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Red Hat Walks The Linux Tightrope
Brainsur writes "ZDNet reports about Redhat : European marketing director Paul Salazar admits there have been plenty of screw-ups along the way but that Red Hat is now working hard to please the open-source community and investors alike. Making money from open source is a balancing act. While your underlying product is forged in the white-hot fires of online altruism, the success of your business means striking pleasing postures for the investment community."
means striking pleasing postures for the investment community
I disagree completely. What it means is that you need to do right by your investors, not the investing community in general. If you're an open-source based company, your investors should realize that, and, if they are unhappy with the way you are treating your company, they have the option of selling it, or trying to force a hostile takeover.
An open-source company has to keep it's reputation, and it's actions towards the community as it's most important goal, because teamwork requires goodwill. The problem comes with all of the investment companies who buy into Redhat not because of who they are, but because of how much money people think they can make them. (It should be a little of both.)
Once that is accomplished, the rest should fall into place. The attitudes and actions of the company should determine the value of the company. It shouldn't be the other way around.
I have mixed feelings about RedHat. One one hand, they were one of the first that set the Linux snowball rolling, and have given a lot to the OS comunity. On the other hand, their Linux distributions were subpar, even with the amount of support they offered. For a while options like SuSE have been much much better. Anyway, everyone is entitled to fuckups. I hope they get on their feet again and do better!
....was to piss me off enough to try SuSE and Gentoo.
It would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name
I have yet to understand their licenses, I pay $349 pr. year to have a ES server connected to their update network or what?
the success of your business means striking pleasing postures for the investment community.
Who knew the secret ??? to profitability was Voguing.
While your underlying product is forged in the white-hot fires of online altruism
I think this guy has it all wrong. The GPL isn't about altruism, it's about selfishness, and that's a good thing.
I must admit, I'm a bit cynical, and thus I have some trouble believing in altruism. I think Richard Stallman had a brilliant idea with the GPL. It was a way to turn the selfishness of every programmer, that desire to be able to look at how something was done, to both his advantage, and the advantage of people around the world.
What he's done is to create a system, whereby people with that programming itch (and you know what I mean if you've got it), will give away access to the product of their hearts and minds, just to be able to satisfy that itch when it comes to someone else's work, or someone else's improvements of their own work.
As a programmer, I think there can be no greater boon than to have people who want to use your software, and, even more so, people who want to see how it's written, and possibly improve it.
The translation of that marketing speak is "How do I make money from free stuff? I essentially give away all the code that my computer programmers developed, but where do I get the money to pay my programmers and to grow my company?"
The reality is that there is no money to be had. The open-source model is a poor basis on which to grow a company.
Red Hat should convert itself into a non-profit corporation and, eventually, fold itself into the open-source development lab (OSDL). The only money that might conceivably be made on open-source code is service. Yet, how many companies do we need to service Linux installations? Do we need Suse, RedHat, IBM, HP, etc.?
The growth of RedHat, Suse, and other companies relying solely on Linux to generate revenue is nonexistent.
than how do you eplxain them making profits and getting IPOs?
it snot thin air.. even MS is worried about theri tangible profits and winning strategy
Don't Tread on OpenSource
> Profiting off of Open Source requires that a
> business must sometimes give valuable IP back to
> "the community" for no direct financial reward in
> order for them to have the credit in the community
> to get the development they need in the future.
In other words, you want to use Open Source, you must "pay" the price in development effort. Or else. I don't know about you, but I prefer traditional business contracts with the price clearly stated upfront instead of this nebulous "you must contribute" obligation where you can always be accused of "not pulling your load". Of course, most companies do not sell their source code, as I am sure at least one hundred replies to this post will indignantly point out, but that is not the issue here: my complaint is about honesty. If you want to call your software "free" (as in beer), you better damn stand by that and not arrogantly state that "Profiting off of Open Source requires that a business must sometimes give valuable IP back to the community". I have no problem with those who require payment for their work, be it money or development effort, but you better state that before "giving away" your software, and you better not be calling it "free" (that last one for you, GPL!). In the business world, such practices are called bait-and-switch, and are illegal. Of course, on Slashdot, any Open Source criticism is flamebait, so I guess I am just wasting karma points...
I manage serveral servers for a small sized ISP. Mod me down, but over the time since RedHat released their Enterprise line, I have felt that RedHat was going into the dark. People have become skeptical over their support schemes which they blatantly charge for. Their packages and applications have become too "closed" and again, somewhat dependent on RedHat Enterprise, period. We now prefer OpenBSD and FreeBSD over Linux. We call it simplicity over formality, not that it is all that is to it. Distributions like slackware or debian and the BSD flavors out there works just great and they are more flexible than RedHat Enterprise is. Besides, setting up and maintaining RedHat Enterprise is simply not much fun either!
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
I have a number of my servers on Reh Hat & Fedora. I just put SuSE on my personal work station to learn the little where do they put what in which directory that is different routine.
Well, I really like SuSE, REALLLY.
I think I will be switching all the servers to SuSE.
One thing I really like is console based YaST over SSH. It does everything the graphic based one does and works over slow connections.
Well, I am another convert
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
When I first tried Linux I started with redhat 5.0 and got a bad taste in my mouth toward linux at first. Things that really irked me personally were that every time I had to compile anything from source that I had to install a diffrent compiler from the get go. Seemed like they were always including some version of gcc that sucked. I dident care for the way that network interfaces were handled. RPM worked great for the redhat packages but for every 3rd party package it was dependancy hell as there always seemed to be some strange lib that was always needed but no reference to the package name! I applaud thier efforts but thier distro was definately not for the desktop. Of course I should shut up because I am now very pleased with using slackware on my servers and on the desktop. I know there are better distros for desktop linux but slackware is very easy to use for just what you want and nothing more. I can compile without having to replace gcc right off the bat and package management is easy any way you want to go. I wish them the best of luck and they are a great choice if you need support but if not there are better distros out there.
Got hosting
I think this is what it will boil down to:
Rehat vs. IBM + Novell/Suse + Sun
1) Sun's JavaDesktop is based on Suse Linux, and provides a very good mechanism for updates, for just one time cost of $50 (includes Star Office).
2) Sun and Novell(parent company of Suse) are the 2 top contributors to Star Office / Open Office.
3) IBM and Suse have been working with each other for a while. Especially in the Lotus Notes area.
4) Novell's new directory services can be used on Suse Linux.
5) Suse can be a cluster resource in the Novell Clustered environment.
Where does RedHat fit in this picture????
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
...striking pleasing postures for the investment community.
Yeah, who needs customers so long as some chump is giving us venture capital!
Now order me up another one of those Aeromonto chairs and install a Pac Man in the executives washroom!
We do computers! The laws of economy do not apply!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I disagree. I believe Red Hat makes quite a bit of their money from supporting their customers, than from just selling the software packages.
To most companies, the initial cost of software and hardware is not nearly as important as the long term support contract/plan. Many people thus choose Microsoft, because it provides support, while if you went with Debian, there is no support phone number to call when you run into problems.
And support is exactly why my ex-employer went with Red Hat, because he wanted to keep his x86 hardware, and also has the power of a UNIX system. I suggested using Slackware, because that's what I was running at the time, and he liked it. But after shopping around a bit, he decided to go with Red Hat because they provide support, and he is willing to pay $$$ for support.
your underlying product is forged in the white-hot fires of online altruism
Redhat is competing with Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Suse (Novell) and dozens of other firms in the OS market and you're describing its big challenge as surviving the marketplace for altruism? I don't think Linus cooked up GNU/Linux just so it could be run on the machines of geeks for the benefit of other geeks. He must have known that when he tossed that source code out onto the Internet that there was no telling where it would end up. Redhat's focus must be the blue-white fires of the business computing marketplace or it will be as passe as the "Nifty Fifty" of the 1970's. Where are they now? Ever check out the list of the Dow Jones Industrial Average components in 1960 versus now? Today's Microsoft is tomorrow's Litton Industries or Penn Central Railroad. Compete or die.
If you want to look deep into the future for Microsoft, this site tells all.
In principio erat Verbum.
Any business likes to create externalities, that is, it will pass costs on to others if it can. If the business can use free air and has a choice of cleaning it up or releasing it polluted, the obvious choice is to release the air polluted. It's cheaper and the profits are greater. The only restraint is usually the law. (although occasionally public pressure forces a business to behave.)
...)
In the case of free software, we have the case where the environment bites back immediately. It immediately punishes 'pollution'. My hope is that Red Hat et al find business models that work. Perhaps these business models can then be translated to other industries. ie. Open source business models might show us how to protect the environment.
Certainly, open source proves that profit is not the only way to incentivise the creation of value. This is good because economic theory lately has been going in a rather bad direction in terms of protecting the environment and our liberties.
An example of this is medical research. Research used to be conducted like open source. Now most research is funded by drug companies. The result is that if a disease can't be profitably be treated with a drug, it will be ignored. Cures that are not drug based are ignored. There will be no research that proves that cancer can be cured for free. Serious economists are starting to realize that this is a bad thing.
In "The Success of Open Source", Steven Weber cites a variety of sources that prove that open source is a better way to produce many 'goods'.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I'm cheering for Red Hat (and Suse and Mandrake and Debian
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Damn straight, becase as we all know, "There's only one way to rock!"*
*(c) Van Halen
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
The last thing I remember... was their Entripise filesystem. Before that being a big proponent of tieing together the Gnome and KDE interfaces *which many distros have followed suit* and being the first to implement it well (imho). They do contribute... but not everyone can innovate everyday.
Hmmmmm, let's see...
1. RPM. Read the Linux Standards Base documents?
2. Anaconda, the install/setup program.
3. Kudzu, the hardware detection system used by Knoppix and others.
I could continue, but I think those three on their own more than justify the company's existence, if nothing else.
While I will admit that as an overall distribution I was not overly enamoured of Red Hat 9, RH have contributed solutions to a number of vexing problems for us, and also carry on a very active development effort at sources.redhat.com.
I'm also detecting some of the usual commie whining (No, I don't think OSS is communist, but this is) about a company that's daring to actually make a large profit here...as if every company purely by virtue of its existence had to inevitably emulate Microsoft's bad behaviour. However, it might behoove you next time to be a little more sure of your facts before you start bitching.
Let's see. ...
They have many people daily working on the kernel.
They have many people daily working on glibc.
They have many people daily working on gtk.
They have many people daily working on gnome.
They have many people daily working on
>What is RedHat giving back to the Linux community on which it feeds?
They ARE a BIG part of the communty. Accept it.
are they(RH) making money by selling related Linux products from the open-source community, where hard-working people make contributions and don't charge anything which they work on?
If so, has RH been giving 'rewards' back to the Open Source community?
If so, what rewards?
The simple fact is that Debian is Linux. If you go look at Distro Watch you can plainly see that if you were to take Debian, Knoppix, DSL and Gentoo --which are all in the top ten-- all together as Debian you'd clearly have by far the biggest share of the distros and all of them are rising. There's no reason not to use Debian any more.
This certainly wasn't always true. When it was just Slackware, Debian and RedHat, RedHat was cool because RedHat was the only distro with a GUI installer, but those days are long gone.
Top it off with RedHat's screw the desktop user attitude and they don't really deserve any respect. Hey, if their attitude is take and no give then why should anybody care what happens to them. I put them right up there with Linspire. In a few years nobody will even remember who they were.
A couple of things
1) the idea of a consumer economy and a free market is that the public decides what they want to pay for and what they are willing to pay for it. if people can't fill that desire then they don't succeed as a business.
in a truly free economy -- which Free Software is doing a good job of ensuring -- the profit margins are always very thin. that's what competition is supposed to do. if another CEO is willing to live in a barrel so he can beat your company by offering service (or whatever their source of revenue is) then you had better do the same.
2) we have rule of law for a reason. that's how anarchy (not socialism) is prevented.
3) are people angry when they find out that kfc's chickens are being abused by the workers at the meat factory (throwing them against the wall, etc)? yes. does it affect kfc's business? yes. it's the same thing but in the OSS marketplace. in some markets you have to make sure you're not abusing your employees or else people won't buy your stuff. in this market you have to make sure that you're not seen as a leech or people won't buy your stuff.
THE RULES ARE THE SAME.
and none of this has anything to do with socialism. come on.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
needs to buy a DB vendor. I've read more then once that Novell is looking at buying MySQL.
man you're an interesting cat.
we're not going to a violent force-led market. redhat has contracts with its customers. they agree on what redhat will provide and they agree on what redhat will be paid. if the contract is breeched by either party you can take it to court.
the relationship we were discussing is that between redhat and the public. specifically the OSS-aware public.
do you think companies shouldn't have to think about what the public thinks? a lot of these companies are publicly-owned. they fail if the public doesn't like what they are doing. it is a balancing act for any company. if any company steps too out of line then the public keeps them in check. the public is the consumer and the public decides what they want and what they are willing to pay for.
what do you want? companies to be able to do whatever they want and have the public either not know or not care?
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
While YaST looks cool it's fairly useless. Why buy a distro when I can download a better one for free? Well, I'm reinstalling Gentoo. If I have to edit config files by hand I might as well use a much cleaner distro. Portage is a big ass plus too.
Look, I'm glad Novell got my money. IMO I think they'll be good for the GNU/Linux community. I'm just sorry SUSE sucks so bad. I fear too many people will buy it thinking it is a decent, useable distro and be disappointed. I honestly believe that this time next year it will be much better but right now RH wins.
This is my opinion. Treat it as an opinion.
> are people angry when they find out that kfc's
> chickens are being abused by the workers at the
> meat factory (throwing them against the wall,
> etc)? yes. does it affect kfc's business? yes.
So you are equating using OSS without paying for it with abusing chickens? This is exactly what I am talking about: lying. If you give something away for free, it means that you do not expect payment. But you, along with many others in the OSS world, are basically saying: "you don't have to pay for it, but if you don't, then you are a scumbag."
> we have rule of law for a reason. that's how
> anarchy (not socialism) is prevented.
First of all, this is a really dumb statement. The definition of anarchy is absence of authority, which inevitably leads to absence of law. Whether that is a bad thing is an entirely different question, and is one I would answer in the negative. But that is another discussion.
Consider what "law" really is: a codified consequence against a defined transgression; defined by those who are backed with sufficient weaponry to enforce it. The difference between the prosecution of the shoplifter and the ostracism of the "leech" is that the latter is carried out by those who are powerless to enforce their complaints by the means of force. The difference between "law" in a capitalist society and "law" in a socialist society is in the sort of people who make it. Socialists are very big on cracking down on "leeches", which are defined as having something valuable (like programming skills) and refusing to give them away for free. You may call this "being a good member of the community"; I call it "slavery".
> the idea of a consumer economy and a free market
> is that the public decides what they want to pay
> for and what they are willing to pay for it.
Very true. But most people forget that there is the other side of the economy: the producer. If you are willing to pay no more than $0 for a product, do not be too surprized that eventually there will be nobody willing to manufacture it.
> in some markets you have to make sure you're not
> abusing your employees or else people won't buy
> your stuff. in this market you have to make sure
> that you're not seen as a leech or people won't buy your stuff.
Again I would like to point out the analogy between "abusing your employees" and "being a leech". According to the terms of the free software license, when you are being a "leech", you are simply exercising your license-granted right to not pay for the software because the software is intended to be free. The free software community clearly has a different viewpoint - that of an implied, unstated contract that if you use the software, you are required to contribute other software to the common pool or face ostracism. This is exactly what I am complaining about - the straight-faced lie, the bait-and-switch or whatever you want to call it. No, it is not illegal to be a "leech"; the license language prevents any legal action against you for now. But the community goes to great lengths to emphasize that if you do choose to actually do what the license allows you to do, then you are committing an immoral act (see the above chickens and employee abuse statements) for which you will be punished by public damnation. The moral code which prohibits being a "leech" is the socialist's moral code. It is most certainly not mine.
Prove it. They have many people working on RHEL, which costs more than many cars. hell something like 60% of the companies employees are marketing and management.
Many = dozens.
Many != 2
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
> we're not going to a violent force-led market.
> redhat has contracts with its customers. they
> agree on what redhat will provide and they agree
> on what redhat will be paid. if the contract is
> breeched by either party you can take it to court.
When I am talking about a force-led market, it is not RedHat that I have in mind. RedHat is a traditional business that makes money from traditional contracts. They do not have to force their customers to "contribute" anything. The customers either purchase what RedHat is selling, for an honestly stated price, or they do not. If they do choose to purchase a RedHat distribution, they are not incurring any additional obligations to RedHat. Once the price is paid and the customer has the software, the transaction is finished. The customer owns what he bought. Period.
> the relationship we were discussing is that between redhat
> and the public. specifically the OSS-aware public.
Entirely correct. And it is "the public" that is becoming a violent force-led market, not RedHat. While RedHat is selling their product for money, the OSS community is "selling" their product for implied future obligation of "contributing back to the community." When you buy from RedHat, the purchase price fulfills your obligations. Afterward, if you want to tell RedHat to take a hike and go to hell, they'll just shrug and go back to business. They are not going to call you names, or make public statements on how bad a customer you are, or prevent you from buying any other RedHat products, should you choose to do so in the future. And if you open your own business and sell something good, RedHat will not refuse to buy it from you solely because you did not "contribute" anything aside from the purchase price. If you download OSS, your obligation is never fullfilled. Unless you keep contributing to the common pool, you will be called a "leech", you will be hated, you will be flamed, you will get bad publicity, and you certainly won't get any more business. All because you have taken the license literally and assumed that "free" means "you don't have to pay anything". Now tell me if you think this is an honest practice.
> do you think companies shouldn't have to think about what the public thinks?
No. They shouldn't give a damn about the public. They should only think about whether their product is good. If the product is good, people will buy it. That's how capitalism works.
> the public is the consumer and the public decides
> what they want and what they are willing to pay for.
Indeed, but it is the producer who decides what he wants to produce and how much to charge for it. If you don't want to pay for it, don't expect anybody to make it.
> what do you want? companies to be able to do whatever
> they want and have the public either not know or not care?
Yes and no. Companies should be able to do whatever they want, but the public should know what they are buying and be able to differentiate between what is good and what is a fraud. If I decide to sell a word processor for $650 and nobody buys it, it is both my decision and my loss. If the public does not want to pay anything for a word processor, then I am not going to be able to sell it, but it is the public's decision and their loss because I am certainly not going to just give away my hard work. They can keep their slow and bloated OpenOffice while I'll see if I can write something that will sell. If all software must be free, then I'll find another line of business and you won't see any code from me. I'll make money from something else I can produce and be happy there; and if the public believes they can do without my skills and my work, that is their decision and it is fine with me.
With developers like this, who needs enemies? I honestly don't expect them to get very far as long as they have employees that display that special combination of arrogance and absolute stupidity that's giving all Linux users a bad name. As long as bugs like that are intentionally left unfixed, I will never use Red Hat.
"I'll make money from something else I can produce and be happy there; and if the public believes they can do without my skills and my work, that is their decision and it is fine with me."
No one is forced to contribute to OOS. Your skills and contributions are less important to the OSS community than is ("our" notion of) freedom. "We" would prefer to do without you rather than to allow "our" software to be embraced and extended (and lost). If you think you could do better, start writing your own operating system.
they kinda shot themselves in the foot by killing the free server-level product. fedora is not enterprise-level server stuff. hey, how handy, they have an entreprise product!....but it's expensive and there's no way to try it out without buying it. It's kind of hard to tell my management that linux is cheap when I need to ask him for a purchase order for RH Enterprise. We can afford it, because we're pretty big...but hell, we can afford FreeBSD and Solaris and Debian for the cost of a CDR and some bandwidth.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
> No one is forced to contribute to OOS.
Except through shame and ostracism. You really should read the rest of my posts.
> Your skills and contributions are less important to the OSS
> community than is ("our" notion of) freedom.
And what exactly is the difference between "you" and "me" here? My sentiments are going to be the same for every programmer who wants to make a living from the work he loves; writing good, useful software with beautiful interfaces and algorithms. He wants to be recognized and paid for the result of the best efforts of his mind, of his imagination and daring, and of his design skills; not for some boring, repetetive, mechanical, and off-shoreable job like doing customer support, talking on the phone all day with irate, angry, and stupid people, or the mindless drudgery of database screen customization. That is the nature of "me" and my ilk. And what is the nature of "you"?
> "We" would prefer to do without "you"
Can you really afford to tell all the skilled programmers in the world that you will do just fine without them? Probably yes. Average people don't need computers for anything anyway.
> than to allow "our" software to be embraced and extended (and lost).
In other words, you don't want anyone to improve it unless they do it for free. How kind of you. Only slaves need apply.
> If you think you could do better, start writing your own operating system.
Writing an operating system is not hard. If you look around the net you'll find out that everybody and his dog has done it. There are dozens of operating systems, but there are no applications for any of them because nobody is using them. You see, although you are "free" to run any operating system you want, I am also "free" not to write any software for it, since with your attitude I will obviously not be able to profit from that activity. Look no further for reasons why nobody writes games for Linux, or why nobody can make money from business software on Linux (software, not support), and why Windows still runs on nearly every desktop and is quite likely to continue to do so.
> If you choose to use GPL'd work, then it is your
> contractual obligation to release modifications under the GPL.
That is correct. But you are omitting the very important fact that the license does not require you to make any modifications as a condition for continued use. And also the fact that you are only required to release modifications under the GPL if you release the modifications at all.
> sure the project owner can bitch all he wants
> about a company legally using his project but
> not giving back extra. However generally in
> those cases nobody sympathizes with the owner
Quite the contrary: such a company is likely to get labelled as a "leech" and lose business because of it. This is what I am complaining about, not about having to release source for modifications if I release the modifications.
> he is usually told "well you shouldn't of used the GPL" by the community.
I have yet to see anybody make that statement. Usually it is along the lines of: "well, those bastards are just scumbag leeches, let's go on Slashdot and bash them to hell. And then we'll DOS their server. That'll teach them!" The community is very much against the idea that GPL software can be used without any payment by those who are able to pay in money or in code, and this is a serious problem because it means that the license says one thing, but the community has decided that it means another.
Redhat management sees customers saying "fedora sucks, I'll pay $$$ for the good enterprise version."
The reality is customers are saying "fedora sucks, I'll go Gentoo and suse."
Don't get me wrong Redhat AS is solid. But talk about demeaning your own open-commmunity version in favor of the $$ version. As a former Redhat fan, that's tough to swallow.
> Ok, lets do it the other way. Contract to write or
:), it just supports the software other people have written. They are not making money from code, but from service contracts. In the proprietary world the usual order of business is for the support to come from the same company that writes the software. Nothing prevents you from starting a company doing customer support for Microsoft Office.
> acquire an operating system. Similar to Unix. How
> much? Where are the investors?
A good analogy here would be writing a novel: unless you are a famous author, you have to write the novel first. Nobody is going to pay you anything until you do. However, once it is written, nobody expects you to just give it away either. You let a publisher read it and if he thinks it is good, he'll print it and you get the cut of whatever he makes from selling it. Same with software; you can not expect to be paid to develop it, but you can sure expect being paid by the people who want to use it.
> Second. Contract to write a whole suite of
> server utilities. Web server, security tools,
> scripting tools, etc. How much? Where are the investors?
Let's deal with the second issue: competition. You won't know "how much" until you know "how much better" it is than what is already there. If your software is better, and at least some people are dissatisfied with what they have, chances are "how much" will become "a lot".
> Third. Contract to write a graphical environment,
> create the market and environment where numerous
> others are writing software for the environment.
> How much? Where are the investors?
The third problem: lack of a market. You know why automobiles could be sold before there was an interstate highway system? Because they could be used on the same roads as the horse-and-buggy systems. If you want to write a new graphical environment, provide plug-in emulation of something that already exists, like an X-server. Once people see how great your new graphical environment works, they will start writing software using the native interface and after five or ten years you can remove the backward compatibility.
> Fourth. Start today, and in about 5-10 years
> maybe have something someone may want to use.
> Another few years and have something someone
> wants to purchase. Maintain the whole suite up
> to date, with current hardware and security
> environment. How much?
Tell that to Thomas Edison. When you undertake a research project with questionable success and a long-term timeline, you need to think about how you will live until you have something to sell. You can take a day-job and to it in your spare time, which is what the unsuccessful OSS projects do. Or you can set some intermediate goals and figure out some way to get something profitable in between. Look at Zyvex, for example; their stated goal is to develop a molecular assembler, which is not likely to happen anytime soon. But in the meantime they are marketing the tools that they have made to facilitate the mainline research. The point is that if you have to work for 10 years before you have something useful, then you need to rethink your strategy and come up with a plan where you have something sellable every year. That's how every successful company works.
> No sane investor would look at the list above
> and give the enormous sums that would be
> necessary. So it wouldn't happen, and Redhat wouldn't exist.
Of course not. RedHat does not actually write any software (well, not anything important anyway
> No choice except proprietary unix', or Microsoft.
Don't make the mistake of equating "proprietary" with "bad". When the developers get paid, they have the luxury of actually working on the product instead of having to spend their days on an unrelated job. Linux is developed mostly by paid programmers and so are most other successful OSS projects like MySQL and Mozilla. The onl
Pushed me back to Slackware.
the white-hot fires of online altruism
I don't think so. Linux was forged in the 'white-hot fires of online self-interest'; altruism had nothing to do with it. The payoff was different things to different people, and since an easy concept like money wasn't involved a good many folks have a difficult time understanding and instead use the catch-all 'altruism' to explain it. Here are a few of the payoffs:
(1) Reciprocal contribution. Contribute code to a work and you encourage others to do the same. Whether you understand it on a conscious level or not the end result is a product that works better for EVERYONE involved. Everyone wins.
(2) 'Scratching the itch'. This certainly seems to be Linus's motivation for working on Linux. He does it because he enjoys it. He's stated, publicly, that he'd work on Linux even if no one else did. Linus's motivations, and the motivations of others like him, are no different than any other hobbyist: personal satisfaction. That's their 'coin'.
(3) Public recognition. Some coders code for kudos and respect.
(4) Practice and portfolio. Some folks work on open source projects to improve their skills AND their resume for jobs that pay money.
These are just some of the reasons I can list off the top of my head. But 'altruism' isn't a driving force for Linux development, and I seriously doubt that pure altruism (if there even is such a thing) accounts for the motivations of more than a tiny fraction of all coders.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
It sounds to me like you are complaining because the GPL is fair.
Actually, you sound like a troll, but I'm not quite certain. You appear too intelligent to be a stupid as you are also appearing, though.
The GPL was not created for the benefit of companies, it was created for the benefit of generous programmers. Companies can, if they are careful, profit from it anyway, but they are truly of secondary concern. It also wasn't created to allow ANYBODY to make money from it. But it also wasn't created to prevent that. The GPL isn't about money! If you're fixated on that, go play in a different field.
Yes, everyone needs to make a living. This doesn't mean that everything they do is for the purpose of making a living, and those who *do* live that way are pretty shallow characters. And frequently suffer from strong moral defects (e.g. a certain Mr. McB*). Power is equally corrupting, though not quite as narrow. But the GPL ignores such goals. It just doesn't consider them at all. (So it's also an incomplete recipie for how to live one's life...but it doesn't pretend to be one.)
So the question them becomes: How is a company to earn money in the context of a community bound together in the context of an essentially artistic covenant like the GPL. The first rule is, AND MUST BE, honor the covenants of the community. If you don't, then expect to be at best considered as an outsider. If you HAVE been a respected member of the community and you betray the conenants, then you should the community to consider you a traitor, which you would, in fact, be. (Follow the syllogism backwards.)
Now it's a given that the community is not homogenous, so there will be variations in what is considered acceptable behavior... Caldera was considered a genuine, if fringe, member of the community. It's behavior was considered borderline acceptable. I have never considered Lindows/Linspire to be a member of the community. They just don't appear to either accept the principles of the community, or to be interested in joining it. BUT THEY AREN'T REQUIRED TO! They appear to be a friendly hanger on. They fill a niche that no good community member has filled, so they aren't even competing (which would be fair, if unpleasant). Sun, OTOH, seems to be an MPD case, which has personalities which are members of the community, and personalities which aren't. Their collective actions render them beyond the bounds of the community, but it's not clear that they are traitors in any normal sense of the word. More like a psychopath. You sure can't trust them, but sometimes they're friendly, and make you want to trust them. But the upshot is that you can't trust them.
So another characteristic that a company must have is that it must be trustworthy. This is difficult, as companies are inherently untrustworthy. (All it takes is one change in management.) And this means that the FOSS communities can't ever allow any one company to become too important. If that's your goal, go play somewhere else.
That's probably too much, even if I could continue, and so goodbye without a conclusion.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
1 - Google on "create externalities". There are lots of educated uses (the criterion for inclusion in a dictionary) of the phrase with the same meaning that I intended.
2 - People "bear" costs they do not "bare" them. (The thought of all those unclothed costs turns my stomach.)
In response, I do as a consumer of any commercial software product does when unhappy: I stopped buying software packages from them.
In all honesty, I was probably a terrible customer. I bought each and every shrink-wrapped release and registered them. But I never used any support, free or otherwise. I'm still using RH9 because "it's not broken" for my purposes, and because there are free aftermarket support solutions that update the RPMs and so forth - so it also isn't all that long in the tooth, despite not being particularly current as a product. But I won't be buying their new commercial packages, and I am not interested, at least at this time, in the Fedora project - I prefer a straight commercial approach, as it is my feeling that there is more (or at least, more timely) drive behind keeping such products working properly.
Anyway, just 2 cents from a former RH customer.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Redhat employees that contributed to the latest 2.6.8 kernel:
e Log-2.6.8 | perl -nlwe 'print $1 if //x ' |sort |uniq |wc -l
$ wget -q -O - http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/Chang
Of course you're just some stupid uninformed troll, otherwise you'd have just looked up this public info yourself on kernel.org.
The lameness filter is useless, and made the above command needlessly verbose.
"... forged in the white-hot fires of online altruism ..."
Okay, this might be nitpicking, but still ...
Unless some developers out there really don't give a rip about their careers or their education, open source developers are working for themselves as much as anyone else. Working on an open source project means learning about the tools and techniques used in that project, plus being able to say "I worked on that project." If someone's just coding as a hobby, and they know everything there is to know, they're still getting enjoyment out of it -- unless we've got some monkish programmers out there ;-)
If nothing else, open source is good for the free exchange of information. And Red Hat is smart for utilising the ambition of the open source movement.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
By thy high UID and constant illogical comments, I figure that th'art either an astroturfer or a troll. Regardless and as noted above *plonk*.
European marketing director Paul Salazar admits there have been plenty of screw-ups along the way but that Red Hat is now working hard to please the open-source community and investors alike. Making money from open source is a balancing act
::sigh:: Sorry if this sounds like a bashing session. I really enjoyed RedHat in the past. Yes, I did purchase quite a number of AS 2.1 and 3.0 servers. I'm supporting them (in case anyone asks).
I know this is going to sound bad but I really believe that Fedora was a big mistake. The previous RedHat releases IMO were MUCH more stable by a long shot than any of the Fedora releases I've used. It feels like alpha software at time. I know people who have had great success with Fedora. For some reason I'm just not all that happy with the uptime.
In all fairness I believe it's probably not all that bad. My experience with it however hasn't been all that great. I've been with RedHat since 4.1 came out. Since Fedora I've switched to other distros including SuSE, Debian and Open/Free/Net BSD.
I'm hoping they will either fix it before releases are available for use or simply dump Fedora and go back to the good old days.
Yes, I've been told Fedora isn't what you should be using for production. In the past I haven't had any problems with production environments running RedHat 7, 8 or 9. Now I wouldn't trust anything to Fedora. I've spent months working with it in a test lab and chatting up a storm on the mail lists.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Minix was cooked up be a teacher in order to teach his class. He was scratching an itch.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Red Hat isn't walking a tight rope. Clearly they have gone totally commercial in their interests. They are thrilled that all of the ISV's are certifying to RHEL. http://blogs.zdnet.com/index.php?p=364 It's also not a question of if Red Hat is good for open-source. Clearly they are. They use their market capitalization to buy code (Sistina..) and move it into the OSS world. Their marketing is purely based on the goodness of the GPL and the OSS model. They champion it relentlessly. The real question is one of distribution competition. Red Hat is cleary happy that its barriers against the other distributions are growing wildly. (Again pay attention to that zdnet link above) ...well so what right?
The so what is the ultimate role we in the OSS world get to play. Are we going to be RHEL partner or pet? Will other distributions have a shot at the big-time, and at directing the Linux movement? If we are talking about using OSS applications it will remain a competition--but here is the catch. RHEL is grabbing all of the proprietary ISV certifications. They are not out to make money with the apache crowd anymore--they are hunting elephant with SAP, Oracle and the PeopleSofts of the world. They know if they can get all of the ISV's they will control most if not all of the real profits to be had in the Linux world, while their pets all scurry about helping them.
2 Final points.
1-Do the math on that quote about 4M per ISV. Red Hat claims 300 ISV's and 1k aps. If you multiply that cost to certify to RHEL out then ISVs have invested somewhere between 300M and 1.2B in their commitment to RHEL. Meaning it would take that much investment to move them all to Debian or some other competing distribution. Then consider SuSu was bought for only 200 million and you see how massive that barrier is. Scary.
2-They called Fedora the 'hobbyist' version. Give me a break! Red Hat spent the last 10 years convincing the world Linux was more than just an OS for hobbyists, and now they turn around and call their true OSS project just that. A RH sales-guy used the term several times in his pitch to me and I about lost it.
So yes they love OSS and the GPL, its what allows them to make a 90% margin. But do they love competing with other distributions and welcome an ongoing and balanced meritocracy? I can't believe that anymore.
Am I missing something here??? It doesn't look good.
Has anyone listend to this audio? I don't have windows media player. Was Red Hat really so glib about stopping competition from other distributions and in-house hacks.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/index.php?p=364
My shares in rhat have been diving the past two weeks so maybe there is a campaign to undermine the company and what they stand for: open source? I am holding onto the shares and still searching for the root cause of the negitivity.
Red Hat has in my opinion had alot to do with bringing Linux to the main-stream. It was my first nonwindows OS (5.1) :) and has alot of sentimental value.
What we have to understand and accept, is that while the core of linux and alot of good apps remain free, and that there will still be alot of free distros, a company has got to make money and do the whole corporate thing. This does have advantages, like getting commercial software, drivers, etc.
There are 2 issues here.
1) The life/death of "Open Source"
2) Having an OS of choice on one's comp.
Redhat has done much to improve both in the past. And at least they're not sueing us or shoving their os down our throughts and making us pay for it. (no names mentioned.)
While the core system and many apps will still be open source, I say let them make and sell a professional system, that may not be completly open source, but that has the potential of loosing the stigma of "garage OS" that linux seems to have. (by no means do i think that, but it is a myth that floats around.)
All I want is more drivers and software.
I want my linux games section back in Frys and gamestop. If Redhat has to sell its soul to The man, so be it. ( all you OSS zealots can install Gentoo )
This is unusually honest description of the GPL by someone that is pro-GPL.
I agree that the GPL isn't about money, but that's not the same as saying that the GPL is revenue-neutral. Clearly it is tougher to make money on GPL'd software than closed source and the existance of GPL'd software puts downward pressure on programmers' wages.
Of course I accept Red Hat's membership in the community. Not that it would matter if I didn't, or if they weren't. Your info is valid. Your attitude...
--
make install -not war
And after they buy MySQL, maybe they'll find a real database vendor to buy.
This type of setup is nothing new, McDonnalds, for instance, has ronnald mcdonnald house, for helping families; you think there doing that because it was a contractual obligation, no. There doing it because it, indirectly, makes them money- the goodwill it generates twoards the company helps cause potential customers to get them instead of others when they want fast food. Open source is not a fast food joint, but simmilar rules apply, if a company wants to earn the goodwill that will cause it to be chosen over another company, it needs to establish that goodwill; with contributions to the community
Part of those contributions, as well as establishing some 'good will' to allow you to be chosen above others, also establishes your level of credibility; like it or not being an open source company is still 'wild west'- lots of fly by night opperations come in and say ther open source, install things, and disapear overnight, sometimes with horribly mismannaged instalations; if your contributing code/bug reports, or setup documents, then you establish a reputation for your coders abilities with that code; a reputation that will show up in google when potential employers are looking you up.
This is not in any way different from the traditional buisness world; if I am simply a company that sets up microsoft systems and administers them, or makes modules for microsoft products, I had best have something that makes me stand out from the crowd as an expert, this can take the form of making free microsoft utilities avalible to all for download, waiting for the few that will be interested in your other services (winzip), creating in depth manuals for use by those who want to do something interesting with there systems (again to attract them to your website to buy your real products), etc.
You don't HAVE to do this, and you can still suceed, if only temporarily; espically if no one else dose what you do, if your a company that deals with open source GIS systems and complete integration with electrical grids and existing setups (or something else very much needed and rather rare) and your very good at what you do, you can give nothing back to the comunity- the lack of 'goodwill' that would cause people to turn to you is irrelivant, your the only one offering that service, however, eventually someone else will come along, and give more back, generating that goodwill, and getting the free development/upgrads/purchases from users/potential customers that that goodwill generates; and they will eclipse you-
And guess what- this is almost exactly what is happeneing to windows; they give very littel back to the 'comunity', and therefore do not have the goodwill to attract the type of people who will simply donate there work: Linux may still be rather immature, but often people WANT to use it, because it's 'feel good software', the linux comunity; though the GPL, free distrobution of code, etc. has generated a great deal of goodwill that makes many people want to use it- even if it's not the best product for the job; and then they help it grow, so that it will be the best prodcut for the job- once again for that goodwill.
Side note:
It is of no co-incidence that many closed source companies are 'open-sourcing' a lot of there stuff now; it's for this goodwill effect: The EXACT same way that companies like Mc-Donnalds fund charities, but in computer and software terms.
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
Investors that demand immediate gains in a business that is by its very nature focused on long term stability are foolish and not worthy of your time. (meaning the OS, its components, what runs on these systems and the personel (or just knowledge) required to maintain it all) If working with and growing from the community "pro bono" is a way of stabalizing yet ensuring growth (market penetration and innovation) then doesn't the whole idea of "investment" come into play here? People say things like "I invested [time, money, effort] and it paid off" meaning that they took one step back to [hopefully] take 2 or more steps forward.
"Satisfying" your investors may mean first weeding out the ones that are fools. Is there money worth the compensation in pain and bad business decisions? If someone invests 1 million dollars but over 2 years because of him you piss off the industry, the users, and the [potential] customers are you really going to say that the 1 million was worth it? How much did it cost you?
If looked at as an extension to a non community driven approach, the system RedHat has adopted has MANY benefits. First they have a wide selection of beta testers. Second they have a wide selection of free developers. Third they ensure training for their pay products and if good spread the word to businesses. Think about it, why is Microsoft usually winning in the server arena? Because everyone is familiar with it. That translates to "safer ground" and lower costs. RedHat understands this. Your benefit is a free OS with pseudo-support from the company.
If elements in the community don't like others "profittering" off their work then they can take their short-sighted and unrealistic selves and join up with the foolish investors and waste their own time.
Care to explain in which way exactly does Fedora suck? Personally I've seen continuous and steady improvement from RH9 to FC1 and now FC2. Many other distributions are also very good, I use a variety both at home and at work, and I can't see any particular problem with Fedora that I can't se in any other distro in one form or another.
If anything, things improved markedly from RH9. The support is better (try it!), access to updates is much easier and automated. The releases so far have been on time and the problems encountered have not been RedHat only (the infamous XP boot bug for example). If anything RHEL 3.0 appears distincly backwards (I also use that one at work occasionally) compared to the niceties of the FC series.
I suspect a lot of people who moved from RH9 to many other distros experienced a similar lever of improvement as if they had stayed with Fedora, and that problems with the distribution have been blown out of proportion.
Fedora users haven't been left to their own devices by a greedy company, quite the contrary. Redhat only botched the PR job.
look to the Novell/SUSE/Ximian deal for a glimpse of the future of Linux in the business world.
i don't think a company selling a free OS can make a profit. i think that all the current Linux distros that are looking to serve the enterprise market will eventually be consumed by it and spit back out as products of those companies running on other products of those companies.
there will still be free distros, the off the wall projects not concerned with enterprise sales, or the projects that offshoot from enterprise projects in an effort from those enterprise vendors to support the OSS community, like Fedora.
OSS programmers will continue to support the community that produces the OS that keeps them employed as Linux admins and developers, and some will work for the Novells and IBMs and contribute that way. i just don't think there will be stand alone distros that are operating to make a profit going ahead.
in this market you have to make sure that you're not seen as a leech or people won't buy your stuff.
Dead on.
Examining that more closely you can determine that "hiding bad actions" or "killing the messenger" can be successful business strategies as long as the cover of darkness can be maintained.
If the risk of exposure is suitably small, then a strict, unconstratined optimization of actions in the free market might indicate that unethical behavior will make you more money.
"Provided by the management for your protection."