Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[max bianco]

On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Francis Earl <lunitik at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the main thing you're missing here is, no one really cares
>  whether Linux takes off on the desktop, in fact, Red Hat has said it
>  won't try because it's not cost effective.
>
>  An XP desktop costs around $200 whether it's added onto the cost of your
>  machine or not. Linux generally is between $50-100 from most that try to
>  sell it, but everyone goes for Windows anyways. You have to take several
>  steps to get it onto that machine, and you're still not going to be the
>  first choice because you're not what people are familiar with.
>
>  Red Hat charges in the thousands per machine for support to
>  corporations, that is where the money is, and by comparison, the home
>  desktop is chump change to them. That is without marketing costs,
>  without much of anything but a strong name in the corporate space.
>
>  Why should they pay around $15 per user for software the user didn't pay
>  for, just so they can play codecs that aren't relevant to the people
>  making them their money? They are available within the community, so
>  what is the issue? You'd rather Red Hat go out of business, just so it's
>  easier for you to play a damn audio file, or better 3D performance for
>  your games?
>
>  There is nothing you can really do about nvidia and ati, nothing but
>  reverse engineer things, or force them to open up the specs. There is
>  people trying to do that stuff, via Nouveau for Nvidia cards for
>  instance. There are even legal ways to get codecs (fluendo) and other
>  equally easy ways. Red Hat would rather fight to get those companies to
>  play ball right than just so "ok, we'll do it your way".
>
>  You run Linux today because Red Hat didn't say "ok, put it in, but be
>  gentle" to every corporation that told it to bend over. Today, Linux is
>  big business, and is really making strides even on the home desktop.
>
>  You wouldn't even have heard of Linux though if it wasn't for RedHat.
>  Why should they go back on what has made them successful just because
>  the current batch of Linux newcomers can't figure out how to add a yum
>  repo or read docs? Then, that IS why Ubuntu is so popular today... but
>  again, at least they're providing mindshare, so they're doing their
>  part.
>
>  I just hope they're not harming the rest of us by making it justifiable
>  to not open their hardware to Linux devs, that they are teaching people
>  the right way to do things. I hope they are doing more to wise users to
>  better codecs - codecs that allow them to actually OWN the media, and
>  share it legally.
>
>  I don't see much of that though, all I see are a bunch of Ubuntu guys
>  wandering out to the rest of the Linux community, and expecting Ubuntu's
>  flawed beliefs to be prevalent everywhere.
>
>  To answer your question, yes it does feel good being part of a minority
>  that asks "how are they able to get away with that?", and makes an
>  effort to ensure the industry can't rape users anymore. It speaks more
>  loudly for the ignorance of society at large that these things are even
>  an issue.
>
>
Amen.