Is Red Hat the Microsoft of Linux?

RadioheadKid writes "This article featured on eWeek asks the question 'Red Hat: Next Redmond?' It quotes an IBM VP who says, 'There is a backlash against Red Hat from many consumers and government agencies, who fear it is increasingly becoming the Microsoft of the Linux world with respect to its dominance and attitude,' while Red Hat states: 'Our commitment to open source remains absolute, no matter what our competitors are saying.' Is this just some pro-UnitedLinux spin, or a valid concern? What do you think?" Such characterizations are nothing new, but a response on NewsForge from Red Hat's Jeremy Hogan supplies a counterpoint to make the eWeek article worth reading. (Has anyone really seen a Red Hat backlash?)

Comments

Red Hat? Hah!

[Devil's BSD]

If you think Red Hat is like Microsoft, look at Mandrake. For Christ's sake, their installer looks like Windows XP!!! But I guess it is a rather ingenious way to drag confused Windows-dependent newbies to the Linux world.

Re:incomparable

[Arandir]

Troll Tech has tried to monopolize the market for Linux based handhelds by replacing X11 with a framebuffer-based system (which is less efficient to boot).

Have you ever tried to fit X11 into a handheld then had it be responsive afterwards? Which of Trolltech's competitors does not use a framebuffer? What handheld had an X11 system to begin with so that Trolltech could "replace" it?

Authors of GPL'ed software using Troll Tech's system are OK, but other kinds of free software, or commercial developers, need to pay more than they would for GUI development on just about any other platform.

As a BSD developer, this annoys me. But so what.

To quote RMS: "we are now seeking more libraries to release under the ordinary GPL."

If Qt/Embedded catches on widely, you can kiss handheld Linux as an affordable commercial platform goodbye.

Why? If you are selling [sic] Free Software, then Qt/Embedded is Free. If you're selling proprietary software, then you have to treat Qt/Embeddedlike any other commercial toolkit, and pay for it.

Commercial Qt/Embedded may put a halt to penny-ante shareware coders trying to make a buck off their weekend hobby, but the licensing cost is actually quite reasonable for professional developers.

And if Qt catches on on the desktop, it will harm Linux as well.

Hate to break the news to you, but it already did catch on. It's called KDE. I understand it's wildly popular.