the converse, PostgreSQL group
are a philantropic organization, even if its members are making business.
That's a big difference.

Therefore, I would like to make things clear : RedHat attitude might evolve
tomorrow because of financial objectives. There are clear signs that RedHat
is preparing to close its distribution sofware (=RedHat own applications),
ask money to download packages, shrink existing KDE, etc... And this might
well be the case of RedHatDB.

And what if RedHat are bought by a large vendor during a hostile stock-market
offer? Do you think investors will say "OK, RHDB deserves to stay
open-source". They wron't bother with this kind of things...

The situation is : the gun is in pointed to the back of your head, but you
cannot see it because you are looking forward. "RedHat never killed me,
nothing serious man!". Of course, they never killed you necause "you are
still alive". Too simple? You are warned and I won't say more to avoid
bothering you all.

Cheers, Jean-Michel POURE