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Red Hat To Drop Boxed Retail Distribution
An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat, the leading American distributor of Linux, is abandoning the retail channel, the company is expected to announce Monday, says this story in Linux and Main. Non-Red Hat developers will be given a greater role in deciding what's in upcoming Red Hat distributions, too."
When someone is ready to try an alternative to Windows, its much easier to pick up the CDs rather than wait hours for a public download to finish...and lose the enthusiasm for a change in OS.
Solid!
Perhaps this may be a boon for MandrakeSoft? The novice home user who only wants to casually look at Linux or who lacks broadband might feel more comfortable going to the store to get Linux CDs.
I think Red Hat is making a mistake.
There is enormous PR value in having a retail product available, even if it is not particularily profitable.
Example: Ericsson is widely known as a "cell phone manufacturer". Actually, they make very little money off selling consumer products like cell phones. Ericsson has always made its money off the sales of system hardware. (switches and whatnot)
But it's the consumer products that have given them brand-recognition, and that is worth a lot.
I think Red Hat should take note of this.
This sounds like they are downsizing some of their workforce to me. Yes, I know that the article said this move was to improve release cycle times but it sounds like they are just plain getting rid of the retail line and there will be some layoffs too as certain people are no longer needed.
Red Hat was probably hemorrhaging cash in the consumer retail arena... so rather than continue to fight a loosing battle, they're regrouping and doing what works for them.
It's a novel conect in the IT economy.... focus on what actually makes your company money, and dump what you loose money on. Red Hat isn't a Microsoft... they don't have the capital to piss away to maintain market share. They *need* to focus on what makes money.
Has it anything to do with the KDE Klash? (Not likely though)
From reading the article it does seem likely that the KDE thing is part of the issue, since customizing of packages is one of the major things that's going to change.
I'm sure that the money they lose on boxed set is a major consideration as well.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
1. Mandrake: 46.02%
2. Red Hat: 21.33%
3. SuSE: 18.67%
4. Debian: 5.33%
5. Corel: 2.66%
6. Caldera: 2.66%
Others: 3.33%
Linux World Magazine
June 2003
Red Hat is provider for Linux OS for the Enterprises. They want to concentrate more on the RH 2.1 Advance Server, and not waste too much time on the retailing the distribution.
Moveover since the developers will be actually the one doing the packaging as well, Red Hat's job will become in including those packages in their ES/AS/WS distributions. Making the developer list open to all, will in-turn help them making their ES/AS/WS services better.
They want to be a service oriented company, rather than a product oriented. And this is the only Open Source Model that will survive.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Most people who use and enjoy Linux and want to keep it going do, in fact, "shell out money" for a box set. I put my money where my mouth is; I buy every x.1 Mandrake release and am a Mandrake club member. I also just purchased the definitive guide, even though I think it's a little overpriced, the shipping is too high, the discount for being a club member isn't very much, and the entire book is available to club members (like myself) as a .pdf.
If you particularly like a certain distro and use it for day-to-day use, I suggest you do the same if you want it to survive. Or if it's something like Gentoo, give them the amount it would cost if they had a boxset once a year or so, which would be about $60.
Chris
Of course its always rather likely it isn't right. This is slashdot after all. The real story is naturally a little different.
Who's the leading distributor period?
I believe that would be www.linuxiso.org
When took one of RH's training classes a few years ago the instructor was telling us that less then 10% of RH's income is from the distro and they would drop it if they could. It was only a marketing tool for them. That most of RH's income is from support, training, and custom development.
Then look at RH's support model they are like Sun they don't want to deal with the lower tier customers, they only want to deal with the large corporations. Guess you could say Red Hat is turning into a traditional Unix company.
Let's face it, RH is *NOT* targeted at the types of users who are going to pick up software at Best Buy and CompUSA. Even people who want to try linux are going to be put off by RH.
It's just not desktop/home friendly. No flash, no mp3 abilities, and GNOME, while much improved, isn't quite there yet. (File selection dialog, you know it)
This means that the only distro you're going to find at BB and CompUSA is going to be SuSE, at least until or if Mandrake ever manages to find another retail distributor.
RH is choosing to concentrate on the business space. Which is good, since their efforts there are somewhat lacking. (RHAS is dreadful, but with improvement it'd be decent)
I buy the boxed sets, at least every other release. Yes, it's kind of silly, but I like having the "real" CD. It just looks sexier that way.
:)
Vote with your wallet and all of that. Remember, the busisness world counts sales, not people.
Also, I don't program, so it's my way of giving a little back to the nice people at SuSE for sponsoring KDE developers and the like.
I may not have a stall in the Bazar, but I can bring doughnuts to share.
I think I need a new sig here.
I can understand what they are trying to say. I've seen Red Hat for sale in places that perhaps it shouldn't be (like Virgin Megastores, propped alongside normal commercial software). The problem is that the versions they have sat on the shelves are always hugely out of date, and are not likely to work with a lot of more recent hardware out of the box. I believe they had RH 7.1 when I was there last, compared with the current version of 9.
And if places like Virgin are trying to sell something like Linux to the general public (I can't imagine most regular Linux users would be buying out of date and overpriced box sets from a music & video games store), an 'old' version is going to have a Linux newbie bringing it back because it trashed their brand new Gateway PC.
I think perhaps this is for the best.. I just download Red Hat ISO's through the 'Instant ISO' thing on the Red Hat Network anyway!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
There are a collection of things happening the first of which will be officially announced monday. Suffice to say that Red Hat isn't crazy enough to leave people unable to obtain software on CD, nor is it going enterprise only..
You will however have to wait until Monday
I hope RedHat knows what they are doing, because they are going to make themselves invisible to many of the middle management who make buying decisions on software.
And flame me all you want, but what is bad for RedHat in most ways is bad for Linux. They are the lead flagbearer, like it or not.
Every time I buy a boxed set at CompUSA, I see people watching and I know they're wondering about using it. Certainly, they're seeing that people DO buy this "Linux thing" they've been hearing about. At work, people grab the box...or the manuals and comment on how neat it all looks. They claim to be surprised at how much you get in the package, thinking that only MS can do stuff like that. When vendors come in, I purposely leave the materials laying around and I always get a question or two about where our "commitment" is to Linux, usually followed by a resigned sigh as they realize that they'll have to adapt or lose. Red Hat is seriously underestimating the power of that box, and Linux will suffer because of this.
I happen to have the scoop now, for those who can't wait:
Red Hat has been taken over by aliens from Perseus Omicron 8. Future releases will be forcefully installed by tentacled monsters on all machines in existence to enslave the pathetic humans...
and they will drop RPM in favor of apt-get.
Remember, you heard it first on /. and that is a pretty good source.
The aliens is belivable, the tentacled monsters are believable, but apt-get.. ;)