HackFUD

There’s an interesting phrase, and this short article isn’t about any kind of FUD at all, just a quick response to an interesting article I stumbled across, and felt I needed to just make a point about it;

Interesting, just nomenclature eh? Imagine this situation:

1. I buy a license for RHEL
2. I find a bug or want a new feature
3. Lucky for me, I have the source code to RHEL
4. I also have the technical skills to pay the billz
5. I fix the bug and add that new feature to my copy of RHEL
6. I no longer have RHEL, I have RHEL*

Can I get support for RHEL* from Red Hat? A candy bar to readers who answer, “nope, you’re out of luck, Red Hat won’t support you on anything other than RHEL (i.e. RHEL* != RHEL)”.

Which makes sense for Red Hat, when you think about it After all, anyone with the ability can make changes to programs, utilities, and kernels within the paid-for Red Hat distribution. Red Hat allowing its full support facilities and help desk access for any old randomly customised versions of that distribution would be an absolute nightmare for the company, so it makes sense for Red Hat to support only its one - known - distribution.

I suggest that perhaps the better alternative sequence of events Savio Rodrigues could follow would be this;

1. I buy a license for RHEL
2. I find a bug or want a new feature
3. Lucky for me, I have the source code to RHEL
4. I also have the technical skills to pay the billz
5. I fix the bug and post a bug report to Red Hat with the patch which sorted the bug.
6. Red Hat acknowledges the bug and either accepts my patch or writes its own.
7. A patched version of the software is released by Red Hat.
8. I had a fully supported RHEL. I still have a fully supported RHEL.

Q.E.D.

Heh, see what happens when I go away to visit my folks for a few days…

OK, so a company by the name of IP Innovation has basically sued Red Hat and Novell over a patent they own which they say something in those companies’ Linux distributions infringes.

The patent in question is : “User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects“, patent #5,072,412 .

PJ at Groklaw once again has written a great entry on her website about this.

She’s also since then written up a Call To Arms, for looking for Prior Art against the patent lawsuit, so anyone reading this and can help, please do so!

Yes. For this to occur almost right after Steve Ballmer’s FUD-ridden talk, of which I opined about earlier on this site, strikes me as an astounding coincidence. No doubt certain people and companies will make a meal of this situation in the coming weeks and months. I’m hoping the FOSS community will - once again - pool together and destroy these claims. And I’ll be keeping a look out for the ensuing FUD attacks that are surely to come.