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At some point hitherto, John Abreau hath spake thusly:
> It would appear to me that Caldera and the others want to ensure that 
> commercial applications will explicitly depend on the "naughty bits" 
> that can't be redistributed, with the goal that these applications won't 
> work properly (or at all, perhaps) on any distribution that doesn't adopt 
> the UL brand with its per-seat licenses and all.

I don't believe this is the case at all.  I do believe that this is
all about making money.  A quote from Ransom Love:

    As far as licensing, the only issue that we're doing there
    is that we'll make the source code freely available in
    complete compliance with the open source community and open
    source efforts. The binaries will not be made freely
    available, for a variety of reasons, because again we are
    focusing more to the business customer.

It appears to me, rather than as you suggest, that there
will be no "naughty bits" which are part of UnitedLinux.
They will be distributing all of the source code for
UnitedLinux -- they simply will be charging for binaries of
the software which comprises UnitedLinux, which they are
perfectly entitled to do under the terms of the GPL.  In
fact, about 3 years ago I heard RMS, while speaking on NPR,
advocate doing exactly that as a way to make money off of
free software.  He went so far as to say that he's done this
himself to support himself...  At the time his only
insistance was that the source code to such software should
be provided at no additional cost to the purchasing party.

Funny, he now seems to have changed his tune.  It used to be
that he advocated only software which was free as in speech.
It strikes me that now that he does not need to rely on the
sale of such software for his income, he is outright
*demanding* that it also be free as in beer.  Now, whenever
someone tries to use this business model that he himself
advocated not more than 3 years ago, he comes out publicly
in staunch opposition.  He has done so recently in another
prominent case...  (I believe it was Lindows, but it may
have been someone they were working with.  The story made
Slashdot and a number of other linux-related sites.  My
memory controller is broken.  :)

IMO, if you look at the historical tactics of rms, he
changes his tune rather often, apparently to suit his whims
and self-serving motives.  While I agree with most of the
points of his movement, he does seem to forget that the
society we live in is based on commerce and the accumulation
of wealth.  If businesses can not make money selling free
software, soon they will cease to exist, and there will be
NO choices...

I respect the work that rms has done for the free software
community, and I agree with a lot of the FSF's goals.
However, I think his tactics are offensive, and he is
himself a hypocrite.  Overall, I think he now does more harm
than good to the free software community.
 
> It's not about more choices, it's actually about less
> choices. UnitedLinix looks to me like a blatant attempt to
> establish vendor lock-in for the whole commercial
> application market. 

I understand what you're saying, but I disagree on this
point too.  The goal is to create a core OS that is unified,
in order to ensure compatibility of applications.  There
have been a few, large companies with deep pockets which
have ported a few applications to Linux in order to jump on
the Linux bandwagon.  In order for this to continue, the
success of Linux companies must be assured.  It is anything
but assured if they can't find a way to make money.

When it is convenient to do so, many (myself included) point
out that RedHat is making money.  Usually, the point of
doing so is to suggest that this is proof that Linux
companies can sustain themselves.  However, I'll point out
that RedHat's profits are tiny, and their long-term success
is no way assured.

If Linux companies can not find a way to make money, then
they will fold, and you will be stuck with debian, if you
wish to continue to use Linux.  I'm not trying to imply that
debian is a bad distribution here; it isn't.  However, one
distribution isn't much of a choice.

- -- 
Derek Martin               ddm@pizzashack.org    
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