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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.
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?
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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.
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).
Now *that* is a much nicer analogy:
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
But redhat also has the isos of their newest release availible for free upon release unlike suse.
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.
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.
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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