AOL in Negotiations to Buy Red Hat?

bstadil sent in this rumor. The Washington Post isn't exactly a rumor site, so there's probably truth behind it. Wow. It would make a great deal of sense for AOL/Time-Warner to acquire an operating system for leverage against Microsoft - same reason they bought Netscape.

Comments

Good and Bad.

[thesolo]

This is great and awful news at the same time.

While AOL could provide a huge shot in the arm to Linux (it wont make a huge jump to the desktop without being able to run AOL, sad but true), what geek wants to run an AOL OS?? Would AOL/TW put their icons everywhere, or try to include DRM in it?? AOL/TW isn't much better than MS after all, they cater to the lowest common denominator.

Oh well, if they do, I'll just go to another distro, I suppose.

Re:Good and Bad.

[guisar]

I think it's far more likely that ten years from now MSN or some Microsoft funded alternative will have kicked AOL out of the headlines. AOL did well when people were introducing themselves to the Internet but those days are gone. How long do you think AOL can stave off the www.msn.com that automatically pops up when you start internet explorer? RH is better off going it alone.

Re:Good and Bad.

[supabeast!]

"what geek wants to run an AOL OS??"

All the geeks gave up on Red Hat around the time the shipped with a broken GCC. Real geeks are all using Mandrake, Debian, or BSD...

Re:The End of the MS Monopoly

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

"Think about it...to many people AOL IS the internet."

Yes, and if AOL would just break their network back OFF from the real Internet and let those people continue to think that, we'd all be much happier, I'm sure.

Nope but

[OSgod]

the Public does not care. The public uses IE.

Get over it.

Design for your users.

Degrade gracefully.

Enable the users to upgrade.

Get on with life.

Re:Sure they are!

[ocbwilg]

In America if my tax dollars are spent on something that I don't like, I have every right to complain, protest, and campaign to have it changed until I am satisfied. Even though the majority rules and sometimes I'm in the minority, I still have the right to voice my opinion.

Speaking of minorities, 27 million pro-lifers may be a lot of people, but it's not even close to a majority. But that's not even close to the point of my sig. The point is that there is a constitutionally mandated separation between church and state. As such, federal funding of religious groups is illegal, as the constitution is currently interpreted by the Supreme Court. Abortion, on the other hand, is legal. So sayeth the Supreme Court.

My reply is grossly offtopic too. If you don't like my sig, fuckoff.

If you don't like the fact that I have a political opinion, fuckoff.

If you don't like the fact that I have a constitutionally guaranteed right to state my opinion, fuckoff.

If you don't like me telling you to fuckoff, fuckoff anyway.

IE runs on 99% of the users platforms

[OSgod]

and therefore it is the standard.

The current HTML specification is what will run on IE -- not what some third party says the standard should be.

This is the world Netscape started (Netscape compatible) and Microsoft won.

Re:Same thing as Netscape, eh?

[ncc74656]

So, if [AOHell] were really to acquire RH I fear that they would break that one too.

You say that as if Redh*t isn't broken already. LFS is the One True Linux. :-)