Warnings to Red Hat about AOL Buyout

andyo from O'Reilly submitted linkage to a report he wrote over there where he urges Red Hat to think twice about letting AOL eat them. Talks about GNN, as well as Netscape. I'm sure this isn't the last word we'll hear on this subject either.

Comments

but the obvious....

[magicslax]

He doesn't adress the most plausible scenario, in which AOL is mearly picking up another weapon with which to threaten Microsoft. Like Winamp, Redhat woudl probably be let alone to continue development, but AOL could say, "Look BIll, we would like to see some AIM and AOL integration with Windows. We don't need your cheeseball OS, we can take our ball and go home."

Netscape's start page

[s20451]

From the article:

Apparently, AOL hoped to capitalize on the Netscape home page, which most Netscape users left as their default when starting up their browser. That's about the flimsiest grounds I can think of for purchasing a whole company--along with the commitment to maintain and enhance its products.

Perhaps. But as many have pointed out before, one of Netscape's biggest corporate weaknesses was that they didn't capitalize on this, which virtually guaranteed an immediate and huge subscriber base for whatever on-line service they chose to offer. The fact that Microsoft chose to build a competing browser from the ground up and give it away for free, largely to do the same thing, vindicates this strategy. Remember this was when the dot-com upswing was well underway, and everybody and their uncle was turning their site into a portal ...

the worst that could happen

[bcrowell]

What's the worst that could happen? They buy Red Hat and drive it into the ground. Linux will still be around.

What's the best that could happen? They give Bill Gates a good, swift kick in the balls.

Sounds good to me.

Re:the worst that could happen

[travail_jgd]

What's the best that could happen?

Best case: AOL either makes some open source enhancements and releases them to the community, or creates a self-contained PC or set-top box to run their OS. Either way, it's a kick in the monopoly pants for Microsoft.

Worst case: DRM. Weakening Microsoft's monopoly sufficiently that MS no longer has to make concessions to the "little guys". And with two major OS manufacturers supporting DRM, how can the SSSCA fail?

What do the shareholders want?

[cperciva]

For all the discussion about whether this would be good or bad for RedHat, linux, open source software, etc. an important point has been neglected. RedHat is a public company. It has an obligation to its shareholders.

If AOL offers enough money, RedHat is obliged to accept, even if they believe that being bought by AOL will mean the end of the RedHat distribution.

Why AOL wants RedHat

[theoriginalturtle]

Banish any thought from your head about open-source, about GNU, and even about Linux. AOL doesn't know about it (much), doesn't care about it (much) and has become large, rich and influential without it.

AOL wants it for two reasons:

1. So Microsoft can't buy it
2. So they can become larger, richer, and more powerful, which would be partly stymied by #1 above.

Let me explain. AOL/Time-Warner knows its business quite well, and its business has nothing to do with software and everything to do with charging people for access to content they desire.

They can't do that if Microsoft, through MSN, is charging people for access to THEIR content instead. Therefore, they must counter or thwart every attempt by Microsoft to eliminate other options by which consumers might get to ATW (not MS) content. Since Microsoft pretty much owns the desktop, and with the sellout of the Justice Department effort against them has pretty much a clear shot to extend that domination into online content.

And not just web content. We're talking interactive messaging, video-on-demand, online commerce and a bunch of other potentially-moneyed pursuits that AOL wants to have or keep for itself.

I think AOL realistically looked at it and realized that (as a piece I read on CNet the other day pointed out) most consumers online in Murka are not the techs and geeks of the old days, they're just McCitizens who (a) don't know about and (b) don't care about "the desktop," "the operating system," or even the hardware. They just wanna send pictures to their Aunt Edith, buy some stuff off Eddie Bauer, check out some choice pron, or watch "Sudden Impact" for eleventeenth time.

How they do it, they don't care. In the 1930s, nobody knew what tubes were in their Philco radios, they only wanted to hear Jack Benny. Or how about now -- can you name the theatre chain in which you saw "The Matrix?" Do you really care? What color was the wallpaper?

This means AOL has "network appliance" in their heads. They've watched the stuff being done with embedded Linux (like the DVRs that aren't all that popular yet but they work). They looked to see who was the big cheese, the Biggest Name In Linux, and it was RedHat. They buy RH, they can have them develop an AOL Network Appliance, basically a box you turn on and it delivers... AOL and Time-Warner content. No Microsoft anywhere to be seen, which means no chance for Microsoft to hijack future revenue streams.

I personally think AOL is torqued off about the whole go-round with Instant Messaging and vowed never to get dicked by MS like that again.

This is not the end of Open Source. Anyone who thinks so radically overestimates the influence of RH on the Linux world. Yes, it's a big influence, and a lot of the way things are can be traced to them, but if RH vanished tomorrow, someone else would step up. I wouldn't be surprised, as a matter of fact, if AOL didn't slurp up the company, then spin it right back out after working out some very favorable licensing deals and pulling in key development staff.

Their track record is strange: they pretty well fouled up Netscape by forgetting there are non-AOL users of the tool, but they left Nullsoft alone and they're as fine as ever. But the strength of open-source is... we don't "need" any one distribution. If we did, we'd have been hosed long ago.

Turtle