Ask Robert Young

Yes, that Bob Young. The one who helped endow online information resource ibiblio.org, but is better known for his role as co-founder and Chairman of Red Hat. Ask him anything you want, but please hold it down to one question per post. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated inquiries to Bob (who is in England this week), and he'll send back his answers just as soon as he can.

Comments

Red Hat Acquisitions

[Kostya]

I noticed that while Red Hat was valued highly, Red Hat used its funding to purchase companies like Cygnus and C2Net. Escpecially with the purchase of Cygnus, you appear to be consildating the infrastructure that makes linux viable commercially. One could conjecture that you are trying to provide developer tools and resources, both as a product and as a way to build into Linux (as in the motto "it is the developers/ISVs stupid!"). Red Hat is currently valued much lower than it was at the top of the hype, but one could argue that these (and other) strategic acquisitions give Red Hat an edge over the competition or the chance at surviving the tech stock maelstrom.

Q: How do you see these acquisitions as helping Red Hat and its position in the market?

Most important decision for RH?

[MikeCamel]

What was the most important decision for Red Hat, through its history, apart from deciding to IPO? Was there a particular partnership, hire, technical call or anything else which defined the future for Red Hat?

Free- and Non-Free Software getting along?

[Xunker]

Hiya Bob!

The venerable Richard Stallman has a habit of saying that all software should be free -- he is therefor not interested in making Free Software too interoperable with Commercial, Closed-Source software.

On the other had, the also venerable Linus Torvalds has an opposite view; that free software has it's place and that non-free software also has place, and that all efforts should be made to make them co-exist.

Since you have on foot in each world, as it were, what are your feelings on this? Should Free and Open source software be expected to "play nice" with software from various Evil Empires? Or should it concentrate only on relation with other like software projects, and require the commercial world adapt to cooperating with Free software?

Do you think a recession will help RedHat/Linux?

[donturn]

Bob,

We had an Ask Slashdot a few days ago wondering whether a recession will help Linux or not. Since you're the CEO of RedHat, you probably have a better idea as to what effect a recession will have on RedHat and Linux. So, do you think you will gain more market share during a recession than you would otherwise?

Competing against MacOSX

[banky]

With MacOSX arriving as a desktop Unix (more or less) backed by a known, (sometimes) respected name, do you consider Apple to be a serious competitor, the same as Microsoft? Would Red Hat ever consider a PPC release to try and steer people away from MacOSX? Or, instead, do you think Apple will remain largely a niche player, but one that adds weight to the all-purpose viability of Unix?

Who decides what goes in and how?

[Can]

I'd like some insight on how the decision is made to include something in Red Hat Linux, how quickly to roll in new releases of software, etc.

For example, I've seen pre-releases of KDE get included and updated in rawhide (and I believe in actual Red Hat releases) rather often, but even the individual GNOME components are almost never updated until well after a full stable release is announced. There are other examples, but that's the main one that comes to mind.

There also still seems to be a lot of 0.x version software in Red Hat to this day. So, I'm just curious how you make these technical decisions are made.

Why invest in RedHat?

[Merk]

RedHat has the biggest name recognition of all the Linux distributions. To many non-tech types Linux == RedHat. And you are now breaking even, yet despite that RedHat's stock went from $80 a share to less than $5 and there doesn't seem to be a sign of that turning around.

What do you say to people who ask why they should invest in RedHat? Also, as a high-tech company I'm sure employees got stock options, how are they dealing with the crash in share prices and how do you convince them their options are still worth something?

Security

[Rupert]

Recently we've seen several worms attacking vulnerabilities in the default install of Red Hat Linux. What is being done to make the default installation more newbie-friendly from a security point of view? The average desktop user probably doesn't want or need BIND, do they?

--

Your impressions on the recent MS Interview

[Amoeba]

Yesterday on Slashdot we got responses from an interview of MS exec Doug Miller and he touched upon some areas of Linux that caused a lot of debate and discussion in the forum. My question to you is, would you skim through the Doug's reponses and provide us with your counterarguments or comments?

Hardware support

[wowbagger]

Unfortunately, most hardware vendors support Microsoft because MS has the largest share of the market and they know it will pay to support MS with drivers.

Linux is not in that state, save for (perhaps) networking devices. Has RedHat considered helping to fund driver development for other forms of hardware? I'm thinking mostly of 3D accelerated video cards (by helping to fund the DRI group), but other items (scanners, USB->IDE interfaces, etc.) would be nice too.

Using code from other Linux distributions

[jmv]

Lots of Linux distributions (Mandrake-Linux is an example) have started from a version of RedHat and then added their own features and applications. This is, of course, the benefit of open source software. I'd like do know whether RedHat too has benefited from that by putting some of these enhencements back into RedHat distributions. If so, can you give the most important examples?

Mandrake

[Xenex]

Linux-Mandrake started off simply as basically a copy of Red Hat Linux with KDE installed (which was the most advanced desktop environment at that time). However since 'growing' from Red Hat, it has become a distibution of it's own, with a incredibly simple install, more features/applications (ReiserFS, more intergrated Gnome/KDE menu...), Pentium optimised applications, and generally is more 'bleeding edge'.

How do you feel about the fact that Red Hat Linux was 'the womb' of what would now have to be considerer one of the strongest Linux distros for the desktop, and a major competitior to Red Hat on the desktop with it's claimed "99% Red Hat compatibility"?

RedHat and Microsoft .NET

[tmoon]

What is your view on the Microsoft .NET and its impact on Linux in general and RedHat in particular?

MS vs. Open Source business model

[Fervent]

In a recent Slashdot interview, Doug Miller of Microsoft basically said that the Open Source business model doesn't work. Proprietary code with no source available is the only way for companies to make money on existing open standards.

What is your reaction to this comment, and do you think the current Open Source business model works? Does it need to be changed?

Standardization

[milo_Gwalthny]

Bob -

Doug Miller, a Microsoft executive, was recently interviewed for Slashdot. Many of the questions posed were regarding the competitiveness of Linux with Windows in the medium-term. To paraphrase, Rob said that there was no viable business model based on Linux, that the lack of standardization (ie. KDE v. Gnome) would be enough of an economic disincentive to commercial application developers to prevent them from venturing into the market.

On the face of it, he seems to have a point. What do you think? Does Linux need to be herded down the path towards a super-majority recognized 'standard' to be successful, or can the type of open-source movement to date provide enough tools and applications to drive Linux to dominance?

Would you really recommend it for desktop use?

[update()]

I'm a Linux enthusiast and contributor but I still don't see where it's "ready for the desktop" as I would understand that phrase.

Bob, if you had a non-technical friend or relative who currently uses Windows, Quicken, Office, IE and AOL, could you in good conscience tell him it would be in his best interest to use Linux instead? What exactly would be in it for him?

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

Question

[BoarderPhreak]

What do you think of cnnfn.com's recent "Top Ten Tech Stocks to Avoid" article that mentions Red Hat as one of them?

SPARC Platform Edition?

[BoarderPhreak]

Will we ever see a SPARC platform release of Red Hat again? Red Hat implied that there just wasn't enough customer demand. As someone who has used it, I have to admit - I kind of miss it, especially now that the 2.4 kernel and many heavy advancements have been made to things like GNOME and XFree86, etc.

Can the Server Biz Subsidize Desktop Dev?

[frostman]

Let's be optimistic and assume that RedHat will achieve profitability through its support services for businesses running RedHat Linux.

Would it then make sense for RedHat to use some of its resources to help intensify the struggle towards desktop-readiness for Linux?

It seems to me that would be a good thing to do, since it could help expand the RedHat user community, ergo the customer base for RedHat's services... especially if Linux could become a viable desktop OS for larger enterprises, in which case RedHat, as the leading distro brand, would probably get the lion's share of support contracts.

Do you see this happening? Why or why not?

thanx.

- frosty
www.medienkunst.com