Terry Cole

Open Source Bloggers Don't Let the Facts Confuse Them When Attacking Microsoft

One sentence from your article: "Most popular examples of open source software—e.g., Red Hat (RHT) Linux—are not free as in marketed “at no charge.”" - needs expansion.

Red Hat Linux is indeed free as both binary and source up to and including version 9 (still running on some servers out there).

Red Hat source code is still free. It has to be, because Red Hat does not own the copyright to the source. In effect this means binaries are also free (the source can be downloaded and recompiled to create a perfect copy of the binaries).

What is not allowed is the use of Red Hat's trademarks. So Red Hat provides detailed guidelines for what graphics and other trade dress must be replaced to have non-infringing binaries. But make no mistake, the resulting binaries - usually provided by outfits like CentOS - work just the way the RH-branded ones do.

So how does RH make its money? Support. Why does the support dollar stream not dry up? Because the technotrain does not stand still. There is always some new wrinkle, and firms want RH to hold their hand while they learn.