RedHat, Fedora future?

[Peter Boy]

Am So, den 08.02.2004 schrieb Tim Kossack um 12:50:
> > Sun is a per seat licence and you are not allowed to freely redistribute
> > it as with fedora. And you can not freely download the sources and
> > redistribute it (after replacing all RH branding stuff) as with RHEL. So
> > licensing issues are quit different. Again: apples and peaches
> 
> wrong. sun offers jds either per seat or per user. besides (for the 10th
> time) reg. plugs, i was talking about the commercial desktops of red
rhel *is* the commercial desktop and you can freely download the sources
(instead of buying it) and make your own distro and use it for yourself
or for your business or even redistribute it. This is not true for Sun,
SuSE and others, who include non-OSS or patent restricted Software.
Therefore, a potential patent conflict (if RH would include mp3 plugins
as an example) implies a much higher risk for RH as for e.g Sun, who
exactly knows, how many copies are in use (have been sold). Similar
considerations are true for non-OSS Software. Therefore, RH may make a
different decision as Sun about the a topic, which may give you the
impression of being the same for both, but isn't if you look close
enough.

> hat. besides, what has all this to do with what this thread is all about
> (usability) - a customer could care less if he's free to redistribute
> rhel under certain terms, because he wants to simply _use_ that stuff,
> and easily and with the least hassle.

The world is not only black&white. If RH would decide to include non-OSS
Software to increase the usability for you and some others, they had to
dismiss it's OSS committed distribution policy. This is well known as
"side effect". So, you can not just decide to include a software product
to increase a (perceived) usability, but you have to make an overall
decision. And RH obviously decided that it is less a hassle (for RH) to
loose those customers who need the software in question and are not
able/willing to use the delivered tools to install it for themselves, as
to change their long term business plan and market target which are
based on OSS commitment.  


> but even if that would be important for some customers, it a) is not for
> others and b) it's not an excuse to have poorer usability/plugs that the
> comp.

Redistribution policy may be irrelevant for some customers. For those
customers, which consider it relevant, mp3 and others may be irrelevant
and may not make up better usability as you consider.

You might take into consideration that despite you are convinced about
the relevance of that stuff others may consider differently. 

> about), because the argument of you (or red hat for that matter) goes as
> follows: "in corporate environments, a max. ease-of-use as well as a
> complete suite of plugins you need every day is not as important as at
> the desktop at home."

You took the argument wrong. The argument is: what is considered "max
ease-of-use as well as a complete suite of plugins you need every day"
is *different* for corporate and home usage. 

> ut the ultimate goal should be that the desktop for the corporate use
> should be as easy to use and offering the same basic functionality as
> the desktop at home, 
I suppose RH would argue that they currently deliver (for the corporate
desktop) what you are demanding (limited by legal constraints).

> > I don't like my staff watching dvds and playing games while they should
> > get their work done. Therefore I don't care wether xine, mp3, ... is
> > included or not (better not :-) )
> 
> your employees don't have any breaks at all, where they want to surf,
> listening to music etc.?

They have. But I would never make a decision about which linux distro to
buy upon the inclusion of mp3, dvd, ... That is totally irrelevant.

> (...) so, whatever you and red hat think about it: choice out 
> of the box is _good_, and not _bad_ (s.a.)

Full ack. But you should consider the "price" in terms of legal issues
and required resources for preparation as well (see above)


> > > can't see the contradiction you seem to see here, to the contrary, both
> > > "feature richness" as well as "integration" are two requirements to
> > > achieve good usability.
> > But can't being achived at the same time (look at SuSE). Or at least
> > it's very expensive and time consuming.
> 
> again, sun, lindows, mandrake, xandros etc. don't agree with you.
Mandrake itself recently changed its release and QA policy because there
had been too many bugs in the recent releases. One of their last betas
started with a very small selection of software and a voting process for
addition of software. Mandrake itself tried to achive a smaller
distribution which is easier to maintain and to "bugfix". Unfortunately
they ended up in the same complexity as before because they tried to
make a distro for everybody. Maybe they try to fulfill a Sisyphos task.

But we should stop the thread here. Usability is quite a complex issue
and there is no single best solution available. Red Hat assumptions
about how to use the desktop easily fit my needs quite well (as they do
for a lot of others). May be your need are better met by another one.



Peter