Brief rant (somewhat related to Damien Miller's recent post on OpenSSH)

[Paul Iadonisi]

Folks,
  Red Hat has taken a lot of criticism, some of it deserved, regarding
community involvement (or lack thereof) in the Fedora Project.  Whatever
comes out of opening up the process more to community participants (and
I believe it will be at least passably -- hopefully more -- acceptable)
in the end, please remember one important point.  Though Red Hat has
'let go of the reins', so-to-speak, regarding support (i.e.: Fedora Core
is not a supported product of Red Hat), there is one thing that they
cannot give up responsibility for even if they wanted to.  And that is
legal liability.  Whether or not to include something in the
distribution that is legally questionably (mostly patents, but Content
Scramble System related stuff is in a category all itself) absolutely,
without a doubt, *must* *be* *a* *Red Hat* *internal* *decision*.

  Should I type that in all caps, too?

  No, I guess I'll refrain from yelling. ;-)

  There.  I got that off my chest.

  Don't get me wrong...a lot *should* be expected of Red Hat if the
company expects outside contributions to build a distribution which will
ultimately be what gets drawn from to build RHEL and therefore make Red
Hat money.  However, expecting to be allowed to have a say in the legal
choices Red Hat makes is asking for far too much, unless you are willing
to provide your *own* indemnification to Red Hat.  :-)

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets