From: kevin lyda (kevin at domain suberic.net)
Date: Thu 09 Sep 1999 - 10:36:40 IST
David Murphy spoke thusly:
>One swallow doesn't make a summer - Red Hat's stock price is a symptom
>of current stock market mania for internet companies, not an
>endorsement of their business model - it'll be interesting to see if
>more new and different problems like [1].
>
>[0] NMF
>[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/990902-000006.html
this story has been covered to death in the past week. redhat has
the same policy as debian and any other gpl'ed distribution: you can
copy our stuff (just as the license states) but you can't say it's an
official redhat distribution. if i started selling debian cd's in the
same packaging as debian i'd more then likely get a phone call or a
letter saying "cut it out." with redhat that's an even larger issue
since they offer support with their official box set.
as both redhat and bruce perens (speaking for debian) have commented,
people are more then welcome to say "derived from ..." or "contains ...".
after all it lets consumers know what they're getting and credits the
people who did the work.
the register's article seems to be basing it's entire article on a guy who
was violating most gpl'ed distro's rules as well as common sense. i also
note that since making his accusations mr. sands has been rather quiet.
he's gotten more then enough clarification if he's read media reports,
and i'm sure he's gotten more info directly if he's proactively dealing
with his business.
as for the other point, no redhat's stock surge does not indicate
success. it's just one data point. but it's one more data point then
we had a month ago, and it's a data point that involves cold, hard cash.
and if you'll recall redhat's stock price has been rising in spite of
a drop in internet related stocks.
kevin
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