“A support deal announced yesterday by Compaq and Red Hat gives
some indication of how development of Linux by commercial PC
companies can operate within the open source model. Typically a
company like Compaq will have its own systems for modifying
operating software, but as these have historically operated in
conjunction with, er, Microsoft they’re not necessarily much help
when dealing with Linux.”
“The model Compaq and Red Hat are implementing, however,
seems to have been constructed to alloew [sic] Compaq to make
changes in the software while keeping firmly open source.
Compaq is offering call centre support worldwide for enterprise
users of Red Hat Linux, with the trickier queries being escalated
to Red Hat.”
“Any modifications or optimisations Compaq makes in response to
support queries will be evaluated and tested by Red Hat, and then
made available to the open source community under the GNU GPL.”