SLUGs:
The following links seem to be relevant to this thread:
http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/
Notwithstanding Martin's consultation with Red Hat's lawyers, Red Hat's
written and posted positions are far more important than what any Red
Hat employee says.
I think this thread has (literally) burned itself out, so let's let it
rest. For those who thought this should have gone to the politics list,
you were correct. The only reason I let it go so far is because some
startling claims were made for Red Hat's position on reselling its
product. I wanted to see if some more solidly grounded information could
be posted, before everyone chose to crucify a major Linux vendor. Had
this been another vi vs. emacs (or other) flamewar, I would have shifted
it over much earlier. The politics list is not just for democrat vs
republican type issues.
Some lessons:
1) Snip prior posts when replying. We chewed a tremendous amount of
bandwidth needlessly quoting prior posts in our replies. (Just a little
bit of administrivia, there. ;-)
2) Red Hat is a brand of Linux that means a certain thing, just like
SuSE or TurboLinux. Each company has a right and responsibility to
protect its trademarks or risk losing them. Similarly, if people sell
"Red Hat", and their customers go to Red Hat for free technical support,
Red Hat has to solve that problem as well. There _are_ ways around this
(as CheapBytes found) which both satisfy the customer and the company.
Red Hat does not appear unreasonable in this regard.
3) The statements of a single employee at a company are never the last
word on anything, particularly if they sound bizarre. Employees can be
misinformed and misunderstand things, both about the customer and about
their own company. Check the company's written policies, find a
higher-up, or otherwise verify information which sounds incorrect.
4) Don't purposely alarm the list. If someone claiming to be Linus
Torvalds' third cousin twice removed tells you that Linus tortures small
animals for fun and profit, don't just post it to the list. This kind of
a "fact" doesn't make sense, is probably untrue, and only serves to
inflame people. Verify it first. Like it or not, there are certain icons
in the Linux world, and if you start whacking away at them, you're only
going to upset people. If they deserve it, then whack away. But the
bigger the icon, the more important it is that your information be
correct before you start whacking. Newspaper reporters are supposed to
verify all their sources. You should too.
5) Make your point, but be civil. Try to remember you're adults (and for
those of you who aren't, fake it ;-). Just because someone slams you
doesn't mean you should slam them back. Respond with calm reason. You'll
get a helluva lot more respect that way. Look at it this way-- agitators
_hate_ it when you respond mildly. They're out to rile you, and it
drives them nuts when it doesn't work. (And thanks to those of you on
this thread who were models of civility; you know who you are.)
Okay?
Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 12:53:30 EDT