On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, Ed Cogburn wrote:
> The issue is not that the Linux kernel would still be available
> as open-source, the problem is what happens when 85-95% of app
> developers are writing their software only for RH. The 'open
> source' community would not be terribly affected, and would
> certainly continue support of Debian and others, but if RH can
> wrap up the commercial side of the Linux phenomenon, Debian will
> never go much farther than it is now.
If the "'open source' community would not be terribly affected",
why should the growth ("go much farther") of Debian be affected?
As long as RH remains OSS, the worst that can happen is that developers
have to translate everything from RH into Debian. The fact that RH is
commercial doesn't enter into the equation.
Are you saying that Linux users will take a commercial product over a
free one, just because it is commercial?
There is the commercial world and the free world; the free world has
been growing in spite of the commercial world, adding one more
commercially supported OS will not change that. In fact, since the free
world gets most of its users from the commercial world... an increase in
the number of commercial Linux users should result in more converts to
free Linux distributions.
Consider this:
Did the arrival of a commercial Unix stagnate the free unix
distributions (in any way), or did the commercial Unix increase the size
of the unix user base (some of whom switched to the free products
when they realized that unix was ok)?
later,
Bruce
