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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?)
They don't have the money that Microsoft has, and given that they aim for low prices... and not to "lock in customers" then
Can't you guys accept that RedHat might want to make money and still have _some ethics_?
MODS: We were ASKED what we thought!
RedHat pretty religiously releases its code under the GPL and works with third parties to make sure standards get implemented. They will be LSB compliant, for instance, in their next release.
Don't hate them because they're popular and (somewhat) successful; they are not evil, or power-lusting, etc. They do a pretty good job, and are good community citizens.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Seems to me that Gates must've read The Art of War.
Feh.
So, despite the fact that the open source movement is a baby bird that can barely fly, already the infighting begins.
Why on earth are people criticising redhat (who have made many contributions to the stability and usability of Linux? Shouldn't they be working on getting something that 99% of the population don't freak out over??
Ah well, I guess it's inevitable. Someone smelt money in opensource and so the crappy politicking starts.
My opinion : This isn't news, it's pulp journo-jism. Slashdot editors - do you have to throw this rubbish in our faces?
If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
I did not switch from RedHat because I question their ethics. To the best of my knowledge they have always opensourced anything they've done. They have eventually open sourced anything they've acquired. All under the GPL. I don't see how we can fault them for that.
RedHat has done things that I feel are stupid ( gcc-2.96, recent behavior towards KDE ). But NONE of these things are in anyway unethical. Some of them have been handled badly from a PR perspective. But I have yet to see RedHat do anything that even slighly had nefarious intent.
RedHat provides a very valuable service. They provide a familiar interface to the commercial world. Large companies want a standard distribution with support contracts to help them sleep well at night. Large commercial software producers who right rather overly rigid software NEED a platform to implement to ( because they can't implement to standards, or deal with minor variations ). RedHat provides all of these interests with what they need.
People should really leave RedHat alone on the Microsoft comparison front. Kick them around over some of the dumb technical decisions they make if you like. That's fair and decent criticism, but don't FUD them.
Red Hat is a Linux distribution. It must follow the free software licenses that it is built on or it can easily be taken down for copyright infringement. Through the GPL and other licenses thereof, we have Red Hat by the horns. If it ever gets out of line, (not releasing source code, etc), we can slap them in the face with the GPL. Also, nobody is forcing you to use Red Hat. If you don't like what Red Hat has to offer, use Debian, Mandrake, Slackware, etc.
The main point, though, is that if Red Hat tries to become a closed-source deal, it will have thousands, if not millions of hours of code to rewrite.
Basically, Red Hat is the perfect hybrid of commercial/open-source -- they can take advantage of the pool of free developers to get the bulk of their product developed, then work over the result in-house to make the various pieces work together seamlessly (well, mostly), and finally provide direct support to businesses implementing their solution. They are proof that the Microsoft strategy can be made even more effective with open source. Do they step on toes, as with the KDE/GNOME fiasco? Only where necessary to improve the user experience and to aim towards making a product better than Redmond.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
As much as I personally dislike Redhat's distro (we all know Debian is The One True Distribution =P), I think Redhat holds an important place into open source world. The only way I would equate them to Microsoft is that they are the most business oriented distro, which is a good thing, and they have made many great contribution towards to acceptance of Linux in big business (many of these stemming from their relationship with Amazon and one of the best Linux migration sucess stories yet).
I really don't see how Redhat's attitude and dominance can be equated to Microsoft's. Somebody has to be number one, and Redhat's dominance is of a far smaller margin that Microsoft's. Microsoft is closed source, Redhat is not. Period, end of story.
If any distro approaches MS style arrogance, it's United Linux.
Unless they stop selling GPL'd Linux, and move to their own blend of proprietary Unix... In my opinion it seems that the GPL's main purpose is to keep software vendors from doing the MS shuffle. Just because RedHat is seen as the corporate Linux solution does not make them MS. MS got that way by being the only solution due to their marketing juggernaut. I just don't see this possible with open source products. RedHat sells services, and last I checked there was no monopoly on services... Not even MS can do that. But the business world can't seem to function without finger-pointing...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Make no mistake, Red Hat is a commerical organization, whose sole purpose is to make money and increase its value for its shareholders.
c e is the GNU General Public License. RH was founded on the GPL, which places significant constraints on distributors.
However, what could keep RH from devolving into another-business-that-has-achieved-market-dominan
I'm sure if RH finds a dangerous loophole, it'll be quickly shored up by RMS, and unless RH decides to fork all of its packages and take on development itself, will be obliged to adhere to the terms of the software it distributes.
Finally, there is a bellweather I would watch to determine whether RH has become too powerful: Alan Cox. Cox seems a man of principle, and wouldn't stand for too much BS from his employer.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Much like what happened back in the day when RedHat didn't bundle KDE and Mandrake did, the open source nature means that when RedHat fucks up (or more accurately makes choices that don't suit your needs), you can go with something else. The switching costs are minimal. How can you NOT be happy as a RedHat customer?
The day this stuff stops being true is the day I'll stay up at night worrying about RedHat taking over the world. In the mean time, I think the risk of say Gillette taking over the world is much more significant.
sigs are a waste of space
you're stuck with their OS. If you don't like RedHat there are 5-10 other good vendors OR you can make your own distribution.
Personally I think Apple is more like MS than RedHat. Seriously, look at the financials (for example):
MSFT 40billion in cash 90% of market
AAPL 4billion in cash 4-5% of market
RHAT 0billion in cash 1% of market
Apple is just a smaller scale monopoly than micosoft. Don't think for a minute if Apple were in the drivers seat that you could tell the difference between Microsoft of today. That being said, Linux is the true O/S with choice. And that is what makes RedHat NOT Redmond of linux.
BTW I love Linux, Apple (OS X), and Windows (not a fan of solaris however).
*sigh*
MS has money. MS has marketshare. MS is an established name. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft, how can anyone POSSIBLY relate RedHat and Microsoft this way?
Quite simply RedHat just doesn't have the power to be a Microsoft-like company. They don't have the money, they don't have the resources, and they sure as hell don't have the marketshare. Maybe they're the leader of the commercial Linux pack, but so what? Don't get me wrong - I like Linux. I use Linux. But don't expect me to believe that RedHat is going to be able to force computer companies to bundle Linux with them. Last I heard, the PC companies we're cutting back on bundled Linux!
Maybe RedHat is adding some proprietary stuff, or plans to in the future for whatever reason (clusters etc - I don't know). Well all I can say about that is 'DUH!' News flash folks - their business model revolves around a free OS, they've got to pay the bills somehow. And I don't know about you, but I certainly don't work for free.
But anyway if RedHat is able to become successful, then more power to them. And if you don't like it, give your money to someone else.
I don't particularly like this Slashdot story, but I have to admit the editors here seem to have let up on a lot of their anti-Red Hat bias over the last year. I don't know if they ever ran a story bringing this question so much out into the open, but they have been rather nasty and insuinuating in the past, particularly on the old LSB stories and other stories from about that time.
Oddly enough, they've also let up on a lot of their anti-Microsoft bias... or at least they don't go around boasting about not having a Windows partition every other day.
Now *that* is a much nicer analogy:
What is it with the bashing of successful companies???
Ok, so at one time, Microsoft was a little startup...without much technical inguinuity...albeit...but they were the underdog against the bohemeth IBM. Now they are they enemy.
So another underdog comes to the table, and they are becoming enormesly successful in their industry. And we have to bash them? Calling them the "microsoft" of their industry?
This is riduculous.
Redhat is a great company. They adhere to standards. They continue to release GPL code. They have introduced more people to Linux than probably all other players combined. In fact, in my industry (systems integration), 3 or 4 years ago, my customers wouldn't touch Linux. Now, when I tell them I'm installing RedHat, they can put a name behind the product and somehow they feel better about it. Today, in certian situations, I can bring Linux in-house to organizations that would have otherwise balked at my proposals a few years ago. In fact, I attribute this to the success of Redhat for creating a solid organization that backs the very code so many of you are working on. A company that the "C" people (ceo's, cfo's, etc) can identify with and trust.
Just because they are successful doesn't mean that they are evil.
Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
Ya, someone at work told me the way KDE groups similar processes together in the taskbar was just like Windows XP. :)
And then someone at work also told me that the name of x-windows was a direct ripoff of microsoft windows.
But even funnier, I was using Mozilla and some guy was like.. wow, they ripped off Netscape!
I eventually quit that job, and went to work another place that was all bsd/linux/mac.. but my boss calls me bugs me on Sundays... gah, can't have it all.
But joking aside, Redhat rocks. They have innovated a lot of things for linux that is necessary for it to become wider spread. I don't even think we should be spending time with articles like this. Support everyTHING OPENsource despite where it comes from. I hate to say this, but everyone who deals in free software really needs to read the Communist Manifesto. (NO, I am not trying to spread communism here, nor do I support them.) Think of software being personal property and redhat trying to be the state that runs it all. It is cool because everyone benefits yet no one really owns anything.
Unfortuantly money talks and makes the world go around. Which is why capitalism (Microsoft) is a nearly impossible foe to deal with. Redhat is trying to make money though, but you have to admit it is very difficult for them to do.
I guess my point is...
It doesn't matter if you LIKE redhat or not, support them damnit. People like them are the few that might accomplish the goals we all really want. Hell... type emacs on a command prompt, and hit Ctrl-H then Ctrl-P
Gimme a break! Redhat is competing primary against MICROSOFT, not other linux vendors. They're doing what they're doing for the best of the linux and open source communities. If we have division b/n these communities, then it's only going to hurt ourselves.
Justin
Comparing RH to Microsoft sounds to me a bit harsh for the hats, but...
My company has recently been involved in several projects using Linux -- some from quite unlikely customers, such as the long-time Microsoft buddy that has The Way Out... but that's another story. Anyway, their consultors were pretty much learning to use Linux on the fly, and they have zero Unix background. They of course use RedHat, and they did succeed in installing a couple of Linux systems, which ended up being, well... somewhat imperfect.
Alright, yes, they were ugly and insecure and just crap overall. But then again, they were learning, so I don't blame them. I just think that they shouldn't be able to install such systems. Or at least believe that the machines were tip-top and running smoothly.
To rant even further, the thing that bothers me most about Microsoft is the idiotizing effect that has on their users. I'm sick of people mailing me 2MB worth of word documents every other day, given that my net link is rather small and I don't use Windows -- but they don't even know what they're doing. They just pressed a colourful and friendly button and poof, off it went. I just stopped trying to explain that I don't even run Windows, which makes reading their docs a pita for me.
It's like the people that just double-click on executable attachments in their mail, to get the cute sheep on their desktop (and the nasty trojan on their disk). Filtering content and babysitting software for such users is, imho, a battle lost before it starts. Fighting this requires only common sense and a bit of computer knowledge --surely no more that the bit of training you need for operating a car. If using a computer required even a small bit of computer knowledge, most of these things wouldn't happen.
But anyway, I don't blame computer-illiterate users for this state of things. I do blame companies such as Microsoft that actually encourage this ignorance by struggling to build software that even an idiot can use.
And on that account, yes, I do consider RedHat as the Microsoft of Linux, and I do hold a certain amount of disgust and resentment for their practices.
i gave it to a MS only tech who had been trying many other distros most of which he was unable to get to even install, he didn't use redhat because he heard it was bloated, insecure and unstable. and it installed perfectly the first time and he's stuck with it.
its only flaw is (again my opinion) if you dont do a custom package selection install you get too much of the same thing, a couple different image viewers, email clients, mp3 players, image editors and so on. so if you wanna claim they're like MS the only way you'll win that argument is that they bundle software with their OS.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
But redhat also has the isos of their newest release availible for free upon release unlike suse.
There has been a Redhat backlash since redhat began. There are all sorts of people who dont like redhat for various reason, just look at many of the people who frequent irc groups that use debian, many put new users down if they use redhat. ( note not meant as a distro oor flame war inciter, merely pointing out a common experience )
People have derided Redhat because of rpm, have derided it for being too business focused, derided it because even though they might think ??? is a much better distro ( gentoo, debian, mandrake, slack.. etc ) redhat still remains ontop.
Redhat seems thus far to be pretty good. I use it at work cause thats whats installed there, though I also use mandrake and have tried all of the distro's. Redhat can never become the Microsoft of linux merely because anyone else can come along, take Redhats distro exactly as is, slap a new name on it and rebrand it as something new. This basically what mandrake did in the beginning, plus 586 compiled files. So if rehatd tries to through its weight around they can be replaced in the blink of an eye... its not so easy to do with MS, though possible. From a user point of view, provided a good sysadmin has set up the boxes you can make redhat, mandrake, suse and perhaps even debian ( different file system setup ) look the exact same to "just a user", who interacts with it via point an click. So based on that how much brand loyalty is there really. Sure we have distro wars so there is brand loyalty but it doesnt really run to deep
10 of 15 years ago we wern't nearly as connected as we are today. if redhat was bulling someone we would here more than the noise we are hearing now. i'm sorry, but i believe redhat is a standup company. they do alot for linux and free software. they are a part of the community, not a leach.
if you have any legitimate claims, that is fine. if not i'm sorry but i'm going to have to side with redhat on this one.
-- john
Yeah, because rpm is a closed source program with no published information, and is protected by a variety of patents which RedHat use to ruthlessly stamp out any attempts to use rpm on anything other than their own authorised distribution.
When was the last time that Red Hat prevented you from building your own Advanced Server from packages freely available on their servers?
Speaking as RCHE #807202341505038 I'd have to say that Red Hat is a force for good.
Red Hat is in a challenging spot, trying to survive as a company and post a profit while giving away their distro. The current business model is soley based on survival and what works.
Red Hat provides the following invaluable services:
1. Red Hat spends cash on EVIL lawyers to keep the Microsoft/Sony owned Congress from squashing the "cancer" known as "Open Source" and "GPL".
2. Red Hat maintains a lot of code, maybe too much code, and provides patches and bug fixes for FREE via up2date and RPM's. This is called the Red Hat Network.
3. Red Hat puts out a nicely integrated distro that supports nice integrated features like PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module).
4. Red Hat has created training cirriculum and has a very good and very tough certification program which provides quality screened people to employers looking for "Linux" experience.
5. Red Hat has created partnerships with commercial companies like Oracle and created a clusterable server distro which will only get upgrades once or twice a year called "Red Hat Advanced Server". Corporate America isn't going to cycle as fast as the rest of us and needs stability. One or two major releases a year is about all they can take.
6. Red Hat provides support at very reasonable rates.
7. Red Hat provides consulting.
8. Red Hat maintains many topical mailing lists including a very important one for security bulletins.
9. Red Hat Press has started to pump out decent books. I just picked up "Red Hat Linux Security and Optimization".
In the last UNIX war, everything became very fragmented into camps e.g. (Sun, Dec, SGI, HP, IBM). Everyone was pulling is a different direction.
Hopefully in this new era we can get things down to just a couple of players each with equal market share, I am rooting for Suse and RedHat. We can't have just one, because the competition is essential to continue to make things better and better. I sometimes lament at all the duplicated effort and think, if we could all just work together and strive for one goal, however, I realize that the competition is essential. There must be tail lights to chase or pass.
Additionally, Sun, HP, and IBM are all in the Linux game to make things even more interesting.
If anyone in the Linux game has the potential to be evil, I would say look it is he who holds the most patents... IBM and HP.
Until the current patent insanity is resolved in the USA anything can happen and probably will.
There are those that want the Linux community to go from "friendly competition" to "mean spirited destructive infighting". Linux has gained a lot of momentum and is still picking up speed. As the speed increases, I suspect the FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) will increase along with it. This FUD will probably be covertly generated by the true enemies of Linux and all things "open", who currently reside in Redmond and, are pushing a product called ".NET" which they can't even clearly articulate.
Let's hang together, try to resolve our differences peacefully and amicably while we strive to create the worlds ultimate computing platform.
Red Hat is NOT evil!
Red Hat is NOT like MICROSOFT!
Pick a distro, get behind it and PUSH!!!!!!!
Dude, just run an rpm based distro or use Alien. Companies like to issue rpm's because the majority of people are using rpm-based distros.
Where did I say that SuSE was "required" to distribute ISOs? I didn't accuse SuSE (or Apple or Troll Tech) of a GPL violation, I merely pointed out that I believe that their policies are bad for open source if they succeed.
How do you come to the conclusion that simple framebuffer access is less efficient than X11? Do you even know how these things work?
Yes, I do. More importantly, I have used X11 on platforms less powerful than what Qt/Embedded requires. There is no technical or efficiency reason for Qt/Embedded--X11 has a longer and better history of running efficiently on embedded devices than Qt/Embedded.
Your monopoly accusation is also preposterous. All of Trolltech's competitors are using the framebuffer as well.
iPaq Linux and most embedded UNIX GUI apps use X11.
That's not what I call a monopoly.
You need to read more carefully: I said Troll Tech has tried to monopolize the market for Linux-based handhelds. They will probably not succeed in the long run because their strategy makes no sense for anybody than themselves: they don't offer anything lots of other toolkits don't offer as well, but Qt/Embedded is considerably more limiting than an X11-based solution. Unfortunately, Troll Tech will do a lot of damage in the process by making platforms like the Zaurus less attractive for commercial development.
Trolltech, in using the GPL, are encouraging more free software.
Linux has become successful because it is a reasonable platform for both free and commercial software and allows people to publish software for it under a wide variety of licenses. Without the ability to create commercial software for Linux without having to pay some sort of tax to one company, Linux would have been a flop. Just because something is, or forces something else to be, GPL doesn't make it good for open source software.
Troll Tech wants to be the gatekeeper and toll taker for commercial applications on Linux. Why should we give a single company that kind of control over GUI applications on Linux?
If you do want to make commercial software, Trolltech's prices are very cheap, especially considering how quickly you can write apps in Qt.
Yeah, right, that's what people say about Windows as well. And with Windows, people don't even have to pay Microsoft to develop commercial apps.
Think about it.
(but not too hard)
Well said. Red Hat just happens to be the best surfer in the Open Source Tsunami. Sadly, when you are number one some people (especially rivals) try to beat you down.
Mahalo,
Winnipenguin, RHCE (bias declared)
10 REM sig
20 print "Help!!"
30 goto 20
The whole point of open source is to provide people with open standards that don't lock them into a particular vendor. Why would you think that would change in 10-15 years? The code that is GPL'ed now will still be GPL'ed then.
Seems to me the last thing anyone needs to worry about is stupid crap like this. Get some facts behind your argument, and then come back with your labels.
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
The real problem is proprietary closed-source commercial software/hardware vendors who claim their products run on Linux but really only support the most popular brand, a couple of point releases back.
Sure, you can probably get it work on the latest release of your favorite distribution, but since the vendor doesn't document the dependencies, and won't provide technical help, a harried sys admin may find it safer to use the vendor-supported platform.
Hey, Computer Associates, Samsung, MeetingMaker, etc., why not try for cross-distribution compatibility and dependency documentation?
Doesnt anyone else notice the conflict between beginning and the end of this sentence from RedHat?
.. isn't open source supposed to be competition free?
;-)
'Our commitment to open source remains absolute, no matter what our competitors are saying.'
Hmm
Sounds like mr. Bill G:
'Our commitment to our customers remains absolute, no matter what our competitors are saying'
blah.
I'm sorry, who threw logic out the window here. First goal of any business: - make a profit in order to achieve that: - market your product - try and "lock in" your customers, it is much easier to sell to an already happy customer than it is to create a new customer. - provide useful support that will keep your customers happy. - have a leading edge on your competition. Since when has it been a crime to be successful in the IT industry? Who made it illegal to make a profit? Nobody forced anyone to buy Microsoft Windows, nor has anyone forced anyone to buy Red Hat Linux.... - inpho -
Pmp @ DeviantArt
It makes me wonder whether or not the majority of the Slashdot community knows the meaning of the word monopoly.
I dislike Redhat. I am biased. But not towards the truth. I'll make a few points and be off.
1.) Redhat releases software under the GPL.
2.) You are not required to run Redhat in order to use a.out or ELF binaries.
3.) The Redhat developers do not support the fabrication of Redhat-proprietary computer hardware.
4.) You may, to my understanding, obtain and edit/recompile the source code to anything within an official Redhat distro.
5.) The majority of non-GPL, non-free software requires Microsoft Windows. If a game or any other piece of software _were_ released in such a commercial manner for explicit use with the Redhat OS, it would still not be a monopoly.
Redhat is not a monopoly. It is just an operating system that tries to appeal to the less-experienced computer user. (e.g. Windows users, AOL users, etc. no disrespect intended, of course.)
Sorry to disappoint you.
Because the Linux hacker community is the next Bill Gates.
In 10 years time, when 90% of computers are running Linux, if we, as a community, think a new piece of hardware is complete rubbish, we don't support it. End of story. The hardware doesn't sell. Ha ha ha ha ha. Should have designed decent hardware in the begining will be my answer to the company who is sniviling that their software modem, or complete rubbish USB ADSL adaptor, (yes, I am thinking of one piece of trash product in particular here, but I won't name it, to avoid a flame war), isn't supported.
The geeks who are decended from the geeks who developed all this technology - and instead of patenting it like the selfish wannabe theives of today, gave it away, in the sense of it being open - will have control, and we with our infinitely greater intellegence than corporate fat cats will be telling the world what goes and what doesn't.
If the DMCA and EUCD were being introduced in to that world, we could just say, "Introduce it, and there will be a new GPL, saying 'export or operation in the United States or Europe is illegal, and violators will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible.'".
We cannot say that now. In 10 years time, when Linux penetration reaches 90%, we can AND WILL.
I think I see your point. But I think you are in error. As has been pointed out -- and used as fuel for some egregious insults to your intellect -- one can easily change an .rpm into several other formats, including .deb and .tar.gz. Thus .rpm does nothing to restrict your ability to access the contents of an .rpm on any system. .rpm is ubiquitous.
.rpm didn't work on Mandrake... Assuming this person knew how to access .rpms (perhaps therein lies the flaw, but is .tar.gz any less opaque if you don't know about tar xzf?) then the only other reason it 'wouldn't work' is if it made assumptions about where particular files lived, or the system having particular versions of libraries. That has precisely nothing to do with .rpm, and everything to do with the 3rd party targeting a specific version of a specific distro, and is exactly the problem that the LSB was designed to fix. You'd have the same exact problem with a .tar.gz that was built with the same assumptions. .rpm itself does not enforce these assumptions -- an .rpm that I made from a .deb created on my Debian system would have Debian-centric assumptions in it.
.rpm is not a 'fault' of the 3rd parties, the Red Hat-centric assumptions are. In the absence of the LSB, their market position is certainly what caused this -- but what would be the alternative? Red Hat is not so supremely dominant that anyone can pretend it is the only distro. Clearly it is just vendors not wanting to put the effort into supporting many vendors, and thus picking only the largest. If the 'largest' were not so large, would that change anything? I doubt it would instill the vendors with extra energy.
Now, the other post stated that a Java
Now, though using
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