[Ambassadors] Red Hat's investments (was Re: Going passive)

[Henrik Nordström]

tis 2010-11-09 klockan 20:35 +0100 skrev Christoph Wickert:

> Jeroen once grepped through the changelogs of all RHEL packages and
> AFAIR the result was that Red Hat would need to invest 4 times more than
> they spent at the time of the merge (FC6 to F7) to keep the balance.
> 
> Do you really thing the investments have changed by that factor? I doubt
> it until someone comes up with numbers to prove me wrong

And I fail to see how it's really relevant what the balance is.

It's undeniable RedHat benefits from work put into Fedora. This should
be obvious to anyone, at least have been to me from the death of RedHat
Linux & birth of the Fedora project some very many years ago.

It's also undeniable RedHat do invest some significant but unknown
amounts in Fedora both directly and indirectly. Redhat do not publish
what that amount is, and I would argue it's impossible to account in a
sensible manner for a number of reasons with the possible exception of
the direct monetary sponsoring & server hosting.

RHEL and Fedora are brothers & sisters, and shares a lot as you normally
do with the closest family, but is also at the same very different
beings with different goals. But both believe in the same basic
freedoms. The existence and sharing with RHEL do not deny any of the
freedoms we believe and love in the Fedora project.

If RedHat is using their parental relation to Fedora to enforce certain
directions within Fedora against the general will of the community then
I would be worried, but I have not seen any significant signs of this.
Sure, occasionally there is some friction, but nothing major from what I
can tell, certainly less than whats normal in a parent<->grownup child
relation of such closeness as the RedHat<->Fedora relation.

There is some noticeable friction relating to the Fedora trademark which
seriously holds back certain aspects of the community, but I doubt the
last words have been said on that. And this friction is mostly induced
by the involvement of lawyers and not the parental relation as such.

Regards
Henrik