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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."
Far too many people strive to maximize profits in the present, while neglecting the risk that their actions might cause a disruption in the slow-but-steady cash flow they already have.
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.
It's truely a balancing act. Give away too much and you give away the store, but give away too little and people who you aren't paying will stop doing your work for you...
> 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 often hear people bitching about Red Hat. Sometimes it gets old, bitching about Microsoft I suppose. Not enough bitching about Apple's elitism for damn sure...
I've used RedHat since 5.2, and now I run Fedora, I still have all the functionality and features of any other distro. I'm still not running Windoze. Still compile any kernel or source I need. Still not paying for my OS. And I'm willing to bet my systems are up and running from a blank hard drive a hell of lot quicker than those of the whiners.
RedHat has done more for linux that any company out there, go dig up some stats about which distros corporations are adopting (READ: REPLACING WINDOWS SERVERS) the most. With all due respect - you are *not* going to find Gentoo or Slackware on that list. Suse is still a distant second. Where will Linux hurt the pocketbook of M$ the most? Corporate America, that's where. I'm sorry, but as a linux protagonist, that is where my priorities lie - working on curing the disease that is Microsoft
Despite it's blunders - sociopolitical or otherwise - RedHat has done a LOT for linux and for that we owe them thanks if nothing else.
RedHat is not the enemy.
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
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.
I agree and I think it goes beyond this. Suse Linux is far more pragmatic than Red Hat. We stopped using Red Hat Linux for one simple reason; it doesn't include the software that we use everyday. Suse Linux comes out of the box with: a Java VM, Flash, an MP3 codec, Adobe Acrobat, Conectiva drivers for win modems, NVidia drivers installable through their admin tool, Yast, and the list goes on.
I think the difference is that Red Hat makes an open source Linux distribution and Novell makes a Linux distribution that solves people's problems today. Not all the software I want and need to use is open source. Red Hat wants us to either fork out a ton of cash to get the non-open source software we want and need or they want us to believe we're in this pipe dream thinking that what comes with Fedora is all we need.
Novell is already giving a lot to the open source community and they've proven they can develop enterprise software. Red Hat gives everything to the open source community and is trying to develop enterprise software. I am very pleased with the software Red Hat has produced but Novell has the better business model. Sure Novell might not make RMS happy but I don't pick my software on what makes one man happy. I pick my software on what will get the job done.