[Wed Jul 18 16:36:07 CDT 2012]

I know I have said this before, but it's always a good idea to state it again. No matter what I (or anybody else) may think about this or that particular decision by Red Hat managers, about this or that product of theirs, the fact remains that, overall, it is without a doubt one of the most straightforward companies out there in their support of open source software and, on top of that, they behave in a quite honest manner too. As I say, sure, you may prefer Ubuntu, Debian or whatever other distro or open source operating system. That's fine. But personal preference is no reason not to acknowledge what I'm saying here. Take, for instance, the way they decided to celebrate that they have become a 1 billion dollar company by donating US $100,000 dollars to whatever efforts Red Hat associates decided in a vote. As Jim Whitehurst, their President and CEO, stated in an article published by their own Open Source magazine:

Sixteen years ago, few imagined that a handful of people at a Linux start-up in North Carolina were laying the groundwork for an open source business with more than a billion dollars in annual revenue. Yet as we stand at that milestone, and as we take the opportunity to reflect, we believe our success speaks volumes about the power of community.

This billion dollar milestone is not only a win for Red Hat —it is a victory for open source advocates everywhere. Our fight has always been about something greater than just access to software code. The open source movement is rooted in shared values about knowledge; it is founded on ideas that are both ordinary and revolutionary. As members of this community, we elevate transparency over secrecy. We prize freedom rather than control. This is the open source way: sharing ideas and information, contributing to an intellectual commons that leads to greater innovation and benefits us all.

Again, yes, Red Hat obviously benefits from the open source community and what it has to offer, but it also offers a lot itself. They do contribute a lot to the Linux kernel, for instance. They also contribute to many other applications. As far as I can tell, they are a commercial interest, yes, but they behave like an honest and good neighbor. What's the prolem with that? As a matter of fact, other than Debian (widely acknowledge to be perhaps the most open of all distributions), I cannot think of any other Linux distribution that openly allows the existence of a clone that contributes little upstream, like CentOS. Let's be fair, please. {link to this entry}