hoax or bad taste joke by Redhat's CEO?

[John Hearns]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Sean Middleditch wrote:

> I doubt this a lot.  I've had several friends I set up with RHL.  All of
> them are now on WinXP.  Why?  Hardware never worked right (just
> installing nvidia drivers was a pain, and they broke whenever a kernel
> security update came along), 
Polite response: 
Well, doesn't that tell you something about why closed
source drivers aren't what we want?
We use Linux because it is open source - if you have an itch, you
can scratch it. That's the power of Linux - look at the kernel.
In a proprietary Unix, you have a few options you can twiddle for a 
limited kernel recompile. You have to wait for the vendor to make fixes
or put in new features. In Linux you can compile your own kernel -
and tweak parameters to suit yourself, or increase performance where it
matters to you.

Less polite response: have you never listened to RMS? Or Alan Cox?
We may be stuck with closed source drivers - but this is exactly the
situation they lead to. And then you say Linux sucks...