Red Hat Posts Its Best Quarter Yet

hey... by Spytap · 2003-09-18 20:28 · Score: 2, Funny

I just bought a package...that means i helped!

Re:hey... by Bilbo · 2003-09-19 03:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

> What is to stop microsoft from flooding the (alternative) market with it's own Linux clone?
Microsoft is.
Seriously, there's nothing stopping MS from coming out with its own distribution, other than the fact that they would be undercutting their own market more than they would be undercutting RedHat or anyone else. If it's the black market you're talking about (or the "gray market"), and MS putting out boxed sets that claim to be official Red Hat software, then I doubt that MS is worried enough about RedHat's income enough to risk anything that close to being illegal. (They generally only engage in blatantly illegal activities when there's a lot of money to be made off it.) If they take out RH, then there are several hundred other distributors to jump into the gap.

--
Your Servant, B. Baggins

It's the distro I use by ODD97 · 2003-09-18 20:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

But I haven't paid for it. I'm still using the demo account.

Sure, it doesn't act like "real" Linux for a lot of things, but it's very painless to install and very easy to run. It's almost to the point that a non-geek could run it.

And sure, they haven't directly contributed much in the way of new code, but they're been a big cash cow for a number of project developing groups.

Go RedHat!

--
The emperor is naked.

Re:It's the distro I use by innosent · 2003-09-18 20:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Exactly, it may not be a person's favorite distribution, but RedHat has done, and continues to do a lot for Linux. Personally, I use Gentoo, but I'm happy to see a company succeed that puts as much legal, economic, and coding effort into Linux as RedHat does. It seems like RedHat and SuSe are behind a lot of good media coverage, and are usually the first ones to step up when needed (SuSe in Europe, and RedHat in North America, like in the SCO case).

Sure, they sell a free product, but what they're really selling is updates, pretty manuals, and their continued commitment to Linux, and support. Without RedHat and SuSe, Linux would probably be three years behind where it is now, and you wouldn't see as many companies switching to Linux, and as many Linux stories in the news.

--
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
Re:It's the distro I use by minus9 · 2003-09-18 20:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

"And sure, they haven't directly contributed much in the way of new code"

Yeah Redhat and its employees like Alan Cox have hardly contributed anything!
Re:It's the distro I use by ultrabot · 2003-09-19 01:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

You probably mean something like "Linux-popular"

"Traditional" implies a degree of popularity. It's the way most distributions do things, the way that is taught at various Linux courses...

But this is all semantics.

--
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Re:It's the distro I use by revtom · 2003-09-19 02:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's the distro I use at home and at the server farm with which I work at my job. All of us systems persons at work could build our own distro if we wanted (we're all LI/U-NIX geeks). When Red Hat gets us 95% of the way there, we have no reason to build our own ($t2 - $t1 = $money). I don't build my own distro at home, because I have a life (as hard as that is to believe). I started to build my own Linux-from-scratch, but other committments got in the way (wife, family, etc.), so I decided to load up RH.

We chose Red Hat, because at the time we introduced Linux to the server farm, RH7.2 was the best ready -made distro for our purposes (with only a few tweaks). Now, other distros, I'm sure, would do just dandy, but RH is our standard and there is no reason to switch except for the sake of switching.

I now run tweaked RH9 (KDE) at home. The more I use it, the more I wonder why we don't dump MS all together at work. Maybe someday...

Anyway, It is good to see a open source based company actually making a profit. One of the major factors when making major corporate purchases is if it believes the company will be there 10-20 years from now. Up to a few years ago, MS was the only one (maybe Apple?) that could claim that on the desktop OS side, where the big money is. Now maybe RH, SuSe, and if the East Asian aggreement materializes, we'll have three more "solid" companys to choose from for OSs in the corporate world.

--
-- We live in a kakistocracy.
Re:It's the distro I use by schon · 2003-09-19 02:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes, but not "Linux-traditional".

Yes, "Linux-traditional"

Since the Linux startup grew from BSD-style Unix startup, Slackware IS the most "Linux-traditional".

This is obvious to anyone who knows the roots of Linux.

Doesnt surprise me one bit. by HanzoSan · 2003-09-18 20:31 · Score: 3, Interesting

I think the old model of selling products is dead anyway, its dead in the music industry, its dead in the software industry. Theres only so much software you can sell to people, what? You think Microsoft's model would work in the third world? You are wrong.

Redhat actually has a better long term model, a service model which will work despite the changes in economy. The service model basically says, take our software for free, but if you want help using this software, sign up for support.

This will work great for Operating Systems, Microsoft could easily give away Windows and charge for support, antivirus, upgrades, etc. China is now moving toward Linux, when big governments such as these move toward Linux, this means the revenue stream grows x10, government has the money to buy support, and they are the kind of customers who cannot afford to make mistakes and are likely to buy support.

School systems also are the type of customers, businesses I think at least the small to medium sized businesses can use the support, the large businesses can hire their own experts.

--
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac

Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by torpor · 2003-09-18 20:47 · Score: 3, Informative

Sorry to say this, but selling software is dead. There is no money to be made in it. ;)

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by hamster+foo · 2003-09-18 21:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

Redhat's business model is certainly a success but with Microsoft posting $8.07 billion in revenue and $1.92 billion in net income, it's pretty ridiculous to say that selling software is dead. I'm sure record industry numbers would probably support that their industry while in a slump isn't exactly dead either. Both business models have a place and are not mutually exclusive.

On another note, large corporations probably do more to support Redhat's business model than any of the other entities you listed. We have contracts with vendors for just about every product we use. Yes, we also have "experts" on staff, but vendors are called on quite a lot to deal with issues with hardware and software.

--
- b
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-18 21:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think the old model of selling products is dead anyway

95% of all software companies disagree, including giants like IBM and Microsoft. Considering the number of "support only" companies veruses the number of companies that sell both software and support wouldn't you say so?

Redhat actually has a better long term model, a service model which will work despite the changes in economy.

Think again my friend. If the economy TOTALLY went down the crapper Red Hat could be supported by dirt cheap armies of people who have used Linux for years. That and well, the source is out there so it's not too difficult to hire a couple coders and fix things yourself.

and they are the kind of customers who cannot afford to make mistakes and are likely to buy support.

First, I have heard Red Hat's support is horrific. Like it or not that's what people tell me. Second, if you can't afford to make mistakes, hire your own coders and sysadmins. What's easier, to sue someone and hope you win or fire a coder who breaks your super duper mission critical system?

You have some truly "pie in the sky" ideas about how things work these days and how they'll work in the future. I appreciate your ideas but some of your statements are ludacris.
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by hamster+foo · 2003-09-18 21:05 · Score: 3, Informative

Here is the report those numbers come from if anybody is interested. Forgot to include a link in the previous post.

--
- b
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by Strudelkugel · 2003-09-18 21:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

China is now moving toward Linux, when big governments such as these move toward Linux, this means the revenue stream grows x10, government has the money to buy support, and they are the kind of customers who cannot afford to make mistakes and are likely to buy support
So it's up to China to advance the cause of OSS? You might want to have a look at their <sarcasm>altruistic</sarcasm> actions during the "Great Leap Forward", "Cultural Revolution", at Tianenmen, and in Tibet... The PRC is not interested in spending a dime with foreign companies if it can avoid it, among other things.

--
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by hamster+foo · 2003-09-18 21:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

People are buying those computers, and the boxes sitting on the shelves at Wal-Mart. It doesn't really matter how they got there. Selling software is FAR from dead at the present. You are claiming your perception of the future as the present.

--
- b
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by minus9 · 2003-09-18 21:22 · Score: 5, Funny

Yes. Any company smaller than Microsoft and that doesn't have several billionaires on staff must be considered unsuccessful. I find your ideas fascinating and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by HanzoSan · 2003-09-18 21:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

When did we even mention the home users? My point is, big corporate users are the first to migrate to Linux and the benefits will hit the home users later.

This means as more corporate users switch from word to Star Office, the benefits to open office are passed on to the home user.

People do not want to pay $500 for software every few years, the corporations dont want to pay it, the user cannot afford to pay it, and its just not going to work. People will however pay $500 in services.

The professional and business market (small and medium sized businesses) are where the money is at, but I'm a user, and it benefits me to get free software, I dont have the money to pay for the support, and its not important for me to have the support, if I were running a business I would definately go with Redhat.

--
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by Jaysyn · 2003-09-18 22:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

Heh, cause that's what AutoCAD runs on, and AutoCAD is what the customer wants their drawings done in. See also: ArcGIS, MapInfo & LODE Data Corp.

Jaysyn

--
There is a war going on for your mind.
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by mr_sas · 2003-09-19 00:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

hahaha, you really think that people in China would buy games? Half the Windows game developers already won't sell there because of piracy. I can just see the game publishers now
A: "so whaddya think about this new linux thingy"
B: "uhh"
A: "well they've got a market share of 1.2 billion now"
B: "aren't they all chinese though"
A: "oh yeah, screw that"
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by Andrewkov · 2003-09-19 00:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

Interesting link ... Microsoft spends more on Marketing and Advertising than it does Research and Developement.
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by John+Allsup · 2003-09-19 00:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Hmmm... where to start....

People think, ok China moving to linux big deal. Or they say, ok big deal, but not anything amazing. China moving to linux is huge.

Maybe. Many (myself included) will reserve judgement.

Think about it, over 1 billion people will use linux isntead of Windows. Microsoft could have potentially sold a billion copies of windows for $100-$200 each. Now, much much less will be the case.

You're falling into the erroneous thinking that the BSA likes to use in its marketing campaigns.
(Blindly translating numbers into potential $$'s)

Firstly, many in China cannot afford enough clothesto go round the family. Many are only slightly better off. How on earth can these be included in the 1billion potential computer users?
(Only when a country gets the general populous up to the levels seen in the West will computers become so ubiquitous.)

Of the millions in China with computers (the components are built over there, or in Taiwan, in most cases...) many will not pay for the software.
'Piracy' is rampant (as US software corporations like to shout about.)

In the end, you're down to a potential few million copies of Windows being sold. It's probably not that much bigger than one of the European countries.

Now, with a billion linux users I'm sure at least a few of them will have technical problems.
Someone who offers linux support in Chinese
for a reasonable price could stand to profit considerably...

And speaks the language natively, is familiar with the culture, grew up in it, etc. Basically it's a pretty closed market so far as money is concerned. What China wants out of Linux is to be sending less money to the US on account of running Windows, whilst still enjoying its trade principles (which is why it can't simply say Windows copyrights are null and void in China.)

What Linux has to gain from China is more open source software being written. The comments will probably be engrish, ASCII being to prodominant in programming languages to change in a hurry. With the way the GPL and friends work, it only takes someone to upload code to the internet for the OSS community to get hold of it.

In short, China, along with many other countries, does not present a market in quite as straightforward a way as you suggest.

--
John_Chalisque
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by mr_sas · 2003-09-19 02:05 · Score: 2, Funny
a linux-based console?
Slashdotter A: Cool a linux based console!
Slashdotter B: Copy Protection? I'm not buying this. My console is mine i should be able to run what i want on it, not what some insensitive mega-global-corporation says i can.
Slashdotter C:
1. Make unpirateable console
2. market to /. types
3. ???
4. Profit
Re:Doesnt surprise me one bit. by clontzman · 2003-09-19 03:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Before you get too excited, so does Apple:

For the last quarter:

Research and development: $120M/7.8% of net sales

Selling, general, and administrative expenses: $299M/19.4% of net sales

That includes some non-advertising, retail-related expenses, but it's almost 3x as much. All those commercials ain't cheap.

Not that I'm saying that it's a bad thing -- I'm just saying that's it's probably true for pretty much any company.

Source: Apple's 10-Q

SCO Case by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-18 20:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

You'd think SCO's blathering would have damaged them, but they're actually up the last couple of quarters after posting some net losses in previous quarters.

-----------------

So, wouldn't this actually hurt the Red Hat case? I mean I thought they were building it on the fact that all the SCO FUD was hurting buisness.

Re:SCO Case by bobintetley · 2003-09-18 20:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

You'd think SCO's blathering would have damaged them

You would think, but I think the SCO case has actually done more good than harm. Why? Listen to the publicity SCO are putting out - they are complaining that Linux is too good, it has all these enterprise features normally found in proprietary UNIX and their products and services can't compete with Linux-based companies out there offering similar services.

I can just see IT managers out there going "has it? can it? It'll save me how much? I want some of that!".

How many more business people have heard of the Linux and free software as a result of this?

No publicity is bad publicity as the saying goes...
Re:SCO Case by Cooper_007 · 2003-09-18 21:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

I don't know what came over me, but for some reason I chose to RTFA. Sorry.
to say it has not affected us would not be accurate; we continue to spend a lot of time with customers around this. Those who are sitting on the fence are using this as an excuse to continue to sit there
It's rather silly to deny that it's costing them revenue, but I suppose it's a sign of a good business when they manage to deal with it and still post a profit in the process.
Re:SCO Case by screenrc · 2003-09-18 22:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

How did you conclude that Red Hat was not
damaged by SCO? Red Hat might have been damaged
and its revenue could have been much higher,
but because of the Microsoft/Sun funded anti-Linux
campaing it did not show.

Just because revenues are not lower, we
can not conclude from this alone that they
have not been damaged.

What's terrifying by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-18 20:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

Red Hat has a profit of $3 million this quarter
Microsoft has so much money they can afford to just randomly toss off $8 million this quarter as a random aside just becuse dropping that money into keeping SCO afloat might generate bad PR from one of their competitors.

Implication: It is more than twice as profitable in the short term to become Microsoft's random lackey and wait for bribes from them than it is to make a useful, worthwhile product that competes with Microsoft.

Is this a sign of a company with too much power? Nahhhhhh....

Re:What's terrifying by TheRaven64 · 2003-09-18 22:20 · Score: 5, Funny

Linux Sucks! Open source is evil! The GPL causes cancer! GNU is un-{nation of your choice here}!
Can I have $8 million now? (Yes, I have principles, and yes, I know exactly how much they're worth...)

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:What's terrifying by Daniel+Phillips · 2003-09-18 23:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't think anyone is claiming that you can't make money with open source.

Not now, they aren't.

--
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Re:What's terrifying by Pharmboy · 2003-09-19 01:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

It is the job of the IT industry to enable their customers to do new things that weren't possible before, but also to make doing existing things cheaper.

The fact that there's less money to be made from selling software is good news for the economy. (Roughly speaking, there are exceptions..) They should be spending their money on business intelligence, not on infrastructure that is roughly speaking "solved".

Nice point. Cheaper software makes it easier for small businesses to grow, and large businesses still need the support and tech's to impliment this software, so they hire, spend, develop, and contribute (via GPL). Anything that lowers the cost to start up and grow a business is good for jobs, good for the economy, good for consumers who now have more choice in the market place.

Personally, I have a few rhn $60/year basic accounts (and they just gave me one for free). I also have servers that do not have the service yet but still benefit from it. It is nice to contribute toward the success of open sourced software in a small way, but more importantly, they offer a killer service that pays for itself in the first month or two.

Being able to update several machines while I am at home, in a web browser, has allowed me to manage twice the servers. We use older servers, and tend to run ONE service on each box. Each box is configured as a backup server for another server, so we have great fallover protection. rhn is pretty stable and reliable. In almost two years, I have never had a problem with any updates it installs. You can even install and uninstall software remotely.

They have done a few things I didn't like, like cutting off support for 6.x and 7.x too fast. It WAS dumb of them to allow their certificate to expire, causing a problem where everyone had to manually download and install two RPMs for up2date.

But I can speak as a satisfied customer, overall. Their lowest tier of support (Basic Entitlement) is offering value and a very good service for many of us.

--
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!

I use Redhat myself by HanzoSan · 2003-09-18 20:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm very pro Redhat, they make the best version of Linux in my opinion. Gentoo seems interesting but ridiculous to setup, Debian is too old and would require I upgrade every component after I install it, Redhat is easy to install and fairly up to date, its also easy to upgrade.

I dont very much care for the RPM system, I hate dependencies, I dont really like everything about Redhat, but it works so I use it.

Redhat has contributed new code, they are doing a good job at improving functionality. RPM while I dont like it does improve functionality, Up2date while I dont use it does help newbies, and bluecurve which I dont really like does make Linux easier to use.

--
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac

Re:I use Redhat myself by digitalunity · 2003-09-18 22:45 · Score: 4, Informative

For a RedHat user, you sure don't seem to like much about the way it's set up. You sound like a hands-on, technically inclined person. IMO, you should consider Slackware if you decide to try anything else. It is by far the most stable of all the distributions out there and if you know anything about the workings of Linux, you will find it very easy. All of the packages are up to date and easy to install.
I don't personally like RPM either, so rpm2tgz is my friend. It does include RPM if you ever need it though. The BSD style init scripts are easy to configure. The file placement scheme is very well thought out, making modifications, program install/updates, whatever a breeze. The distro setup program is very easy to use making package selection a no-brainer, as well as setting up networking, pretty console fonts, whatever else you need.

For anyone who want's to get into the inner workings of Linux and really understand what's going on 'under the hood' so to speak, Slackware is a good place to start. It's easy to use, yet flexible enough to get real work done. What more could you ask for?
</plug>

--
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Re:I use Redhat myself by croddy · 2003-09-18 23:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

both debian and redhat have their advantages. I run both redhat 9 and debian unstable at home and am highly satisfied with each of them.
redhat is very easy to install and configure, is mostly up to date, and security patches come out very quickly. given (basically) any intel/amd style hardware, I can usually get a redhat system booting within an hour with little tinkering. it includes the redhat-config-foo lineup, which make major system setup tasks very convenient; however, for the most part, redhat's configuration files and scripts are not 'managed' by the distribution. redhat also has a tendency to heavily patch some portions of the distribution (for example, the kernel and gnome/kde).
debian is far more difficult to install and configure (and the stable distribution is pretty old), but once done, updates and configuration are as simple as apt-get and dpkg-reconfigure -- switching to unstable will put most of your system ahead of redhat. the apt repositories are extensive -- for example, installing ardour on a red hat system will require quite a bit of hand-compiling and tweaking, but under debian it's nothing more than 'apt-get install ardour-gtk', with all the dependencies automagically computed and installed as well.
personally, I have abandoned up2date/RHN in favor of apt-rpm. the apt-rpm repositories *are* much smaller than the debian repositories, but they are a superset of redhat's own updates, and they include a lot of other things as well. for those who don't need/want a redhat support contract, apt-rpm provides much the same functionality as up2date, but without leeching off redhat's servers to get bugfixes and upgrades. an advantage to apt-rpm is that many, many 3rd party applications are available as RPMs -- and these don't tend to stress the RPM system as much as unofficial .deb's do.
they're different distributions with different purposes & I'd say each is the best in its class. kudos for a great 2nd quarter!

28 million ain't bad but.... by dood · 2003-09-18 20:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

... that's what Microsoft or Oracle make in a week. I don't think the OS business model is quite there, yet. ;)

Re:28 million ain't bad but.... by GauteL · 2003-09-19 05:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why not? Why does one have to earn millions of dollars each day for anything to be viable?

Red Hat have said this themselves before. They do not believe that they will ever be a cash cow like Microsoft, but they think they can make a pretty decent living for a number of people. Why some people bought into the idea that they would take over from Microsoft beats me.

Re:They must be doing something right? by CAIMLAS · 2003-09-18 20:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

And I s'pose you pay for all the software you use, right?

By that I mean, "pay the market price for each individual program", not "paid for shareware once because you couldn't find a crack".

--
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers

Ok that's one. by MisterFancypants · 2003-09-18 20:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

On this thread, there seems to be a lot of speculation going on about how OSS business models can be successful based on the success of one company.

I have no specific opinion on how viable Open Source software sales can or should be, but a sample size of one success is hardly scientific proof that it is a viable business for others to get into...

Re:Ok that's one. by Jade+E.+2 · 2003-09-18 22:07 · Score: 4, Informative

Well, there are more companies than just Red Hat trying to make money off of Linux. Off the top of my head, I can name Transgaming, Suse, Mandrake, VA Software, Loki, Corel, and Lindows. I'm sure there are more, but I'm tired and very sick right now. But just using those companies, it's a pretty scary picture.
Mandrake, Corel, and VA Software are all losing money. It's particularly impressive just how proud VA is that they've only lost 3.7 million in the first quarter this year, as opposed to the 9.8 million they lost first quarter last year. And you can't exactly claim it's starting losses either, all 3 have been around for years.
Transgaming doesn't have financial information on their site, but they're a tiny (20 employees according to this June article) private Canadian company. While that's great for those 20 people, I don't think selling access to freely distributable software and asking people not to distribute it is really a scalable business model. Lindows is apparently another small (they claim 50 employees when trying to explain why they charge for click-n-run, who knows if it's accurate or not.) private company.
And Loki... You know.
SUSE may be the only other major profitable company there, I can't really tell since they also don't list financial information. (At least, not on their English site, and not that I could find on their German site with Babelfish.)
So, out of 8 Linux companies, one is (maybe 2 are, if SUSE is good.) large and profitable, 2 are small and private, 3 are large and losing money, and one already went bankrupt. Still not enough to really mean anything, but not quite as happy a picture as just considering Red Hat.
Re:Ok that's one. by rmohr02 · 2003-09-18 22:55 · Score: 3, Informative

You mention some good points, but there are many companies making a profit off of open source software other than Linux. MySQL, IBM, Trolltech, Intel, and Dell are just a few (yes, I realize some of these companies make money in other ways as well, but they all report their open source-related activities to be profitable).

They need smarter vendors by jsse · 2003-09-18 20:39 · Score: 5, Funny

We, along with many other companies around here, have serious enterprise deployment of Redhat Linux and Oracle, thanks to their Redhat+Oracle enterprise initiatives.

However their vendors don't seem to catch up with trend. I got many calls this week from a ASL sales asking for some clarification to our order:

"Are you sure you don't need Arcserve for Linux for your tape drive?...dar? oh tar...tar? I really think you need Arcserve for schedule backup....cron?...." "Are you sure you don't need GEAR PRO for your CDRW drives? I believe you need it for writing some CDRW....I don't think there's any CDRW burning software bundled....what cdrecord?...." "Are you sure you don't need any antivirus sof" *DIALTONE*

Re:Thank God for Debian! by WindBourne · 2003-09-18 20:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

Better than debian existing is the fact that you have a choice to choose from.

--
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.

Re:How to make money with Open Source by jsse · 2003-09-18 20:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

I know it's just a joke, but RedHat really makes some serious contribution to the community. First it's a distro of its own from day one, rather than a straight fork from other distro; Second it constantly contributes back to the community with their huge development teams; third their keep bunch of maintainers(e.g. Alan Cox) well-fed so that they could continue with their contribution without worrying about their morgage. :)

Re:How does it feel ? by innosent · 2003-09-18 20:51 · Score: 2, Funny

At the end it's all about $.

Wait, so we're capitalists now?... In America?... When did THAT happen?...

--
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.

Full figures here by dipfan · 2003-09-18 20:52 · Score: 5, Informative

Red Hat's SEC filing is here and show, among other interesting facts, that RH has $307m in cash in the bank, which is more than enough to pay for the lawyers to fend off SCO.

In many respects the six monthly figures are even better: a move from a loss of $6.3m in net income to a profit of $4.8m. Sure, a drop in the bucket compared with MS, but you've got to start somewhere.

Selling Free Software by Dancin_Santa · 2003-09-18 20:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Someone else mentioned that the selling of Free Software is somehow an affront to the people writing Free Software. They are probably modded down to -1 Flamebait by now.

They are wrong. When someone writes software and releases it under the GPL, they have set free another piece of software. It is really the most beautiful thing you could do for a piece of software, in fact. Without getting into the whole debate about whether it makes sense to anthropomorphize ideas and code by saying the overused phrase "Software wants to be Free", I will just sidestep the issue and say that as a moral developer I believe that software should be Free.

I didn't always feel this way. I used to think that software that I wrote belonged to me as a result of my thinking about it and transcribing my thoughts into Emacs. But this is wrongheaded thinking, and I was shown so by the FSF. It boils down to the fact that once I release my code from my brain it ceases to be mine. Whose is it, you ask. Well, if it doesn't belong to me, then it certainly can't belong to you either. It exists on its own as a Free entity.

Software makers use the artificial method of copyright to recapture this software and to claim ownership of it. This is not unlike the slave traders of old. I would go on here with the slave trader analogy because it is so completely apt, but experience in this forum shows me that most people here who claim to believe in the ideals of the Free Software Foundation simply do not understand the goals of the organization nor the fundamental reasons behind the movement.

So why is selling Free Software okay? Free Software cannot sell itself. It is an inanimate object and thus needs a broker to handle transactions for it. The broker can be as simple as a roommate copying a CD ISO or as involved as a complete corporation dedicated to distributing and supporting the software. Because the software is Free, it can go anywhere and do anything, but of course it needs someone to help it along.

Selling Free Software is good for Free Software. It is nothing more than a person or company taking a small fee for introducing the Free Software package to a new friend.

And SCO claims OSS model "unsustainable" by Solokron · 2003-09-18 21:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

"Red Hat has defended its business model against a claim by the SCO Group yesterday that its dependence on open-source software development was unsustainable in the long term. " Hah! http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/os/story/0,200004 8630,20276904,00.htm

--
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".

Re:How to make money with Open Source by hdparm · 2003-09-18 21:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is load of crap.

There are very, very few companies that contributed to Linux and open source in general as much as Red Hat did during last decade. In code, money, advocacy and jobs.

You suck. So does moderator(s) who think(s) every post that contains ??? is funny.

Re:How to make money with Open Source by j3110 · 2003-09-18 21:04 · Score: 4, Informative

Hey, that's just not entirely true.

IBM released a lot of their own code into the Linux kernel, and they've released other great products like Jikes, JFS, Eclipse open source out of their own pocket.

RedHat has Alan Cox on staff, and a few of the drivers and a lot of utilities for Linux have been written by Redhat.

A lot of the software that Redhat distributes they aren't really involved in, but they aren't selling Linux anyhow. They are supporting Linux. By giving companies a safety net of support, they have switched a lot of people to Linux. This means more general software and hardware support for Linux. Before Redhat, you had to buy specific hardware in order to get it to work with Linux, but now pretty much everything has a Linux driver. If nothing else, they've at least got the support up for Linux enough that people will release specs for their hardware to people willing to right drivers.

--
Karma Clown

kudos? maybe, but not for making money by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-18 21:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

Cowboy Neal wrote:

" Kudos to Red Hat. They must be doing something right."

Uh, because success is measured in dollars, right? In that case: kudos to Microsoft. They must be doing something right. Kudos to Enron. They must have done something right. Kudos to penis-enlargement spammers. They must be doing something right.

"Making money" is not necessarily the same thing as "doing something right." Redhat may or may not deserve kudos - that's a separate issue - but if they do, it certainly isn't for having a bank account.

Re:kudos? maybe, but not for making money by ddimas · 2003-09-19 00:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Actually they deserve kudos because they have been able to be profitable while doing something right.
As you pointed out it's easy to make money robbing people, especialy when the law allows it.

Re:How to make money with Open Source by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-18 21:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why would anyone invest heavily in open source development when there are lots of people doing it for free?

Because no one wants to do the shit work that you still need to do to make a system "Enterprise" ready.

Since Redhat and IBM doesn't make the software they can't guarantee any "quality assurance".

Yes they can, and they do. They have a QA department that runs QA testing on software which they subsequently ship. Just because its Open Source doesn't mean you can't QA test it.

Support is an low-largin, low-salary business, not a growth-area.

If its not a growth area, whats with the growth of Redhat?

RMS harps on Freedom, but he's not clear enough by Dancin_Santa · 2003-09-18 21:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

The way he explains it, you would think that the Freedom that he speaks about is the Freedom of developers to do stuff with GPL'd software. This is not true.

The Freedom that he so ineloquently describes is Freedom of the SOFTWARE. The Software itself is Free, Liberated, Unchained, whathaveyou. Because it is Free and cannot be made UnFree (this is why the BSD and similar licenses are not Free Software Licenses; even the FSF is falling for the BSD linguistic trickery) you gain the benefit as a developer of all those wonderful things that RMS talks about.

But the key point is the the Software is Free. I wish RMS would stop confusing the issue by trying to make people think the GPL grants users extra rights because it doesn't. The GPL simply sets up a way for Free Software to never be made UnFree.

Re:RMS harps on Freedom, but he's not clear enough by John+Allsup · 2003-09-19 00:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

The basic problem with RMS's positions on many things is that his views are based on idealism: the kind of 'right thing for society' that intellectuals like to debate. The problem is that idealism is not that great a motivator. Marxism may have been the starting point for the Soviet Union, but it took the arrogance of the Tzar and the mess being created by the Tzarina during WW1 for the people to get sufficiently motivated to ovethrow the previous rulers. (This is a gross oversimplification I know.)

So far as the software itself being free, that is a different, but still confusing way to explain the concept. What exactly freedom means for a human being is hard enough for interested parties to debate as it is. What does freedom mean for a computer program? Does a free piece of software have the right to refuse to be installed on a particular computer? (I know it often appears that GPL'd C sources have a right to refuse to compile, and the free will to exercise that right when they feel like it, but I suspect the cause of this is technical rather than political or philosophical...)

I'll not go on. Others can add thougts to this.

--
John_Chalisque

OT: So, how is SuSE doing? by ivi · 2003-09-18 21:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

Does anybody happen to know how SuSE
- with its "demo-mode" CD-ROM d'load
(only...) is doing, ie compared with
RedHat, financially?

TIA

Re:OT: So, how is SuSE doing? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-18 23:02 · Score: 3, Informative

SuSE also allows FTP installation of its latest distribution. It is a common misaprehension that they only supply "demo-mode" CDs.
Re:OT: So, how is SuSE doing? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-18 23:43 · Score: 2, Informative

they only supply demo-mode CD ISOs
Re:OT: So, how is SuSE doing? by hughk · 2003-09-19 01:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

Suse is a German public company limited by shares (AG), but it isn't stock exchange listed so the accounting disclosure rules are negligiable. Unless they decide to list there is unlikely to be more information and the high tech market sector is dead.
German corporate taxes are painful so the tendancy is to minimise profites. When Germany's Neuer Markt was alive, companies could pay taxes according to their books filed under German law (HGB) but publish results according to IAS or US-GAAP. The tax man was held at bay by the agreements that supported disclosure in the Neuer Markt. Now there is no such segment and the tax man is very hungry - so any figures published will understate profits.
However, from the word going around, Suse aren't doing at all badly. They have always gone for a more corporate image which makes them appealing to big business. RH's hacker culture counts against them on this even though they have been very successfully climbing up market.

--
See my journal, I write things there

Re:How to make money with Open Source by ThinWhiteDuke · 2003-09-18 21:23 · Score: 2, Informative

There are very, very few companies that contributed to Linux and open source in general as much as Red Hat did during last decade. In code, money, advocacy and jobs.

How much exactly did they contribute? AFAIK, RH does not have much more than a dozen full-time people working on GPLed Linux stuff. And this company generates $25m per quarter. This is insignificant.
You just don't want to face it: the world divides in 2 categories; those who develop free code and those who use it. The ones who make money are the 2nd category. RH just commits a symbolic amount of ressources back to the community; the most of their R&D is in proprietary stuff. There's nothing morally wrong with that. When people give away something, they shouldn't expect (or demand) anything back; otherwise it's not a gift.

The single company that makes the most value out of Linux is IBM. They have the optimal structure (IBM Global Services), brand and product portfolio for that job.

That's the great ambiguity about "making money out of OSS". You can only make money if you take significantly more than you give. Does anybody knows about a corp. making money when 75% of their engineers write GPL code full-time?

--

It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.

Re:Open Source is right! by frp001 · 2003-09-18 21:28 · Score: 2, Informative

I cannot talk about FreeBSD, my experience with Debian is that they are always a few steps behind for a matter of stability.
The "drivers" as you claim are kernel modules, and to my knowledge Redhat kernel sources are availble ( Redhat 8 and Redhat 9 ) you can also check in the update section.
So I would guess if you have trouble with Debian, either your kernel is not up to date (ftp.kernel.org) or the installation fails to detect and configure hardware correctly...
BTW I used a Dell box to try out Knoppix (which is Debian based) and have not met any problems.

--
May I use your sig please?

Maybe its the way they work by fox2mike · 2003-09-18 21:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well to make such an amzing progress takes effort. And they pay their programmers pretty well too ! Most of them have the luxuries of a nice car & home.

They deserve to be where they are right now, the system they have adopted (which has both programmers & volunteers working on RHL) seems to be working really well. That leaves us wondering why haven't the others followed a similar approach & if they did, have they been as successful as RedHat ?

Re:Maybe RedHat can teach Mandrake by jgisclon · 2003-09-18 21:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

Two totally different products. Red Hat's cash cow is selling support to enterprises that use RH mostly on servers.

Mandrake is an end-user desktop distro, primarily. Selling support is not going to be a viable model for them, and with ubiquitous broadband and CD burners, selling boxed CD sets is a tough route to go as long as they make a free-as-in-beer distro.

Given their position, I think the careware "Mandrake Club" is about the only thing that will work for them unless they decide to follow SuSE and cease to make free isos available and rely soley on retail CD sales.

SEC filing by glassesmonkey · 2003-09-18 21:51 · Score: 3, Funny

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
- FORM 8-K
CURRENT REPORT
PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF
THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
- Date of Report : September 18, 2003
- Red Hat, Inc.
Sales to approximately 26,000 subscriptions
???
Gross margins increased to 74% (profit)

Why the bigger numbers? by Pros_n_Cons · 2003-09-18 22:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

Some things I'm about to say might be alittle harsh but Slashdot needs to take its medicine.
First does anyone remember when Redhat9 came out, a huge selling point for them was that you could beat the rush and get RH 9 a week early if you signed up for support? An aweful lot of people signed up for that (including myself) . so many infact it ended up killing thier servers speed to something around 5k. But guess what. Slashdot posted bit torrent within the first hour happy to offer non paying customers a better solution. So how many people will be buying support this time around do you think? Not as many I'll bet.

If Slashdot is always talking about morals and doing whats right with everything from patents to software. Why can't they allow a company that has argueably did more or atleast as much for linux then any other single company to earn a buck for just one week? Thats all folks. It's time we start showing as a community that we're not just a bunch of freeloaders, anarchists & hypocrites.

--

-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller

Re:Why the bigger numbers? by SlashDread · 2003-09-18 23:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

"freeloaders, anarchists & hypocrites."

- Every person on the world likes the concept of gratis, why should "the community" (I dont like labeling, but..) be different.
- Anarchism is a political view. It can be reasoned its the utmost freedom political view. It is however not something "bad"(C)
- ALL of humankind are hypocrits.

Its time people understand this "community" is NO DIFFERENT then others.

Greetz /Dread

(C)G. "dubya" Bush.

Re:Open Source is right! by Pros_n_Cons · 2003-09-18 23:04 · Score: 2, Informative

But we have to remember about the roots - RedHat is becoming a little bit prioprietary, a little bit uncompatible... yes! yes!

No, Why don't you read RH's patent policy first HERE

basically they're defensive patents, I wont say anything more cause you should read it yourself and become englightened.

--

-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller

SLAVE TRADING? by Stu+Charlton · 2003-09-18 23:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

I would like to honestly point out something that seems to be often missed by free software advocates and is a major reason why the free software argument has had a difficult time politically.

You have an opinion about what software becomes when it leaves your head - that the information is "freed". The world at large has a very different perspsective on that, they view it as intellectual property.

Who is "right" or "wrong" objectively is for philosophers or saints to decide. In politics, the question is never, "who is right", the question is one of "what works" to progress society? (the reason for this is that politics, even democratic politics, is not a realiable means to figure out right from wrong)

I am saying this because rhetoric like the above message is clearly philosophical, it is not political. Using a philosophical stance will not help the cause of promoting free software and reasonable copyright laws in this world, because philosophical posturing is often not concerned with reality as it is, but how it should be (or how the FSF says it should be).

The idea of copyright as a means to promote the progress of society is an old one, and still may be a good one. But it continues to be stretched to the point of abuse by those who wish to turn this principle into solely implying the progress of for-profit corporations. We must fight this trend politically. That means, we need solutions, and we need actions, and concrete visions.

We do not need philosophizing about whether charging a fee for free software is good or bad, or rationalizing it as "giving a small free to other friends". I point out this not as an insult, but because you seemed to have hit RMS' philosophy square on the head. It is a crystal clear example of why RMS is ineffective in politics but ESR is somewhat effective. (I sometimes wonder if the FSF goal is free software or universal friendship?)

I think most people realize that economic transactions in the world exist precicely because most of the world is not friendly with one another. We may regret this, think it awful, but it is ... reality today. Software development exists within an economic system. And changing that is a a much bigger battle than fair copyright laws. Choose your battles wisely, and some may actually be solved in this lifetime.

--
-Stu

Real numbers or Enron-style accounting? by SgtChaireBourne · 2003-09-18 23:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

Here you can see that MS-Window and MS-Office pull in monopoly rents. i.e. 4-5 times the free market price. With everything else losing money, any price cuts in those two are going to cut deeply. Thus the panic to spread expensive lock-in techologies (e.g. Palladium/ WMP9) and licenses (License 6).

Given that software distribution can have nearly zero cost, RedHat, SuSe, Apple and others seem to have more viable model. Even the RIAA could learn from them, though for both Microsoft and RIAA, I think they've waited too long and would do the U.S. economy the best by leaving the playingfield altogether.

--
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.

Re:Maybe RedHat can teach Mandrake by Chemicalscum · 2003-09-19 00:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

Mandrake is also a damn good server distro. Mandrake has two problems. (1) a former management financially wrecking the company in the dot.bomb era and (2) The French government not giving it more support by pushing is use in government agencies.

Mandrake could really become a significant force in the enterprise server area in Europe if the French government gave the same sort of push for its internal use as the Chinese government gives Red Flag Linux. Or for that matter as much as the German Governments at the federal, provincial and municipal level give SuSe.

Re:RHL Announcement? by jensend · 2003-09-19 01:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

The project is on hold, largely because a lot of clueless lusers thought the shift was a perfect opportunity to flood redhat's development mailing lists and ask stupid questions. Redhat is going to wait until after their next release to try again.

I think this is one of the main problems large projects have right now. Mozilla's bugzilla, the OpenOffice.org mailing lists, and many of the other primary communication means of large projects are being flooded with people who aren't developing for the project and don't know what they're talking about. The projects don't want to move to a model where only those made members by a list/bugzilla administrator can post, because that would really discourage new developers. So the signal-to-noise ratio just gets worse and worse.

Stock up by hey · 2003-09-19 01:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

up 9 percent
Not much of a surprise, I guess.

A service, packaged as a product by Jungle+guy · 2003-09-19 02:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Red Hat says they are a service company, but their cap improved after they developed the Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In fact, it is a service: Red Hat downloads a bunch of free software avaliable on the internet, packages it and works hard to make it a stable platform for enterprises, backporting bugfixes for it for years (free software developers tend to make bugfixes only for their latest software, but you can't be on the bleeding edge because dependencies may break other applications, specially closed source ones, like the Oracle database).

They sell it for a thousand dollars or more, saying they are only charging for 24/7 support. But whoever runs Red Hat Enterprise knows that it is a very stable software, and, once you have set it up, requires only small atention. So, in fact, it works like a product.

Purchasing services might be good if you have on special neeed, but 90% of IT needs can be supplied by off-the-shelf software, that should require little baby feeding. The whole Linux mantra "you get the software for free and pay only for support" is not endorsed by many companies - they don't want to have a source of impredictability on their budgets. Red Hat has learned this, adapted itself and is making a living, paying for a lot of free software developers. If you tune free software, purge the bugs and sell it, you have gains of scale that could not be possible on a traditional service model.

Buying Red Hat Linux is great for a company because, even after they stop supporting it, you can hire someone to backport bugfixes and support it - you get the freaking source code of it.

Re:A service, packaged as a product by HiThere · 2003-09-19 05:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Could *you* package a product stable enough to support an enterprise?

The only way I could do so would be by using Debian stable. And the Red Hat Enterprise version is much friendlier (especially during the setup). Also the Red Hat edition has support for multiple raid partitions at various raid levels, and various other features that are more than a bit difficult to configure when starting from a vanilla Debian. (Mind you, I think the pricing is rediculous, but if that's what it takes to convince people...)

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re:How does it feel ? by cje · 2003-09-19 03:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

You know, posts like this are why I like browsing Slashdot with a +6 Flamebait modifier. :)

You say that "Red Hat makes cash from volunteer work and don't [sic] give back." First of all, the most obvious point to make is that there is nothing requiring them to "give back" anything. All that they have to do, according to the GPL, is to make sure that they continue to release the source code to the software. They are not required to make yearly donations to GNU or to the EFF.

Second, they do give back. The money that Red Hat makes doesn't all go straight into Bob Young's wallet. Red Hat has lots of developers that are working on lots of things, such as cluster management and IP load balancing. These are capabilities that benefit the community as a whole, and the money flowing into Red Hat allows them to pay talented developers to make a lot of useful contributions to the operating system and its supporting software. What's wrong with that?

Finally, your assertion that Red Hat is making money off of OSS developers is pretty silly. The basic functionality of any Red Hat release is still freely-downloadable over the Internet. Red Hat is not making its millions of dollars from Joe Linux User buying a boxed set of CDs at Egghead. Instead, they're making money from businesses and corporations who are buying Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (for example) at $2,499 a pop. These people are not shelling out money for Mozilla or Apache. They're paying for things like 24x7 tech support, Red Hat Network subscriptions for OS upgrades and security patches, the additional "enterprise" capability provided by the more-expensive products, hardcopy documentation, etc.

Your average Red Hat home user needs none of this, which is why your average Red Hat home user doesn't pay a dime for his/her distribution. Those of us who have been using Linux for more than a decade have been fighting hard to get it into our places of work, and the types of things that Red Hat (and others) are now providing, such as round-the-clock support, are exactly the types of things that the PHB types wanted to see before they would allow it in. I know that there are plenty of purist types who believe that nobody should be allowed to make a red cent off of software, but I'm inclined to cut Red Hat some slack here. They're helping to increase Linux acceptance in mainstream IT shops by leaps and bounds.

--
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground

Thank You by p.rican · 2003-09-19 04:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

my point exactly...but you beat me to the post. Contributing code isn't the only way to contribute to the linux kernel. People forget that many linux distributor's are employing the top kernel hackers so they can feed their families and contribute code on their own time...

--

/. --"Demented and sad....but social" -Judd Nelson

Re:How to make money with Open Source by volkerdi · 2003-09-19 06:30 · Score: 2, Informative

Now, if I recall properly, Red Hat was derived from the BOGUS Linux distribution by Rik Faith. Rik later wrote the package utilities PMS and PM for Red Hat, and Erik Troan and Marc Ewing used those as the basis for RPM version one.

I doubt BOGUS was a Slackware fork -- the structure was quite a bit different. But I'd like to think that Slackware might have helped them accompish their first compiles, and maybe given them some ideas. Several config files did make it over, at least.

redhat source code by David+Jao · 2003-09-19 07:05 · Score: 2, Informative

Is the source code for Red Hat's installers available?

Yes: anaconda source rpms

How about their build and dependency system ... ?

The build and dependency system is all inside the rpm program and associated libraries. Here are the source rpms for rpm. If you are worried about chicken and egg installation issues, an rpm tarball is available here.

How about their build and dependency ... database?

The actual (complete) package database for redhat 9 is available in this little known gem of a package which is included in redhat but not installed by default (and IMO should be). The spec file for rebuilding the package database can be obtained from the corresponding source rpm, provided you have a copy of all of the redhat rpms for a particular version.

In general, almost everything in redhat includes source code. If you have to ask, the source is probably available. There are a few rare instances where redhat does not provide the source code, but these are pretty obscure and you have to know redhat fairly well to run into these programs -- so well that you wouldn't need to be asking in the first place!

Slashdot Mirror

Red Hat Posts Its Best Quarter Yet

77 of 355 comments (clear)