[P2P-F] red hat's restriction's

Wed Mar 9 14:00:10 CET 2011

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 2:24 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks, could we call your suggestion a 'corporate commons' approach
> (non-pejoratively)
>

Perhaps.

Publicly traded corporate participants in open source software commons
have to give priority to shareholder's interests under US and possibly
other country's laws.  They have no legal obligation to sustaining
commons other than complying with GPL v.x terms. It would be more
difficult for a company such as Redhat to take a sharing approach that
goes beyond the GPL and rectify it with shareholder interests than it
would be for them to make decision that tries to protect
"profitability". (The same goes for Oracle, IBM, etc).

Still, all of that being said, a commitment to cooperation over
competition could plausibly prove to be more profitable than a
decision to enclose/obscure in a bid to "protect" in a competitive
environment. The reality of course is that there are no guarantees
that an enclosing "protectionist" move will increase profits more than
a binding agreement with competitors to cooperate and share various
resources. So, the suggestion still stands that sharing and
cooperation are an overlooked option for companies of any type. It is
likely culture and worldview that drive the decision making here.
Businesses would do well to consider employing complex systems models
in cases like this, plus be open to questioning long-held assumptions.

> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 12:12 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > http://press.redhat.com/2011/03/04/commitment-to-open/
>> >
>> > I would welcome any comments on this for the p2p blog,
>> >
>> > see:
>> >
>> > Recently, Jonathan Corbet, respected kernel community member and editor
>> > at
>> > LWN, commented on our change in kernel RPM packaging. When we released
>> > RHEL
>> > 6 approximately four months ago, we changed the release of the kernel
>> > package to have all our patches pre-applied. Why did we make this
>> > change? To
>> > speak bluntly, the competitive landscape has changed. Our competitors in
>> > the
>> > Enterprise Linux market have changed their commercial approach from
>> > building
>> > and competing on their own customized Linux distributions, to one where
>> > they
>> > directly approach our customers offering to support RHEL.
>> >
>> > Frankly, our response is to compete. Essential knowledge that our
>> > customers
>> > have relied on to support their RHEL environments will increasingly only
>> > be
>> > available under subscription. The itemization of kernel patches that
>> > correlate with articles in our knowledge base is no longer available to
>> > our
>> > competitors, but rather only to our customers who have recognized the
>> > value
>> > of RHEL and have thus indirectly funded Red Hat’s contributions to open
>> > source that will advance their business now and in the future.
>> >
>> > --
>> > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>> > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>> >
>> > Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> > http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
>> >
>> > Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> > http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > P2P Foundation - Mailing list
>> > http://www.p2pfoundation.net
>> > https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
>> >
>> >
>>
>> It appears to be a reaction to Oracle. Red Hat is trying to make
>> Oracle work harder at "cherry picking" kernel updates to
>> http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/index.html which is a
>> re-packaged RHEL.
>>
>> Not only that, but as the press release says, companies like Oracle
>> are apparently offering to support RHEL itself. So obscuring the
>> reason for updates makes it harder for a company to say that they will
>> support a competitor's product.
>>
>> As crazy as it may sound, Red Hat could do *better* to figure out a
>> way to create a long term cooperation agreement with companies like
>> Oracle, F5 Networks, and others who repackage RHEL. What could these
>> companies share back with Red Hat that takes money/profit out of the
>> picture?
>>
>> --
>> --
>> Sam Rose
>> Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>> skype: samuelrose
>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
>> http://forwardfound.org
>> http://futureforwardinstitute.org
>> http://hollymeadcapital.com
>> http://p2pfoundation.net
>> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>>
>> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
>> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>
>
>
> --
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
--
Sam Rose
Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://forwardfound.org
http://futureforwardinstitute.org
http://hollymeadcapital.com
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://socialmediaclassroom.com

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan