Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Reco <recoverym4n@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 10:38:28PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 02:57:35PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 06:37:03PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > > Red Hat employees do have significant involvement in Fedora. This is true.
> > > May I ask, what model would you prefer?
> > 
> > Both, actually.
> 
> Your answer that follows indicates that you misunderstood my question.

Indeed I had.


> Red Hat do indeed employ people who work on Fedora, much as the do for X,
> GNOME, the kernel, systemd, and a whole raft of other technologies. Your
> suggestion was that this impaired the independence of these projects.

It's inevitable. Those who are paid for their work tend to align with
employer's view of things. I don't see it as a Universally Bad Thing™,
or The Source Of All Evil™. It's just the way things are.


> My question is, what would be your ideal situation? How should people
> who work on these projects get paid for their work?

I honestly do not know. My (tiny) contributions to Debian in the form of
bug reports, patches and answering e-mails on this list here and there
did not provide me with any income ☺.
Never tried developing or maintaining anything. Not my cup of tea.

What I do know - never trust any commercial entity to keep *your* interest
in any priority. Add some non-commercial ones to 'do not trust' list
while we're at it (Mozilla Foundation, Tor Project to name a few).

In the conflict of interest between a single commercial entity and a
community of individuals first one usually wins.
But, in the conflict of interest between *multiple* commercial entities
and a community of individuals second one stands a chance.

I'd like to switch an angle a bit here. Red Hat and community put aside,
who else is interested in Fedora?
For instance, it's impossible to name a single corporation (SPI does not
count) that stands behind a Debian, if there's any.
It's possible to do so for, say, OpenSUSE or (pardon) Ubuntu.


> Or perhaps they shouldn't, and this stuff should be strictly hobby only?

The way I see it - it does not work that way for long.
Sooner or later 'the stuff' transforms to Boring Things™, and any
initial enthusiasm does not keep things running indefinitely. Usually
does not.

So, sooner or later, money come into play (aren't they always do?). The
important thing here for me is 'who pays', not 'who gets paid'.


> Who should Red Hat employ, or to put it another way, what should Red
> Hat employees do if not work in the open?

That's for Red Hat and its employees to decide, not for me.

Reco