8.0 problems.

[Adam Myrow]

On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Seems to me you can't have it both ways, logically speaking. Not that
> anyone needs to be logical, I guess. But, I don't understand the
> principles you seem to be trying to espouse here. What are they,
> exactly?
>

I guess what I am trying to say is that Redhat is breaking compatibility
for no logical reason other than to promote themselves as being ahead of
the pack.  Dropping MP3 support in this release, stating that they are
dropping Lilo in the next release, and this clock thing.  It has nothing
to do with the GPL here.  The GPL lets them do all this, but I just don't
agree with the whole idea.  Let me ask you something.  Suppose the next
release of Redhat decides to drop DOS and VFAT filesystem support.  Would
that not upset a lot of people who still expect to be able to read their
Windows partitions in Linux?  They could argue that they are dropping
support for FAT and VfFAT because by supporting these filesystem formats,
they are supporting a closed OS.  You have to draw the line somewhere in
how rigidly you will follow the teachings of Richard Stalman and how much
you will support those who are trying to migrate from the closed world of
Windows to the open world of Linux.  Consumers are hard to change, so we
need to slowly pull them to Linux.