White Hat
by Colin Dodd
A narrative is forming around Microsoft’s patent FUD campaign, and it’s not a paean to their business acumen, nor an ode to their brinksmanship. The real story is more of a folktale-in-progress that turns on a simple dramatic question: What is Red Hat going to do?
FOSS activists like these at BinaryFreedom.info see Red Hat as an “important domino” and say,
Don’t let Red Hat fold! | binaryFreedom.INFO
We have seen Microsoft’s FUD cause our comrades to pay for patents and intellectual property that doesn’t exist and if Red Hat caves in, many more will follow. Let’s rally our support behind Red Hat to make sure it doesn’t happen! [...] Let’s make sure that everybody at Red Hat knows they have the FULL backing of our community if they stand up to Microsoft’s FUD and they have NO backing from us if they don’t.
June 18th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Don’t let Red Hat fold!
Don’t let the community fold !
Please.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
we know RedHat have rejected the deal so far, but
Linspire did at first too, we just want to offer our ongoing support to RedHat against Microsoft’s pressure.
Thats all.
In Solidarity
Chris Fernandez
Founder of Binary Freedom
June 18th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Microsoft claims that they have shared details of their patent claims with Linux vendors, presumably Red Hat, too. Red Hat would be a savior to the industry if they would just leak these details to the public.
June 18th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
“Red Hat would be a savior to the industry if they would just leak these details to the public.” Unfortunately, that’s probably a bad idea. Microsoft no doubt insisted on NDAs, and we don’t Red Hat tied up in a massive lawsuit that will accomplish little; MS no doubt can assert (legitimately or not) other software patents against GNU/Linux.
June 18th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
“Red Hat would be a savior to the industry if they would just leak these details to the public. ” While they might violate some NDAs I think it would be great if they did this. I’m not asking them to do it, but I’d be ecstatic if they did. I posted a response to some of the criticisms of my original blog posting here:
http://binaryfreedom.info/node/152
Comrade Ringo Kamens
June 19th, 2007 at 1:50 am
> While they might violate some NDAs I think it would be great
> if they did this.
Go bring up a company, violate MS NDAs and be as ecstatic about that as you can.
Even if RH has technically very crude Linux products (SUSE is barely better that way and I do know distros that work just so much better for us), I don’t recommend SUSE since last autumn and hope that Red Hat will stand its ground against an ugly racketeer.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
An NDA on such information would not hold up in court, so long as it does not contain trade secrets.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:18 am
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