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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.
Linux out in the open, with big company backing?
Or, are we going to start up with the "elitest want Linux to stay small"?
Linux (even the RedHat distro) has the GPL protecting it. Even AOL/TW's big lawyers can't break it. Why is it such a bad thing??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
but you forgot to give a reason.
AOL bought ICQ, AOL bought Winamp.
Did anyone notice that one of those products did really change to the worse (besides the ads in ICQ, which is ok I guess because they are not that annoying)?
No, no one noticed, because they didn't.
But what changed is that the coders of ICQ and Winamp got nice paychecks.
So, Alan where is your problem?
Don't like opensource OS coders who dare to make money?
AOL/TW is up there with Microsoft in terms of average Linux community member, for even if most people don't outright hate them, they think of them as the haven for the spammers and the clueless.
As I said it's a matter of perception.
Now, while AOL/TW wouldn't care one bit about all the Linux users ceasing to use RedHat products (their goal in buying the company, after all, would be to use its knowledge to create a AOL-OS) it cerainly could help on RedHat's end, as they'd lose any and all goodwill that they have from the community.
And when a significant amount of work is saved for a Linux company by having the community on your side and contributing various things, this certainly would be nothing but a pain for them.
If RH is acquired, then you better believe that AOL/TW would drive RH to become a company that supported the AOL/TW initiative (i.e. world domination by AOL/TW).
AOL/TW is an 800lb gorilla.
MS is an 800lb gorilla.
The RH acquisition would be like giving one of them a dart-gun: while it may hurt, it would stil only be a little weapon.
As a consequence, RH's gameplan would change from Red Hat Domination via Linux to AOL/TW world domination. Linux is dropped from the big picture, and only becomes a little piece of the puzzle.
Having Alan leave for a company that would support the World Domination thru Linux initiative (like Mandrake or SuSe, or Debian) would be a good thing for Linux.
If AOL is making a push into the desktop OS market, like some leaked memo's said before, why RedHat? Someone else mentinoed reading about AOL pushing into the web appliance market like the WebTV boxes.
In either case, why are they looking to buy RedHat? They could very easily hire 1/2 dozen talented admins and programmers to put together their own distribution in 6 months or less. I'd personally be more than happy to be collecting a nice steady paycheck from a company I know is going to be doing well no matter what.
The scenerio we've come across that seems to work logically is that RedHat is having financial problems, and they're looking for a buyer. If this is the case, Alan is screwed anyways.
If they don't find a buyer, he's out of work.
If they find a small buyer, he'll take a paycut, or potentially loose his job anyways.
If they find a big buyer, he'll cry that a big company got him.
I think Alan is trying to cry like JWZ . He doesn't know how to handle the whole thing, so he knows another hacker cried about the same type deal years ago. Not saying JWZ was right or wrong, but that was years ago with a different scenerio.
AOL adopting Linux is a great thing. He should recognize and embrace it. I'd rather see them develop their own distribution though. The more big companies that start working with Linux the better. That's how Micro$oft got into the market, they got everyone to start working with them.
I get on very well with my boss.
I regularly grab a beer after work with him.
I also often tell him to fsck off if he gives me work I don't like.
It's a good thing and its based on honesty and mutual respect.
If you don't have that, then you have to realise that many bosses will do whatever they can to exploit you as far as possible, and that old bullshit "putting the food on the table" is one of the buggest reasons It keeps on happening. Can't you see that if people weren't such cowards as to cave in to the "but how am I gonna pay the bills" argument then bosses would be forced to do more of what made their employees happy. All you "food on the table" bods are part of the problem allowing companies to become greedy and exploitative in the first place.
If your employer knows that you fear leaving them, they are suddenly in an extremely powerful position over you.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz