Re: evan leibovitch and the LPI certification tests
"Phillip R. Jaenke" <prj@nls.net> writes:
> And what about their 'partners'? I have yet to see one of their contracts.
> And I'm just getting this eerie feeling that, well, it's an exclusive
> contract. If you offer RedHat, you only offer RedHat as far as Linux go,
> at least on preinstalled systems. VA Research no longer offers SuSE, or
> Windows either, on any of their systems. Only RedHat 5.2. That bugs me.
That is a completely unfounded fear. You can look at the requirements
for their resellers online at:
http://www.redhat.com/corp/corp_partners_channel.html
This includes the contract. All requirements are bound only to those
systems you sell RedHat software on, and you are not required to sell
only RedHat software. None of the requirements even mention what you
are allowed to sell or not, they just say that you must provide tech
support in certain situations, maintain staff that is RH certified,
and achieve a minimum level of sales in RH software.
There are various reasons why box pusher would want to limit the
number of different distributions they support. Internally at my work
we limit all of our support to Debian. When you consider that they
are dealing with a tremendous number of clients, then limiting the
variability of the installation makes it much easier for them to
support their clients. If I was a box pusher I might well settle on
supporting nothing but Debian. Talking with VA sales indicates that
this was probably the primary motivator for reducing the number of
distributions they supported, it was having negative effects on the
performance of their tech support departments. So, provided we were
able to generate more demand for Debian, I could certainly see their
position changing.
And anyways, there is no call for bad-mouthing organizations that have
supported Debian with many resources, especially not when your
complaint is mostly FUD and rumor mongering. Complaints about
technical reliability are certainly valid, but they should not become
the ground for such juvenile name-calling and FUD. In my mind you owe
RedHat, VA Research and this list a retraction of your groundless
claims and possibly an apology.
> If we don't market Debian, to be blunt, we're going to get fucked. This
> LPI moron obviously has some serious press contacts. He's got personal
> reasons. The more damage he can do to Debian, the less credible we seem,
> and the more power Caldera and RedHat have. And he didn't even mention
> Slackware, which IMNSHO, is probably the *BEST* distribution if you're
> going to tinker like hell with it.
Maybe the first thing you should do then is think about what you can
constructively say to him and others. You seem to be really good at
talking at least, but it's the constructive part that has got you
baffled it seems.
I would propose, and if noone who is more familiar with Mr. Leibovitch
is planning to do so, explaining to him the reasons behind several of
Debian's decisions which he is attributing to irrational ideology or
some sort.
This means explaining that Debian is not against business, and that
one of the reasons why we have such strict and well defined guidelines
about licensing for packages is so that companies can easily and
without fear repackage our work and use it as the base for their own
distribution, like Corel is. No other distribution that I know of has
made their licensing policy so well defined, and public (which implies
stability).
We should explain why we chose not to include KDE in our main
distribution. That distributing KDE violates a license which is the
cornerstone of all Linux distributions (because the kernel is placed
under it) the GPL. This is not an ideological position, somehow
opposing KDE or QT in favor of GNOME. Debian simply does not want to
violate the law in a way which may weaken the binding power of the
Free Software communities most important(arguable) license.
Perhaps you could better spend your time writing articles about these
common misunderstandings about Debian, rather than bad-mouthing, with
no real basis, the people who give us the servers and bandwidth we use
to create it. I propose that you would win more support for Debian
that way, which is what you yourself recommend we do.
--
Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>
Less matter, more form! - Bruno Schulz
ignazz, I am truly korrupted by yore sinful tzourceware. -jb
The Osmonds! You are all Osmonds!! Throwing up on a freeway at dawn!!!
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