Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 28, 2003 02:16 AM
So let me see if I got this straight, you are essentially saying Red Hat is worse then Microsoft because they removed the Taiwanese Flag from the KDE control panel?
So Red Hat, in your own words, is anti-democratic and evil because they don't recognize Taiwan as a country. Okay, this is a just an example so don't get too annoyed with me, but by your same definition the United States (and several other democratic countries) are anti-democratic and evil because they also don't recognize Taiwan as a country. Taiwan may be a democratic, capitalistic country but the US panders to China, a communist country, because it has a large economy and it is more profitable to do business with them. The US isn't alone in this, but I think the definition of evil and anti-democratic needs some work.
I think you forget that Democracy is all about freedom. In my opinion, Microsoft is more anti-democratic then Red Hat because Microsoft restricts more freedoms then Red Hat. While Red Hat was wrong to remove the Taiwanese flag, if I was motivated enough, I have the freedom to fix the problem (by uninstalling KDE and replacing it with the KDE.org rpms). If Microsoft were to do the same thing, could you easily fix it?
There are many more valid reasons not to use the Red Hat distribution. Here are three of them:
The continual ballooning of their installation (size does matter, smaller is better)
Their refusal to cooperate with the open source community. Red Hat does most of their modifications in private and did not coordinate with the projects they are modifying. As a result, everyone is suprised when the software hits the market.
Their disrespect for the goals of open source developers. Their extensive modifications to KDE is only one of them. They have also released a distro with a GCC that couldn't compile many open source programs including the linux kernel.
There are a lot more reasons, but I won't go into them here because they aren't really that important. I personally believe the damage the inflict on open source projects is worse then the removal of a flag (which btw is easy to fix). I don't use the Red Hat distro (but not for the reasons above, I simply decided to do everything from <A HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/">scratch</a linuxfromscratch.org>).
Face facts. Everyone is different. Let them make up their own minds. Try to avoid preaching (I'm a hypocrit, I know). You see the removal of the Taiwanese Flag to be a major influence in your decision not to use Red Hat, others may disagree (China for example). Some people are smart enough to mark up their own minds. Wouldn't it be better to just mention why you don't use Red Hat rather then villifying them?
Sure, Red Hat may be evil incarnate. They may be anti-democratic. Personally I don't think they are any worse then other commercial distributions, except for their pesky overly-capitalistic, anti-social behaviour.
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Re:Please, do not support Redhat!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 28, 2003 02:16 AMSo Red Hat, in your own words, is anti-democratic and evil because they don't recognize Taiwan as a country. Okay, this is a just an example so don't get too annoyed with me, but by your same definition the United States (and several other democratic countries) are anti-democratic and evil because they also don't recognize Taiwan as a country. Taiwan may be a democratic, capitalistic country but the US panders to China, a communist country, because it has a large economy and it is more profitable to do business with them. The US isn't alone in this, but I think the definition of evil and anti-democratic needs some work.
I think you forget that Democracy is all about freedom. In my opinion, Microsoft is more anti-democratic then Red Hat because Microsoft restricts more freedoms then Red Hat. While Red Hat was wrong to remove the Taiwanese flag, if I was motivated enough, I have the freedom to fix the problem (by uninstalling KDE and replacing it with the KDE.org rpms). If Microsoft were to do the same thing, could you easily fix it?
There are many more valid reasons not to use the Red Hat distribution. Here are three of them:
There are a lot more reasons, but I won't go into them here because they aren't really that important. I personally believe the damage the inflict on open source projects is worse then the removal of a flag (which btw is easy to fix). I don't use the Red Hat distro (but not for the reasons above, I simply decided to do everything from <A HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/">scratch</a linuxfromscratch.org>).
Face facts. Everyone is different. Let them make up their own minds. Try to avoid preaching (I'm a hypocrit, I know). You see the removal of the Taiwanese Flag to be a major influence in your decision not to use Red Hat, others may disagree (China for example). Some people are smart enough to mark up their own minds. Wouldn't it be better to just mention why you don't use Red Hat rather then villifying them?
Sure, Red Hat may be evil incarnate. They may be anti-democratic. Personally I don't think they are any worse then other commercial distributions, except for their pesky overly-capitalistic, anti-social behaviour.
Anywho, just my two-cents
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