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."

Comments

Translation: How do I make money from free stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Best thing that Rad Hat did...

[boudie]

Thank you Red Hat, but I thought the whole idea was to get out from under the thumb of corprorate America. When the representatives of a certain company can't put together 3 sentences about anything without talking about what they owe their shareholders, I lose interest pretty quick. Will Fedora even be around in another year? Suppose it depends on what the shareholders want.

Re:Best thing that Rad Hat did...

[1lus10n]

Redhat is very much is the enemy of people who have been involved in linux for a long time. (ie have a vested interest in seeing it succeed). Redhat gives the community and other linux company's a bad name with the money whoring BS they pull.

I might also point out that redhat has nearly no penetration on the corporate desktop, and THAT is MS's bread and butter, the server share that redhat has came directly from unix, not windows.

RedHat has done more for linux that any company out there

Examples ? Last time I checked without the backing of IBM and the like redhat (like all of linux) would be relegated to "hobby os" status and stuck in the closet instead of in the datacenter.

now I run Fedora, I still have all the functionality and features of any other distro.

When was the last time you used another distro ? Cause regarding the "features" you mentioned, no you dont.

Not enough bitching about Apple's elitism for damn sure...

What the fuck do you think redhat is exhibiting you damn fanboy ?

Still not paying for my OS.

Good to know your the reason redhat got rid of redhat and moved over to the completely over-priced insane corporate model and offered the community the table scraps known has fedora.

Also just for the record the reason that fedora was such a leap forward for redhat was because redhat essentially crippled all development on the "free" versions almost a year before they announced fedora. So there was little/no forward progress until the community was allowed to actively contribute.