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Red Hat Walks The Linux Tightrope

Posted by michael on from the walking-the-linux-plank dept.

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."

1 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. What has Red Hat given to the Linux community? by petrus4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.