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Alan Cox to Leave if RH AOL Buyout Happens?
According to MartinG,
Alan has posted to the LKML and said "Im
insulted that anyone believes I would continue working for RH if aol/time
warner owned them. " This of course refers to the
Red Hat/AOL
Buyout Rumors that we have been
talking about
all weekend.
Jamie Zawinski left netscape, as shown here and here shortly after it was AOLized. Here are some highlights from those pages:
April 1st, 1999 will be my last day as an employee of the Netscape Communications division of America Online, and my last day working for mozilla.org.
I think AOL still has all the stigma that it always has, as far as image goes. My friends keep saying ``jwz@aol.com'' and then laughing uncontrollably...
AOL is about centralization and control of content. Everything that is good about the Internet, everything that differentiates it from television, is about empowerment of the individual.
I don't want to be a part of an effort that could result in the elimination of all that.
It is now a brand. Like Coke, or Tommy Hilfiger.
Thank you, AOL, for pointing this out to us.
If he does leave, he loses his chance to put the resources of an enormous company like AOL/TW behind the development and acceptance of Linux. To me this doesn't seem like the smartest move he could make.
There's plenty of time for him to leave afterwards if it looks like AOL/TW is going to do a Bad Thing, but up to and until that time, I think it's in his best interests, and Linux's best interests, to take advantage of the possible benefits of being backed by one of the largest, richest companies on the planet.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I really don't know why people are complaining. To me, this seems like a good thing.
First of all, this isn't AOL/Time/Warner buying out Linux, this is AOL/Time/Warner buying out Red Hat. Linux will be alive and well, and Red Hat will become whatever AOL wants it to become.
Second, AOL can provide the $$ to make RH a contender against Microsoft. Right now, Microsoft is (for all intents and purposes) the only operating system out there aimed for middle-income home users. AOL can help break that monopoly into a duopoly by introducing a user-friendly version of RH. Sure, far from ideal, but certainly better than having Microsoft still control the home market.
As long as there's Slackware/Caldera/Debian/* Linux distros, Linux will survive w/o Red Hat.
Me email iz skyewalkerluke at microsoft's free email service.
Linux out in the open, with big company backing?
We already have that, with IBM no less, not to mention a plethora of lesser giants. GNU/Linux will do fine without AOL/Time-Warner, and arguably better.
Or, are we going to start up with the "elitest want Linux to stay small"?
It's not about elitism, it is about the dangers of an industry which has as a stated goal the eradication of free software (at least for playing DVDs, and by extention managing digital data of any kind), has attempted to legislate exactly that, and is unlikely to change its ways anytime soon. Remember, this is AOL-Time-Warner we're talking about.
Is the evil of AOL/Time-Warner exaggerated? On the AOL side perhaps, on the Time-Warner side it is understated, if anything. Keep in mind that old-school copyright cartel content providers have been the most zealous, and most effective, opponents of free software (remember the DMCA, deCSS, SSSCA, the Hague Convention, etc.)?
OTOH the loss of Red Hat to the "dark side," if that is in fact how it turns out, won't really impact GNU/Linux all that much. Some other distro (Suse, Mandrake, Debian, Sorcerer, or Slackware perhaps) will take up the slack. More likely all of them will to varying degrees.
Hopefully the talented programmers such as Alan will find gainful employment elsewhere doing exactly what they love to do: working on Linux. IBM comes to mind as an immediate candidate for sponsorship of this kind, as do about a dozen large universities in the US alone.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The way I see it, Alan doesn't want to work for a gigantic media conglomerate that supports the DMCA and such. It goes against his principles. His decision probably has nothing to do with how Linux or RedHat itself will be affected by an AOL buyout of RedHat. So all you people are getting the wrong idea here.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
And this is exactly the biggest danger of AOL buying a company - and in one sense, it IS what happened with Netscape.
Don't worry about AOL taking an established, successful company with a real future and running it into the ground. Hasn't happened yet. (Netscape, GNN, CompuServe were already dying when we bought them. CompuServe is a relative success, GNN couldn't be saved, and Netscape has a new lease on life now that the MS contract is dead.)
Don't worry about AOL taking open stuff and making it proprietary. Hasn't happened yet either. (Everything that's proprietary at AOL started that way, and has slowly, if much-too-slowly, grown more open.)
Don't worry about TW's influence on the AOL side. There isn't any. Steve Case and Bob Pittman run the show.
Worry, instead, about people who simply don't want to be associated with AOL, cuz it isn't cool. Is it immature and short-sighted? Probably. Are geeks known for their maturity, social competence and rational decision-making? Not particularly.
Too bad, because when AOL buys a smaller company, that's usually what they're really buying - the brains behind it. Redgate got us Ted Leonsis. WAIS got us Brewster Kahle for a while. Netscape got us hundreds of net-savvy software engineers. Ditto CompuServe. Medior got us Barry Schuler - well, can't win them all.
It's stupid for Red Hat employees to announce they'll leave simply because they don't want a triangle with an O above their main entrance, but if they do, then THEY will have killed Red Hat, not AOL.
Would anyone bat an eyelash if the potential buyer is Microsoft and Alan Cox said this?
Well, many people feel that AOL/TW is just as bad as Microsoft... Microsoft is trying to control the computer OS and application space, AOL/TW is trying to control virtually EVERYTHING you see, hear or do ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Both have extremely questionable business practices, both abuse their positions of power. Which is worse?
AOL/TW (The TimeWarner part is very important, this isn't your daddy's AOL anymore, where elitest-non-AOL-attitude might be the primary driving force in Alan's decision) is not just any old large company.
As I mentioned in another post (a reply, actually), if the company considering buying AOL was Microsoft, nobody would bat an eyelash about Alan Cox saying this stuff. Well guess what? AOL/TimeWarner is just as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft. Not only are they wanting to control computer use as much as Microsoft does (just doing a poorer job of it), but they want to control virtually everything you do! Do you have any idea how much of everything you see at the movies or on TV or on the web is eventually controlled by AOL? In many ways they are much more powerful than Microsoft has ever been.
AOL/TW (again, TW being important) is directly involved in much of the backassward technology & lawmaking that Slashdotters decry every day: DMCA, copyrighted CDs, SDMI...
If you REALLY disagree with those laws and the very idea of huge media conglomerations controlling everything we see, how could you possibly suggest someone should just shut up and be happy working for AOL/TimeWarner?
I'm one of the people who often attack Linux users and programmers for their stupid elitest attitudes, but in this case I say bravo, Alan.
AOL will not be happy to have competing version of Linux and they will do what is needed to "standardise" Linux after they have bought it.
And that will be their attitude - they will not act as if they've bought just one distro. Think about why they want to buy RH. They know that, to the extent that the public know about Linux at all, they think of RH (at least in the US). So they are, in the eyes of the general public, buying Linux. For god's sake, how many posts have there been on /. over the years complaining about people equating RH and Linux!?
With this approach, what do you think AOL's attitude to SuSe and Mandrake will be - a spirit of healthy competition? Does they sound like AOL/TW to you?
AOL's one worry in the world is losing the content control war to MS. They will want, and try to make, one, standardised, non-MS, copy-regulated, platform for their content and that is why they want Linux - because they can't have Windows. Standardised means not letting "little guys" do their own Linux and they will do what it takes to get rid of them.
Do not fall into the Charybdis of AOL just to avoid the Scylla of MS!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It's crazy to think Alan is "cocky" for saying he would not work for AOL. I worked at CNN.com when AOL bought Time Warner, and I left before the deal could go through because I didn't want to work for AOL.
Lest you think I'm just another lunatic, about 15 of the 20 developers I worked with also left around that time. Of the developers that remained, only one of them was a developer of any quality, and he was big into MS tools.
My point is, working for a faceless conglomerate is one thing. Working for one with significant philosophical differences from your own is another thing entirely.
- Vincit qui patitur.
What a strange assumption I keep reading, that AOL-Time Warner actually have any interest in Red Hat Linux in particualr, or GNU/Linux in general. What advantage would that give them, distributing an OS that actively encourages its users to get a clue and consider alternatives?
What I'd expect to see is for them to buy up a bunch of developers (Red Hat or any other) and set them to work in the bowels of the AOL/TW Death Star producing something based on a Linux kernel, with most of GNU stripped out, no daemons, no package manager, no compiler, a brand new GUI, AOL-only apps with built in copy restrictions and automatic billing (already got your credit card number), and a daemon that hunts down and kills non-AOL approved processes, all for your security and convenience. I expect it to ship branded as "AOL", not "Red Hat" or even "AOL Linux". Possibly "Secure Linux" if they want to resell it as a perfect Son of SSSCA compliant implementation.
Impossible, you say? How much would it cost to develop? Ten million? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred million? A billion dollars? To control the desktop and the distribution and billing of content before Microsoft get in there first with Blackcomb and Homestation, that's pocket change.
They don't need any particular distro to do that, they just need developers. So run Alan, run for the hills, and take as many as you can with you.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
IANAlan Cox, but what 99% of the people in this discussion fail to realize is that this probably has nothing to do with the future of Redhat/Linux, but with the principles involved.
Fact: Alan Cox has serious issues with the DMCA, both practical and philosophical.
Fact: AOL/Time-Warner, being an industry leader in the area of movies and such, is a proponent of the DMCA and other similar laws.
Alan, being a man of principle, probably feels that the merger would be a bad thing becuase of this, and his working in the resulting company would comprimise things that he believes in. Unlike many people in this world (and, it seems, on slashdot), he feels the finding a new job is the proper course of action in this case.
As an aside, the non-Alan consequences of this are interesting - AOL/TW owns RH, in order for RH to play DVDs (which is an important feature of a modern desktop OS) it needs to violate the DMCA, AOL/TW supports the DMCA. So with AOL/TW owns a product that endorses breaking the DMCA, or they give RH (and by that, perhaps all of Linux/x86) a "legal" (if not open) method to play DVDs.
_sig_ is away