On Sat, Sep 24, 2005 at 12:58:40PM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Sat, Sep 24, 2005 at 07:02:57PM +1000, Andrew Pollock wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I attended a product briefing at Computer Associates on Thursday, and one of > > the products that was discussed more than demonstrated was something called > > eTrust Access Control[1], which, from my interpretation, sounds like it > > achieves something similar to what SE Linux probably does. That's not really > > the point of this email though. > > And why should the kernel team support propritary software, especially > where a better free alternative exists already? > That's the attitude I feared I'd find, but was hoping I wouldn't... In this particular instance, without being intimately familiar with CA's product, I can't readily comment on how it stacks up with SE Linux, it just *sounds* SE Linuxish from the description, and from how it was described at the product briefing. As I said, the nature of the software wasn't the point of this email, it could be doing something for which there isn't a comparable free product out there. At the end of the day, I think we need to accept that we live in a mixed world of free and proprietary software. If the kernel team want to thumb their noses at the proprietary, then it may come at the cost of lost installations of Debian, which I think is a bad thing. Taking the example of where I previously worked. I'd deployed a fairly nice to manage Internet gateway infrastructure using Debian. Due to a bit of nepotism, and general higher-up management decisions, we had CA Unicenter foisted on us. We didn't get a say in it. Of course, it was supposed to do all this fandanged stuff that we already had Nagios doing, but management wanted to to be able to name drop some commercial software to clients, rather than a mish-mash of this "open source" stuff. We're not able to fight a massive management reeducation/attitude readjustment battle, so we have to accept what we're given. The problem is, when said commercial software starts mandating what Linux distribution(s) it'll support, if the management push is for that commercial software, then if it doesn't support Debian, then Debian's going to be the loser, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the commercial software. So it doesn't matter that those of us that have to manage the Linux boxes happen to firmly believe that Debian's got a lower "cost of ownership" in terms of management than say Red Hat, management just see it as "we want this $100,000 piece of software, and your Linux distribution choice is blocking that implementation". I'm sure I'm not the only person who's been in this situation. So, if you don't want to try and ease that pain, maintain the attitude you're currently expressing, but I don't believe it is in the best interests of our users to be so exclusive. regards Andrew
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