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."
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Why would this be a bad thing?
by
kwj8fty1
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
So, I honestly don't care if AOL/Timewarner purchases RH. RH is not a distro I use. Having the backing of a huge media giant may help the linux cause. Sure, it will drive features *IN Redhat LINUX*, but not in the other distros. Long term, yes, it may effect the marketplace. But having Timewarner promoting linux would be a GREAT thing. Talk about adoption in the marketplace. Linux needs more credibility, and this may be a good way to get it.
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.
I wasn't really directing my ire per sae. Slashdot really doesn't do much more than post links to news posted elsewhere and allows people to comment on it. Yet, if not for slashdot's post, even with a newspaper as big as the Washingon Post, the coverage would have been significantly less.
Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Its perfectly acceptable to speculate. And like I said, there's always the chance that its true to some degree and the PR people at AOL aren't aware of it.
My point was, that for a great many people, geeks in particular, slashdot is accepted as a credible source of information. And in most cases, this is true. And sometimes they drop the ball. We complain rather viciously when other news agencies don't do so much as pick up a phone to attempt to verify the validity of a news source, yet when slashdot does exactly the same thing, we generally accept it as par for the course. This is fine if slashdot is a rumor site or if it only reflects news reported elsewhere. However, if it wants to reflect known accurate information, then it needs to make some effort to assure that while information may not be completely accurate, at least someone who is an authority on that information has verified it as accurate.
When articles are posted multiple times, or article summaries contrast greatly with the actual content of the article linked to, the credibility, or lack there of, of slashdot is brought into light. They will make the occasional snafu. It happens. It can't be completely avoided. But they need to make at least SOME effort to avoid the obvious ones. That
way, when they only reflect on the poor quality reporting of some other news agency on rare occasions, then ire WOULD be misplaced.
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.
It doesn't say that the merger is completely out of the question. Here is what the article had to say:
Sources familiar with the situation emphatically insisted the two companies are not near an acquisition deal, nor have they discussed one.
and then...
An AOL Time Warner spokeswoman, as a matter of company policy, would not discuss the merger rumor, and Durham, N.C.-based Red Hat could not be reached for comment because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. A Microsoft spokesman also declined to comment.
I agree, it sounds like the merger is a farce, nothing more than a ploy to rile up people and boost some stock prices tomorrow morning, but you never know...
1) "Leak" a story that you are in talks to buy Red Hat.
2) Observe the terabytes of feedback from industry analysts, reporters, and fanatical users.
3) After denying everything as rumor,...
4)...bring several million dollars worth of free research to the next board meeting.
5) Get a raise for your ingenious idea.
Re:I see the ploy
by
JoeBuck
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This kind of thing is actually a common Washington
(DC) manouver called a "trial balloon". If the
president's staffers have an idea they aren't sure
about, they leak it to see what the pundits and
the customers, um, I mean, the campaign contributors
react. If people hate it, then they deny that it
was ever a serious proposal in the first place.
If people really hate it then they deny
even having discussed such a disgraceful thing.
If they like it, everyone competes to pretend he
or she thought of the idea in the first place.
Well, what I don't understand is why they would buy RedHat when you can download the ISOs for free.;)
-- I do not have a signature
Famous last words...
by
Logic+Bomb
·
· Score: 3, Funny
As said by Michael in the first item about this story:
The Washington Post isn't exactly a rumor site, so there's probably truth behind it.
That about made me want to puke when I read it.:-)
Sounds like the HP-Compaq merger
by
josquint
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Didn't get get the same line with the HP/Compaq deal?
First it was a big rumor that it was going to happen.
Then HP 'backed out' and denied it...
then it was back on in a week...
hmm... Funny this happens right after Cox says he'll leave under AOL.
.
Lack of evidence doesn't disprove something
by
sam_handelman
·
· Score: 4, Funny
It just proves that there is a conspiracy to cover it up.
Obviously, AOL has been spreading rumors that there is no takeover in order to prevent Red Hat's stock price from rising so that they can acquire it in a hostile action. None of the signs are there, so it must be true.
AOL's real problem is that they've reached the logical conclusion of their intellectually insulting business strategy of eating fish that are bigger than they are. There are no fish bigger than they are. They're trying to acquire the public sector but they don't quite get it.
-- The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Well, AOL could buy Slack, RH, Mandrake, Suse AND Debian and still have enough money left to send me 4 discs a month. I don't think getting a deal is the issue here.:)
-- "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
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.
HOLD ON THERE TIGER. What is NOT shown in that number is that MSN has purchased many of those users. Take Qwest (Q-worst?) for example. I was fat, dumb and happy using Qwest DSL and qwest.net. Then the BORG, Redmond division, came in and purchased the Qwest.net subscriber base.
We were told of this marvelous "Upgrade" to the garbage that is MSN. I work from home and have had as many as 5 machines (Linux, Solaris and a windows box) networked and connected to the net at a time.
I now pay $20 more a month to remain a qwest user so I can actually use the service.
/rant
Sorry, blood pressure rose there for a moment... The point is that MSN BOUGHT many of those users, or there were people foolish enough to USE the 6-month free MSN subscription with their new computers.
Uhhh... AOL client software works perfectly fine on classic MacOS (though without IE 5.1 integration), and they've released a decent beta of a version for OS X.
--
------------ "...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
So easy to use, no wonder it has a negligible desktop market share!
Think before you rant!
by
Shabazz
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Public companies can't lie or make any misrepresentations when dealing with questions from investors (or the press). This makes coverups very difficult because they could result in very expensive lawsuits. If they deny that they are in negotiations, and they are, then they are liable under Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act.
And for the record, IAAL.
Credit For:Top 11 Reasons AOL Wants to buy Red Hat
by
GooRoo
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Dude, at least give credit where credit is due.
Original link is from BBspot and can be viewed here.
Linux CDs in the mail?
by
cosyne
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Think about it. Why wouldn't it be a good thing for everyone in the US to get a CD with the AOLinux distro on it every month or so? I just popped in a CD off my spindle of AOL CDs, and it had like 200 megs of blank space on it. They could leave the windoze (and macintosh?) clients intact, and use the other 200 Megs for a compact linux distro. There's no reason they need to use redhat- people like my mom just want to be able to email, surf, write letters, and print. Throw in an MP3/CD burning suite, and you've got just about everything covered. (If AOL wanted to, they could even make DVD playing software that the MPAA, and thus the average consumer, is happy with). I'm sure AOL could fund their own team to put together a little distro which is reliable and secure and targeted to towards people with compaq, dell, hp, or gateway systems that they got off the shelf at frys or compusa (think of it like a PC-to-internet appliance conversion). Ignoring, for now, the implications of having AOL in charge of your operating system (what, like that'd be any worse than M$?), it could be beneficial to the average luser to have a single monolithic system installed on their machine in which all the applications they want are designed to work directly with the OS. From AOL's point of view, it could be nice to have control over the OS that their client is runnig on, and not having to worry about what little component of the system microsoft botched this week. And from the/. perspective, it could be good to expand the linux user base to some signifigant fraction of AOL's. Plus, once you get a bunch of family PCs out there with linux, their 13 year old kids can start using linux to run more than just the AOL client.
Just a question.
Red Hat, or Dark Helmet?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"AOL Time Warner Inc. is in talks to buy Red Hat Inc., a prominent distributor of a computer operating system, an acquisition that would position the media giant to challenge arch rival Microsoft Corp., according to sources familiar with the matter."
"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."
This just in: "Ha ha! Foooooled you!", said sources familiar with the matter.
Red Hat means saving money?
by
kenneth_martens
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
According to the article, one of the reasons Red Hat might gain market share outside of the United States is because "a desktop vendor in Latin America or especially China, if they can save 50 to 60 bucks on a PC that's a big deal." Having lived overseas (the Philippines) I can say from personal experience that at least some of the desktop vendors do not pay for the copies of Windows they install on new systems. So a free OS may not be that big an incentive. (And I don't believe for a minute that the Windows XP registration will put a stop to this sort of piracy--it will only stop the casual home piracy.)
AOL Time Warner apparently is not making a bid to buy Linux manufacturer Red Hat, said sources familiar with the matter.
If there is no matter, then how could these sources be familiar with it? Am I the only one who has a problem with this? Even if the author meant "highly placed sources," I'm not sure I would take them at face value.
On the flip side, predicting that AOL will never buy Red Hat is like predicting the end of the world--no one cares if you're right, and everyone just makes fun of you if you're wrong...
-- "It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
If Palm is actually dividing the hardware and software sides of the house, they just might be interesting in selling or licensing Be to AOL.
From AOL's perspective this might be a more desireable move, as Be's source isn't open to all, and It doesn't have a reputation as a "hacker OS".
Be has better multimedia support (important to Joe Average).
AOL doesn't need to worry about code forking with Be,which could happen on numerous Linux projects if AOL gets in our pool. There are some strongly independant types who would do everything they could to insure incompatability with Red Hat AOL. That's not an issue with Be.
Slashdot Mirror
The guys at work were all ready to hear the commercials for Redhat 7.3, the "Best Redhat Ever!"
So, I honestly don't care if AOL/Timewarner purchases RH. RH is not a distro I use. Having the backing of a huge media giant may help the linux cause. Sure, it will drive features *IN Redhat LINUX*, but not in the other distros. Long term, yes, it may effect the marketplace. But having Timewarner promoting linux would be a GREAT thing. Talk about adoption in the marketplace. Linux needs more credibility, and this may be a good way to get it.
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
Sources familiar with the situation emphatically insisted the two companies are not near an acquisition deal, nor have they discussed one.
and then...
An AOL Time Warner spokeswoman, as a matter of company policy, would not discuss the merger rumor, and Durham, N.C.-based Red Hat could not be reached for comment because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. A Microsoft spokesman also declined to comment.
I agree, it sounds like the merger is a farce, nothing more than a ploy to rile up people and boost some stock prices tomorrow morning, but you never know...
--Chag
I get it! This is cheap market research.
...bring several million dollars worth of free research to the next board meeting.
1) "Leak" a story that you are in talks to buy Red Hat.
2) Observe the terabytes of feedback from industry analysts, reporters, and fanatical users.
3) After denying everything as rumor,...
4)
5) Get a raise for your ingenious idea.
Well, what I don't understand is why they would buy RedHat when you can download the ISOs for free. ;)
I do not have a signature
As said by Michael in the first item about this story:
That about made me want to puke when I read it. :-)
Didn't get get the same line with the HP/Compaq deal?
First it was a big rumor that it was going to happen.
Then HP 'backed out' and denied it...
then it was back on in a week...
hmm... Funny this happens right after Cox says he'll leave under AOL.
.
It just proves that there is a conspiracy to cover it up.
Obviously, AOL has been spreading rumors that there is no takeover in order to prevent Red Hat's stock price from rising so that they can acquire it in a hostile action. None of the signs are there, so it must be true.
AOL's real problem is that they've reached the logical conclusion of their intellectually insulting business strategy of eating fish that are bigger than they are. There are no fish bigger than they are. They're trying to acquire the public sector but they don't quite get it.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Well, what I don't understand is why they would buy RedHat when you can download the ISOs for free. ;)
Remeber, they're connected to the net though AOL.
You ever try downloading something big over AOL?
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Well, AOL could buy Slack, RH, Mandrake, Suse AND Debian and still have enough money left to send me 4 discs a month. I don't think getting a deal is the issue here. :)
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
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
Not only that, you can get a lot of AOL CD's for free as well. They are a pair of perfectly matched companies...
Plus, AOL software only runs on Windows...
Uhhh... AOL client software works perfectly fine on classic MacOS (though without IE 5.1 integration), and they've released a decent beta of a version for OS X.
------------
"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
So easy to use, no wonder it has a negligible desktop market share!
Public companies can't lie or make any misrepresentations when dealing with questions from investors (or the press). This makes coverups very difficult because they could result in very expensive lawsuits. If they deny that they are in negotiations, and they are, then they are liable under Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act. And for the record, IAAL.
Dude, at least give credit where credit is due.
Original link is from BBspot and can be viewed here.
Think about it. Why wouldn't it be a good thing for everyone in the US to get a CD with the AOLinux distro on it every month or so? I just popped in a CD off my spindle of AOL CDs, and it had like 200 megs of blank space on it. They could leave the windoze (and macintosh?) clients intact, and use the other 200 Megs for a compact linux distro. There's no reason they need to use redhat- people like my mom just want to be able to email, surf, write letters, and print. Throw in an MP3/CD burning suite, and you've got just about everything covered. (If AOL wanted to, they could even make DVD playing software that the MPAA, and thus the average consumer, is happy with). I'm sure AOL could fund their own team to put together a little distro which is reliable and secure and targeted to towards people with compaq, dell, hp, or gateway systems that they got off the shelf at frys or compusa (think of it like a PC-to-internet appliance conversion). Ignoring, for now, the implications of having AOL in charge of your operating system (what, like that'd be any worse than M$?), it could be beneficial to the average luser to have a single monolithic system installed on their machine in which all the applications they want are designed to work directly with the OS. From AOL's point of view, it could be nice to have control over the OS that their client is runnig on, and not having to worry about what little component of the system microsoft botched this week. And from the /. perspective, it could be good to expand the linux user base to some signifigant fraction of AOL's. Plus, once you get a bunch of family PCs out there with linux, their 13 year old kids can start using linux to run more than just the AOL client.
Just a question.
According to the article, one of the reasons Red Hat might gain market share outside of the United States is because "a desktop vendor in Latin America or especially China, if they can save 50 to 60 bucks on a PC that's a big deal." Having lived overseas (the Philippines) I can say from personal experience that at least some of the desktop vendors do not pay for the copies of Windows they install on new systems. So a free OS may not be that big an incentive. (And I don't believe for a minute that the Windows XP registration will put a stop to this sort of piracy--it will only stop the casual home piracy.)
On the flip side, predicting that AOL will never buy Red Hat is like predicting the end of the world--no one cares if you're right, and everyone just makes fun of you if you're wrong...
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
If Palm is actually dividing the hardware and software sides of the house, they just might be interesting in selling or licensing Be to AOL.
,which could happen on numerous Linux projects if AOL gets in our pool. There are some strongly independant types who would do everything they could to insure incompatability with Red Hat AOL. That's not an issue with Be.
From AOL's perspective this might be a more desireable move, as Be's source isn't open to all, and It doesn't have a reputation as a "hacker OS".
Be has better multimedia support (important to Joe Average).
AOL doesn't need to worry about code forking with Be