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

AOL buys *all* the cool stuff.

[Ptolemarch]

It's interesting: AOL has bought almost all of the coolest stuff on the Net: Netscape, ICQ, WinAMP. Don't forget that Gnutella came out of there, too.

And they've let all of them, so far, mostly be their own companies.

Re:AOL buys *all* the cool stuff.

[luge]

Umm... the Moz Public License allowed them to take it closed whenever they wanted after they bought it. And as much as I love Moz it was completely unusable when AOL bought Netscape. If AOL had cut off funding then, sure, the community would have source, but the community would have nobody who understood the source and no one with time to work on it. AOL has paid for hundreds of people to work on Moz for three years now. So... you'd have no Moz without AOL. Period.

Re:AOL buys *all* the cool stuff.

[Jay L]

Very untrue. CompuServe was floundering when AOL bought them, and so instead of letting them go off on their own, their service was merged into the AOL infrastructure (via CS2000) and their developers have been pooled on many projects.

With Netscape, there's tight integration in some cases, where it makes sense (e-mail for NetCenter), and not others. And again, the development resources are often shared between groups when needed.

Sometimes the integration can be premature, at best. There were many articles in the press about trouble when AOL brought TW employees onto the AOL e-mail infrastructure, which just wasn't ready to support the type of groupware features TW was used to. I argued against forcing it down their throats, but the merger team had already decided what a Good Thing it was, and there was no fighting it. Long term, though, it'll be a big boon to the AOL back end, forcing some feature development. And I believe there are other such ways they've leveraged support staffs (staves?) and other infrastructure since I left.

In general, I think AOL's been fairly smart about when to integrate and when not to integrate.

Jay the ex-mail guy

Re:AOL buys *all* the cool stuff.

[KodaK]

They are a $$$ centric buisness.

What else should they focus on? Skeeball tickets?

...see them for what they are.... a money grubbing buisness...

Again, here you go with the anti-capitalisim. What, exactly, is wrong with making money?

No offence, and I know you mean well, but you really need to lighten up on the money making thing. Money makes the world go around, and no matter what you want to believe, it's not evil. It's what you do with it that counts.

AOL is not my favorite corporation, but they're doing well, that means they're doing things right for the majority of people who use their service. Yes, you and I know their service sucks, but THEY ARE MAKING MONEY! There's nothing more grand, more worthwile, and more deserving of our respect than profit. Nothing.

Look at it this way: money gives you the ability to affect change in the way you desire. Therefore, if you gain a lot of money you can do what you wish. If in the process you are corrupted by the money then you weren't a person of the convictions you started out with. This isn't a bad thing (unless you fund things to further the "bad things" you are convinced of.) It's merely a barometer of what you really are, and most of us are selfish "bastards".

I'm too drunk now to spout out some sort of disertation , but remember this: you're only as corrupt as you allow yourself to be.

Re:Content Control on Linux

[Enahs]

"I got me Linux 7.2!"

I guess you're new to the world of Linux, so I'll be charitable. Red Hat merely produces a distribution centred around the Linux kernel, GNU tools, and a raftload of other software.

Linus Torvalds, father of the kernel and current head honcho of kernel development, works for Transmeta, not Red Hat.

How does that work, you ask? Simple. The only person who "owns" anything related to Linux is Linus, who holds the trademark for Linux. If Red Hat (or, in the future, AOL) were to get too asinine with the use of the Red Hat name, as they have done recently, it's conceivable that Linus could simply tell them they haven't the right to call their product "Red Hat Linux" anymore.

The world of Linux is far more complex than the world of Microsoft, for many reasons.

Negative Feedback

[donglekey]

I can't believe all the negative feedback from this. What is so bad about AOL? They aren't for you and me, it is annoying having to delete them off a new computer for someone, and they sugar coat everything, but who cares? If there is one thing that could dramatically change the history of computing and put power back into YOUR hands, this is it. Quit compaining about the best thing that could realistically happen to computing right now.

Be?

[jso888]

Kind of makes you wonder if AOL considered purchasing Be instead. It certainly would have been a cheaper buy.

It also would give them a more user friendly operating system with a familiar, functioning, and coherent/unified WIMP interface (yes, Linux with KDE or Gnome is IMHO still not ready for the average user's desktop).

And finally, it would give them an OS that is certainly cutting edge multimedia-wise.

Julian

Re:Tech Support

[mini me]

Maybe that's why AOL wants to useLinux, for tech support reasons.

Customer: I'm having trouble doing X...

Tech: Just a minute:
ssh client.aol.com
~# `fix problem X`
~# exit

Tech: That should do it. Thank you for using AOL.

Re:Stop Spreading FUD...

[CondeZer0]

Who is spreading FUD here??

As someone else have already pointed, may be you should try to validate your CSS.

And "Fully Compliant XHTML 1.0 Transitional", means nothing,
you aren't supposed to make new pages using Transitional,
try to make it compliant with XHTML 1.0 Strict...

Anybody that knows a bit about CSS and HTML will tell you how much better
support for them Mozilla have.

Does IE already support CSS1?
I remember when some one from MS said that they would never support
100% CSS1, because "no body really want it", that one was funny..
And how much of CSS2 do they support?

:after, :before pseudo classes and "content" attribute?
No

All the table formating options?
No

etc..

I have a big respect for you, I have read some very interesting comments written by you,
but I think you should check your facts better before spreading this kind of FUD, you may
prefer IE, but it's an accepted fact that the standards support in Mozilla is very superior
to IE. (and I don't mean that Mozilla is perfect, I should know, I helped to run hundreds
of CSS test in Mozilla a while a go)

Best regards

\\Uriel

P.S.: Please, let me know when IE is ported to
FreeBSD so I can look at your page, or may be you will fix it first?

One thing I want AOL to do for Linux

[Compact Dick]

This could turn out to be a good thing for Linux. Why? AOL can infuse their vast resources of capital into the one thing Linux sorely lacks, namely a decent set of true-type fonts.

X11R6's default font set is so atrocious it's no surprise it repels PC users weaned on Windows' splendid set of TT fonts. Fund the development of a LGPL'd set of core fonts [similar to Microsoft's Core Web Fonts] and you have cleared one of the biggest obstacles in the way of Linux's widespread adoption.

I'm sure the zealots wouldn't mind this too much either :-)