[TriLUG] Who runs Red Hat and KDE

[Brent Fox]

On Sun, 2003-05-25 at 13:09, karl thiele wrote:
> >
> >For what it's worth, Red Hat treats Gnome the same way.  Play with Gnome
> >out of CVS and then look at Red Hat's default Gnome setup...they look
> >totally different.  Also, Red Hat does not release new RPMs every time a
> >new version of Gnome or KDE comes out.  Rather, we wait until the next
> >release to provide the new KDE and Gnome releases.  Yet somehow many
> >people interpret this as favoring Gnome and giving KDE "the shaft".  The
> >mind boggles.
> >
> Just goes to show that RH is really a company interested in profits, buy 
> my upgrade every 6 months. 

Umm...actually, the upgrades for Red Hat Linux are free to anyone with
an Internet connection.  Always have been.  And as Jeremy said, new
packages are available via Rawhide but they have not been tested to the
same degree as the packages in official releases.  

> The people this hurts most are the individual 
> who want to keep up with the lastest but are not technical enough to do 
> it on thier own and rely on the distributions to provide upgrades. In 
> this regard the distributors are no different than any other software 
> vendor, except by GPL, they have to give it away for free and in source. 
> I wonder how they would do business if the GPL was not in place?

If a majority of our users were asking for us to release new desktop
packages every week, I feel certain that we would do it.  The reality is
that most users are not asking for this.  And yes, we do feel the GPL
makes us different from other software companies.  I think our
commitment to the GPL is well documented.

> I thought with RH interest and support of Gnome the support would follow 
> suit. I do not keep up with Gnome, actually not with kde, just when it 
> strikes me too. Well I quess you comment is not surprizing. Well I 
> understand the look would be different, got to have RH logos everywhere. 
> Isn't the functionality the same???

All I'm saying is that Red Hat modifies Gnome in pretty much the same
way we modify KDE (theme, icons, menus, etc).  Much of the criticism we
get about KDE is because what we ship is different from KDE from CVS. 
Evidently, these people have never played with Gnome from CVS. 
Incidentally, the kernel we ship is quite different from the kernel.org
kernel too.  But as with Gnome and KDE, the patches are all there and
all GPL'd.  


Cheers,
   Brent