But after Red Hat announced its Judas Iscariot act recently, the scenario is very different. Hell, we even have the announcement of the deal being made by the wispy-thin Matthew Garrett, once a renowned flame-master on mailing lists, but now one of the best and brightest at Red Hat, one who pledges allegiance to peace, civility, diversity, and probably the Dalai Lama too.
No senior engineer from Red Hat has left the company in disgust at its being tricked into signing a deal with Redmond to purchase a key for secure boot for Fedora; this means any GNU/Linux distribution can use the same key, no doubt an act of great charity by Red Hat. The cost isn’t important – it’s just $US99 – but isn’t the principle of it the reason why GNU/Linux distributions have avoided Microsoft all along?