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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.
....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
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.
> 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 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
AAAAhhh, debian snob! ;)
I've used debian, so don't take this as an ignorant critism. I can't stand it. Yes, apt-x is cool, there is no middle ground. What if I want a semi-new package, but I don't want to crash my machine using it? Stable is a couple years stale already, unstable is just that, and testing says it all. That leaves me to compile from source, and if I'm going to do that, might as well use slack.
Package management under redhat/fedore has become much better. I don't often run into dependancy problems, and when I do, it's often because I'm trying to get an out of the way package that isn't in a yum repo. Which I can make myself, by the way, with little effort.
Debian maybe what all the cool kids use, but I'll take fedora or RHE when I need to get work done.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Wow -- you can't stand it?
I love it. I've been using it exclusively since 1998 or 1999. But i'm an odd one. I'm young but I have no interest in new stuff -- i just like stability and consistency.
I do use testing. I find it very stable. i used unstable for years. It worked for the most part. The only tricky times would be when major upgrades were happening -- new gnomes, or something like that.
I"m not snoby though. To each his or her own. I just prefer stability to anything. Debian gives me that.
But thank you for the info. I didn't know they'd gotten better. Maybe i'll try them on a extra computer if i come across one.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Unstable and Testing are the Debian categories, because they concentrate on having a rock-solid system, as opposed to running recent software.
Testing level packages are (if I remember correctly, it's been a while since I used straight debian), are what most other distro's have had on their install CD's. Recent, but not the latest versions of the software, and may or may not require upgrading.
Unstable is the latest versions available on the apt-repository. They havent been though the months and years of testing and the like that the debian guys put stuff through.
If you don't like how they do this, but you want to use apt, you can try one of the other Debian based distro's out there (I use libranet) which combine the ease of use of the APT system, but using recent releases of the software. And you can select the level that you want to download from (apt-get -t testing/unstable install packagename)so you can download whatever version you want.
The only time I've had a problem running apt, was actually just yesterday, when I was trying to use their precompiled 2.6.8 kernel package, and all that required to fix was rebooting and selecting the default 2.4.21 kernel.
Asiide from that, my system has been solid.
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.
You are paying (1) to get updates, (2) for their warranty protection, (3) for the right to get tech support from Red Hat and (4) for the (limited) right to use their trademarks on your computer with the software. If those are of no value to you, then don't renew the subscription -- I think all you need to do is edit out their logos and name.
Red Hat's business model is built around adding value to Linux. If none of that added value means anything to you, then don't buy it.
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.
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?
Spoken by someone who clearly doesn't know Debian. This FUD is getting really old for a lot of us. I've been using Debian unstable for at least three *years* with only one catastrophic failure which I solved by booting off my "emergency boot disk" (a Knoppix CD) and reverting the package that caused the problem.
Unstable is constantly *CHANGING*, *not* constantly broken, that's what Debian means by "unstable". If you were more familar with Debian you would also know there *is* a middle ground and there is more to Debian than apt-get. There is aptitude and synaptic, which make it easy to more finely control the updates of your system, allowing you, for example, to only update the things you need and put the rest on hold, so you miss 95% of the minor problems that everyone suffers because they always run apt-get upgrade and update the world once or twice a day, when they probably don't *need* to have the latest and greatest of every package, and they are very unlikely to need it within 24 hours after its been released.
Bottom line: Using Debian Sid *responsibly* (update only what you need, and only once ever 7-10 days, not daily) is just as safe as using any other recently released distro. If it weren't, there wouldn't be so many people like me doing it.
P.S.: Cool kids want to get work done too!