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Is Sun Turning against Linux and Red Hat?
An Elephant writes "Groklaw is reporting,
based on a ZDNet UK story, that Sun's strategy for survival in the near future is based on trying to equate Linux with Red Hat, and then attack Red Hat as too small to support enterprises. This seems strange -- Sun is selling a Linux distro itself (the Java Desktop System). As I write this, there's no mention of this on Sun's website -- neither confirmation nor denial. What's going on?"
inux & Open Source Center Editor Steven Vaughan-Nichols knows that many Linux fans hate Red Hat. His message to them: Get over it.
... no, not Microsoft, but Red Hat. I often hear longtime Linux enthusiasts say things like "Red Hat has betrayed Linux" and "Red Hat wants to be the next Microsoft."
... there's a lot of hate out there aimed at Red Hat.
After SCO, the company most hated by Linux fans is quite possibly
If you look closely, it's not hard to see why so much ire is tossed on Red Hat. Late last year, Red Hat's CEO, Matthew Szulik, said that for home users today, Windows is probably "the right product line." That's sure to win the hearts and minds of Linux fans right there.
Then, Red Hat decided to kill off its low-end Linux distribution: Red Hat Linux. You would have thought from all the screaming in some Linux circles that Red Hat was proposing dog food be made from kittens. Some Linux fans even said Red Hat is on its way to becoming a proprietary software company.
Red Hat's corporate enemies and, in one case, a purported partner--Sun--are jumping on this last point It isn't true, of course. Red Hat is still an open-source company.
What is true, though, is that Red Hat mishandled the affair. Red Hat 9 had a life span of just over a year with its April 2003 release date and its end of support on April 30, 2004. Business customers, who usually expect to get at least three years of work out of an operating system, were as mad as wet hens to find their support disappearing from underneath them. Indeed, there's been enough outrage that several integrators including at least one mid-major Linux vendor--Progeny--are making a business of supporting Red Hat 9 customers.
The release of Fedora, Red Hat's free and cutting-edge Linux distribution, doesn't appear to have been enough for some of these users.
Of course, what Red Hat really wanted was to have its commercial customers switch to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Some Linux fans were outraged because they felt they were being forced to upgrade.
Rant, rave, rant, rave
But you know what? There's nothing new about this. As early as 1999, I was writing stories about people who hated Red Hat for the same general reasons, which boil down to the fact that Red Hat is getting too big for its breeches. Heck, the ill-fated UnitedLinux consortium was in many ways an attempt by other Linux powers to take Red Hat down a peg.
Now, this isn't to say that Red Hat hasn't made mistakes. Both the timing and delivery of its message concerning the end of life for Red Hat 9 were awful. It placed many of its customers in the awkward position of having to upgrade before they were ready. It left others, including yours truly, completely bamboozled as to whether Red Hat would even continue to have a desktop distribution. As it happens, Red Hat is offering a Linux desktop, but there never should have been any doubt.
Nevertheless, the move itself was one that Red Hat had to make. For better or worse, Red Hat has decided that it wants its Linux distribution to be a high-end, profitable business distribution. Given that, the Raleigh, N.C., company had no choice but to leave Red Hat 9 behind so that it would no longer have two competing lines.
You know what? It's been a successful move. Red Hat's last quarter was its best ever. Why? In large part, it was because RHEL sales increased by 87,000 during the quarter while RHEL renewal rates remained at about 90 percent. Red Hat is a profitable Linux company, and it's getting more profitable.
Perhaps that's the real reason why Sun has been so grumpy with Red Hat. Sun is much bigger, but it's been declining, in large part due to competition from Linux in the server market, while Red Hat has been growing.
And maybe too that's the real problem some Linux fans have with Red Hat. The company has always been about open source and profits. To these fans, the idea that Linux is becoming mainstream, that their da
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Your troll-fu shows promise grasshopper. This is one of the better comedy trolls I've seen in a while.
Just ignore the FUD pusher and keep on doing business with Linux. Idiots will eventually show themselves to be just that and then they fade off into obscurity.
Too lazy to create a sig...
You know, you can have morals and operate a successful business.
Tux is not the Rock. The Rock is funny. Tux is never funny. He's a fat, retarded piece of shit. Real men prefer Peng, who besides being a cool logo that doesn't make a grown man embarrassed once held the X-division title.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Yeah, well the original requirements were to create a non-corporate, non-business oriented clone of UNIX for use by hobbiests.
Linux has, in the meantime, grown out of the lazy hobbiest requirements into a full blown industrial strength high performance yet immensely flexible kernel and toolset slash political movement. It has outgrown the fat penguin metaphor. I like the image of the sleek, powerful, art deco Peng, I think it fits. It conveys reliability. Tux conveys a powerful warning about drinking and Down's Syndrome.
And have you ever SEEN a phallus? Mine does not look like that. It's mostly cylindrical with a mushroomy bit at the top. Peng, on the other hand, is distinctly triangular. In fact, the only thing in nature as sleek as Peng that I can think of is, well, a penguin racing through the water.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I have an HP scanner that I can't seem to find a suitable driver for in Linux. I bought an Epson printer because they at least provide SDK's for people to create drivers... ergo it works fine with my Linux servers. The bottom line is that HP isn't supporting Linux even in what I would think is a minimal way by at least creating easily available drivers to go with their product(s).
This equates to me as HP only paying lip service to Linux. i.e. It makes a good advertising line, but let's see them really support it.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.