[WBEL-devel] Re: How to get the RHEL Errata?

[David E. Cox]

On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 19:18, Sebastian Welsh wrote:
> A longer-term concern of mine is the possibility that in the future, we
> have no guarantee that the SRPM errata will be sufficient to generate a
> complete OS. Playing the "if I were RedHat" thought experiment, I'd
> consider introducing proprietal software to Enterprise Linux upon which
> common components depended in order to reinforce my new sales model. I
> respect RedHats right to grow a sustainable business, but really hope
> that I am just being viciously creative :)
> 

There is lots Redhat could do to make this difficult and still remain
within the GPL: java based installers, proprietary compilers, deep
embedding of trademarks, etc.  But my guess is that the rebuilders are
good for redhat and they know it.  

Redhat's business is packaging, not development.  Spec files and
platform compatibility patches are much more their core business then
bug chasing in the applications themselves.  So as self-hosting
rebuilders go to work, redhat's bugzilla fills with good deep bug
reports on the build process.  They get an army of folks actually
digging through their code making sure it all works.  The sales loss is
marginal as the suits are still going to buy redhat. You just can't
explain to them whats happening late at night down at the public
library.

Thats my hope anyway, that redhat sees the rebuild crowd and the Fedora
crowd in the same light.  Informed beta testers supporting the
gold-plated enterprise editions.

dave