Posted by
timothy
on from the sighs-of-relief-or-disappointment dept.
Several readers have submitted word (this one comes from n8twj) that "CNet News is reporting that AOL Time Warner apparently is NOT making a bid to buy Linux manufacturer Red Hat, said sources familiar with the matter."
So it WAS another rumor. We've managed to have at least 4 (who knows how many repeated articles I might have missed out on) posts about this very topic and it appears to be a non-topic afterall.
Most likely it was one of those "what if we..." things that got tossed out in a meeting somewhere. Something along the same lines as 200 other ideas that probably got passed around the same day. Something that someone spent 5 minutes thinking about and probably never got seriously discussed, but someone overheard it, and said something about it to someone, who said something else, and so on, and so forth, until it gets on Slashdot.. then all hell breaks loose.
We've had discussions on the future potential demise of Redhat under an AOL flag. We've had the #2 linux guy's threatened defection. And the VIP's at AOL/TW are probably going "huh?" right about now as someone finally tells them what's going around in the news. Even if it IS a valid rumor, chances are it hasn't worked its way up the corporate hierarchy yet.
And in two weeks, a bigwig from AOL will claim they're considering it, and we'll all think it was all this discussion that prompted them to consider it in the first place.
So what is it? Are we one step ahead or two steps behind? Who knows.
Don't direct your ire at Slashdot; it was a front page story printed in The Washington Post.
The Post generally has very good credibility because its editors use discretion in deciding which stories are credible enough to run. They went out on a limb with this one and it snapped under them. The price they pay is the next time they cry wolf, you won't believe them. If you blame slashdot, you're giving The Post a license to be sloppy.
What's the big deal? It was listed as "Rumoured Takeover Plan". When my friends and I talked about it, we talked about the rumour.
It still brought up interesting questions and let us know where people stand.
I think AOL (or Corel, or IBM) needs to come out with their own distro of Linux, with the WM tweaked to look much like XP. If it supports browsing, playing video, and a decent office suite most users won't know the difference.
MS has done a lot of cool things (dragging and dropping between different programs and getting the data formatting, etc) that other OSes lag a bit behind, but really, how often do 99.9% of people use that? If given the choice between some funky features and a "name brand" office suite, and $600 savings, which would they choose?
And it's interesting that Alan C. was willing to leave RedHat (if the takeover happened) to ensure that he not only stays free of undue influence, but appears that way to everyone else.
All in all, many useful things were said in these threads and they caused many people to think about things they otherwise wouldn't have.
Maybe you should just learn to ignore stories with "rumour" in them.
AOL subscribers swelled from 9 million in autumn1997 to 33 million at the beginning of this year. In December alone, AOL gained 1.9 million new subscribers, the company said. MSN, by contrast, foundered for years, going from 2.5 million subscribers in 1997 to 7.7 million in December.
Translation: in several years time AOL more than tripled subscribership whereas MSN only got slightly more than three times the number of subscribers in that same time period.
Slashdot Mirror
So it WAS another rumor. We've managed to have at least 4 (who knows how many repeated articles I might have missed out on) posts about this very topic and it appears to be a non-topic afterall.
Most likely it was one of those "what if we..." things that got tossed out in a meeting somewhere. Something along the same lines as 200 other ideas that probably got passed around the same day. Something that someone spent 5 minutes thinking about and probably never got seriously discussed, but someone overheard it, and said something about it to someone, who said something else, and so on, and so forth, until it gets on Slashdot.. then all hell breaks loose.
We've had discussions on the future potential demise of Redhat under an AOL flag. We've had the #2 linux guy's threatened defection. And the VIP's at AOL/TW are probably going "huh?" right about now as someone finally tells them what's going around in the news. Even if it IS a valid rumor, chances are it hasn't worked its way up the corporate hierarchy yet.
And in two weeks, a bigwig from AOL will claim they're considering it, and we'll all think it was all this discussion that prompted them to consider it in the first place.
So what is it? Are we one step ahead or two steps behind? Who knows.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Translation: in several years time AOL more than tripled subscribership whereas MSN only got slightly more than three times the number of subscribers in that same time period.
Hey!!! the parentheses are good for something
Dude, at least give credit where credit is due.
Original link is from BBspot and can be viewed here.