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Sun's COO Pretends Linux Belongs To Red Hat
An anonymous reader writes "Ever mindful of minting phrases likely to spread virally through the Net, reports JDJ, Jonathan Schwartz's blogging gifts were used Friday to assert that "it's increasingly evident the OS wars are down to three - Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux." The article comes up with a new angle on one of the most-talked about members of the tech-exec digerati, saying of Schwartz: "He's the Winston Churchill of technology - he mobilizes the English language at least once a week, and sends it into battle against Sun's rivals." But Churchill would never have tried to pull a fast one by disingenuously describing Linux as "Red Hat's Linux" - the community will upbraid him, for certain. Churchill Schmurchill, Schwartz is a technology mischief-maker not a technology statesmen."
At least he doesn't claim it's Sun's Linux.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Thosed that are divided with be conquered?
They should play pretty until they knock off more of the Microsoft market.
Dumb!
Didn't RTFA, but when referring to the various Linux-based operating systems, it's not uncommon to refer to them as "Red Hat's Linux" or "Slackware Linux", etc.
It's just a convenient way of specifying a particular operating system with certain conventions and features. Maybe if you spent a little less time reading blogs and submitting stories to Slashdot and a little more time doing... oh... I don't know... something with Linux... you'd know that.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Red Hat's Linux clearly in this context means Red Hat's version of Linux. Ok, it's ambigous but let's not get stupid with the nit picking.
I think he meant Red Hat's "offering" of Linux, not necessarily implying that they were the only one, just the only contender at that level.
"Kinky sex involves the use of duck feathers. Perverted sex involves the whole duck." - Lewis Grizzard
There are now over 12 million Mac OS X systems in use (source: 23:40 of WWDC keynote). According to Apple, this eclipses shipments by all other UNIX/UNIX-like system vendors. Apple is the single largest vendor of "UNIX-based"[1] systems in the world. (Probably over 13 million now, according to sales since then.)
"With the release of Mac OS X, Apple became the largest vendor of Unix in the world"
More...
[1] Please, whether or not Mac OS X is or isn't "UNIX" or "Unix" or "UN*X" or "UNIX-based" or "UNIX-like" or "not UNIX", etc., etc., etc., is the subject of another discussion, and really derails the essential, widely accepted concept (by normal, sane people, anyway) that Mac OS X is "UNIX"-based.
Unlike SCO, which claims that they're precious source code was stolen, Schwartz instead presumes that Red Hat's software development works exactly like Sun's or Microsoft's OS division. It's just a matter of tiny minds.
This is made obvious not only by this comment but by others he has made in the past (see Groklaw etc.)
Sun has to make a living somehow. Linux has already eaten into its marketshare. Not only sun wants to bad mouth linux it has started selling Windows too. Refer to this article http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=135547&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =1&liChannelID=9&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage= 1/
or for that mather SCO's
I don't agree what he is saying is that Linux belongs to Red Hat. He said Red Hat's Linux. Meaning, the distribution of Linux Red Hat sells. If I say "Bob's HTML is the best", does everyone assume I'm implying that he created HTML? No. They know I am referring to the HTML Bob writes.
That's not my view however.
Oh come on people, this should NEVER suprise you when a CEO,CTO, COO,CFO or other moron in the executive offices says something stupid.
they certianly are not hired for their smarts.
they are hired for their SALES ability.
they are all nothing more than high profile sales people... and we all know what kind of people are in sales.
"Red Hat's Linux" could be parsed as:
"Linux, which belongs to Red Hat"
or
"That Linux which belongs to Red Hat"
In this case the latter is accurate and is probably what was meant.
---
Side note -- another way to express the second choice is:
"The Linux that belongs to Red Hat"
By adding the article, you clearly indicate that you refer to one of many linuxes. To me, this control of definite/indefinite and countable/uncountable is one of the strongest and most unusual features of English -- although other European languages have it to some degree.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Everyone should admit that for North America at least Red Hat has the major market share for Linux distribution. From what I have read it sounds as if SuSE has a foothold in Europe, but from Sun's North American perspective it's pretty much true. I'm sure (as others have pointed out) he probably meant Red Hat's version or distribution of Linux, but even if he didn't he's pretty much on target.
As much as I don't like Schwartz, he's talking about sales, not who owns linux. The use of "Red Hat's Linux" is used to distinguish which version of linux he's referring to, not to whom it belongs.
Why is this news? Such "tech digeratis" do this all the time. Why is he an exception? Is it because he works for Sun? That doesn't make him a technical person.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
He said:
"it's increasingly evident the OS wars are down to three - Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux."
Did it occur to anyone, that perhaps he just believes the Red Hat distro to be the only distro of any real threat to Windows, and Solaris (of course, doesn't mean he's correct). Why is that statement taken as him attributing the Linux kernel to Red Hat?
In America, yes. Not in many parts of Europe, and increasingly not in the UK.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux
It appears people may be reading too much into this. To my eyes it looks like a listing of commercial OSs along with their vendors: Windows from Microsoft, Solaris from Sun, and Linux from Red Hat. Yes, there are other commercial Linux distros. Yes, there are a lot of other Linux distros, period. The question is this: how many of these are viable contenders in the market[s] shared by Solaris and Windows? And of those, how many are as easily recognized as Red Hat?
The statement above just clarifies that Red Hat's Linux is the particular distro under consideration. I don't believe it is a plot to assign ownership of all things Linux to Red Hat.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Solaris isnt even on the radar. Including Sun's OS in that statement just makes me laugh.
What about Novell? They bought Suse which was a strong distro, and Ximian which holds the track-record for providing cool UI's for Linux.
What are their ambitions? They have a couple of very nice cards to play - why don't they?
On another, but related, note, what made FreeBSD (as OS X) the success it became once Apple added UI? The Apple brand and hardware? What does it take for Novell to get the same level of recognition?
A worried shareholder..
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
Well it is true that Red Hat has the highest market share out of all Linux servers.
h t_linux_market_share_loss_for_red_hat.html
According to Netcraft, most Linux servers are running Red Hat:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/07/12/slig
The other distributions each by its own numbers do not make a difference at all!
Red Hat is single handedly the most easy to use and biggest known Linux brand name. Most of the IT people I know use Red Hat interchangably with Linux. It's like Kleenex or Aspirin Aspirin. It has become an every day household name.
Has everyone forgotten that Sun produces their own Linux distribution, Java Desktop System?
It seems rather clear to me that he is referring to the Linux distribution created by Red Hat.
That RedHat=Linux.
--dingletec--
..burn that Sun, burn it !
... it already does.
Oh wait,
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Anyway, I think the comment applies to servers. With IBM selling its PC division, the company will be heavily committed to Unix-likes for survival - M$ may be the 300 pound gorilla, Sun sees itself as a raptor, but IBM is a tyranosaurus - no speed but lots of weight and sizable claws. It's a dangerous mistake to count out the animal that is too big to see :)
This is not a signature.
"it's increasingly evident the OS wars are down to three - Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux."
It could be taken that way...But did anyone for a second stopped and thought that that just means that redhut is considered as the only major player that is worth considering, the biggest most commercial distribution?
That statement doesn't immediately mean that redhut owns linux. They just own hajority of the of the linux market share.
Atleast it seems obvious to me.
true - i'm no expert, but i would say that most enterprise customers are not going to be too chuffed about running their airline reservation system/power station/supply chain on gentoo's linux, or even for that matter debian's linux.
if something goes wrong then basically you need support, you need someone take liability and fix the problem. with windows that organisation is MS, with solaris it is sun, and hey at the moment, most of the time, with linux, it's red hat.
i'm trying to give up sigs.
"it's increasingly evident the OS wars are down to three - Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux."
Well, I would say down to two. It is left as an exercise to reader to figure out which one should be left out. In addition one of the remaining OS's should have the vendor prefix removed.
How is the slashdot crowd so desperate for anti-SCO news that it would sink low enough to post such non-news such as this?
Everyone says that blogs are the news of the future, the new wave in journalism. However, one idiot who wasn't trained in English usage--unlike trained journalists--makes some mistake like this, and it is taken up by the "blogsphere" and repeated.
Sure, blogs are the news source of the future, but only because the general level of intellegence of North American is falling at an alarming rate. Case in point, this slashdot sumbission.
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..ims," writes Jonathan Schwartz in his latest blog, HP "will only continue to deco...
"After years of protesting Sun's cla....
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My eyeballs just fell off the table.. *groan*
Is it possible that he's merely referring to Red Hat's distribution of Linux? Maybe that's the only distribution he considers a real threat, eh? Maybe you should just relax and focus on the subtle nuances of the English language instead of running off into the sunset with your torches and pitchforks?
Or we can form a rabble, if you want. I'm always up for a good riot.
my theory: Schwartz works for Slashdot and is a genius in creating material on days when Amazon.com failures, apple/IBM partnerships, and Google Groups conspiracies are relatively rare. may the Schwartz be with you!
respek. http://www.ubersite.com/m/19993/
Martini Glasses
Now that we all agree he was talking about Red Hat's flavour of Linux, and not Linux as a whole, can we stop this silly thread?
... as he did in an earlier blog entry.
Or maybe we're both misreading things?
Leaving aside the fact that he probably (may have) meant 'Redhat's version of Linux', he's still wrong to ignore other distributions, such as Novell/SuSE.
Red Hat's linux? These people talk like they have no idea what linux really is. They make it sound like windows, "ZOMG THERE IS ONLY ONE LINUX" - It's rather silly. The fact that they picked redhat for linux to belong to only makes it funnier.
Sure Redhat, Windows and Sun are big player. But what about Apple or SUSE Linux? I think there are still a few more fighters in the ring.
"it's increasingly evident the OS wars are down to three - Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux."
The main mistake is calling it an OS war while it is more of an OE (Operating Environment) War. Microsoft Windows is actually 2 different core OS DOS and NT, Solaris is an OE of Sun OS which is Unix, and Red Hat is an OE of Linux. But putting the OS vs OE aside because OE is not as popular as OS in usage. So Red Hat's Linux the guy was talking about Red Hat's Distribution or OE of Linux not saying that Red Hat owns Linux. If I made my own distribution of Linux it would be Jellomizer's Linux. With a community designed OS Linux both belongs to no one and everyone at the same time. He is not saying that other versions of Linux don't exist just the opposite. But Red Hat in the enterprise is the Major Big League player.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is clearly just a Sun bigot wishing they were more successful in the marketplace.
I think that a more interesting comparison is between *nix-derived systems and Windows. That would lump Solaris, Linux (all flavors), BSD (all flavors, including OS X), and AIX into one pool, which is sizeable enough to make a definite presence on Microsoft's radar.
The corporate culture encourages bullying.
Let's see now, corporations are authoritarian, expansionist, competitive; whereas fascism was authoritarian, expansionist, and militarily competitive.
Hmm.... could corporations be the new fascism? Oh but wait, fascism doesn't entertain the kids with men dressed up like clowns like McDonalds does. I forgot.
Not true with the people I've talked to recently, linux users obviously know what it is( and seem to be using suse, slackware or Fedora. Newbies know its not just redhat even with the trend to use Fedora. And non-users often have not even herd of redhat at but definatly Linux or Unix. Among non-users there seems to be more confision of what unix, linux and the BSD's are. I heard quite a few people who thing linux is used in MacOS X even
=1000101
IIRC, IBM recently partnered with Novell/SuSe, and that alone would make a pretty convincing case to look at that particular distro, in either a SOHO or Enterprise environement. Coupled with IBM's services group, server hardware products the SuSe's enterprise class distro is a robust a complete product. And, IBM, after all has one of the largest services group in the industry.
Me, I switched away from Red Hat when they did away with their RHL9 support some time ago. I have never looked back and see no reason whatsoever to look at the OS's that Sun touts as "the choices" in their blog-vertisements.
Red Hat killed it when they decided to focus on the "Enterprise". I suppose this is why Sun is upset. IMO, they should be glad that RH is so short-sighted. Doing away with RHL will be recorded by history as the most foolish move that Red Hat made during its brief lifetime.
Xandros & Linspire would not exist were it not for the demise of RHL. So, you may say, what do home users have to do with the "Enterprise"? Everything. People like to use what they know. They know Windows from home, so it's natural to use it at work... the same could have been true for RHL.
But it's far more likely that he meant Red Hat's Linux in the sense that, "the flavor of Linux that Red Hat produces" - which probably makes commercial sense in that context.
Besides, it's just a blog, for cryin' out loud. If Sun officially made such a statement it's another thing.
For all you know, it's just the way he writes - people often use colloquialisms in informal writings, such as Blogs. Doesn't mean a thing.
Remember the time he and HP had a problem?
"Red Hat's Linux" sounds like it's referring to their distro of it to me. Linux is a generic term--I think the author intended to pair them rathern than make them mutually inclusive. And he's right--in the enterprise, Red Hat's version of Linux is pretty damn strong. Cheer. It's a good thing.
Spin, marketing, or whatever you call it. Welcome to the world of business. If you haven't noticed, the best product doesn't win--the marketing does. VHS vs Beta. Fight the battles you can win--the ideological battles being waged out there are not always the smartest ones to fight. I think this is one of them. Be happy Linux is on that list--split hairs later. Let the big companies who *like* linux spin it however they want.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
According to this article in eWeek, Sun thinks Linux has forked and Red Hat made their own version. It's all part of their open source posturing. They don't really want to make Solaris open source because it would just get picked over to improve Linux. They want to get open source advantages while still not giving up control. That's why they came up with their not-so-open source license. But if they're not going to go all the way with open source, it would help if their opponents are not-so-open either. Hence, the bad-mouthing of Red Hat.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Wasn't there an article on /. that said this is what sun's strategy is going to be to fight linux? It would have been nice if a link to that previous story was posted in the summary. I cant seem to find it through the search. Can some please post the link here? Or did I see it somewhere else?
It is fun to take shots at Sun for all the outrageous things they say, but this is a real problem I think we in the Linux community are turning a blind eye to.
As far as the business world is concerned (which is where most of the Linux penetration is, we're just not hitting the home desktop yet) RedHat IS Linux. When they buy apps (the business people have to buy big honking databases and app servers and such) they don't buy them with a plan to tweak them to make them work on their favorite OS like we would. They buy them with a certification that it works on a particular OS. And almost entirely, that server is RedHat ES (note that it is NOT Fedora).
We in the Linux community, in our eagerness to see Linux usurp the evil giant in Redmond are pretty much ignoring the sly thief in Raleigh. RedHat is running away with Linux and we're cheering them on.
would have referred to SCO's reason behind its repeated attempts to co-opt Linux as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma".
I will confess that the blogosphere is a largely unknown entity to me...although if the blog's contribution is representative of puerile line noise such as this, it would seem I'm not missing very much.
/. for a while now that I don't think Debian "is" Linux, and it goes without saying that I'm not going to think Dead Rat is Linux's exclusive or most important representative either.
Schwartz has simply declared himself to be just another corporate lapdog...this is the sort of garbage that gets churned out on a routine basis by ZDNet in particular...Maybe he should work for them, if he isn't already.
As for his moronic and completely oblivious assertion...I've been telling the sheep here on
Dead Rat exist primarily for the benefit of the corporate world. Yes, they've made some contributions to the more honest group that use Linux, but their primary purpose is to demonstrate to the mindless denizens of the corporate landscape that yes, it IS possible to make a cracker with Linux. So for the purpose of unutterably stupid androids such as Schwartz, I suppose Dead Rat could be looked at as a focal point of Linux.
The thing we know and he doesn't though (or doesn't care about, take your pick) is that Dead Rat are one among many. They most definitely are not all there is...and their contributions notwithstanding, thank God for that.
In terms also of blogging being the next wave of journalism...again, if this is the sort of material that blogs customarily produce, then that is entirely possible. It would at least be consistent with the rest of journalistic history, if nothing else.
What do you mean just Schwartz's mindset? Most people think that nothing can be produced of quality by an army of volunteers - and a lot of those people are making the purchases. Even people that I've explained it to don't get it no matter how much I explain it. RedHat is the big, well known brand in Linux. I don't think Sun would ever consider something like Debian a competitor (even though it's the most bang for my buck).
I don't think it is just Schwartz. I think that he is catering to all the managers out there who think that way.
Yet another "editorial" solely posted here to pander to the Sun-bashing crowd on Slashdot. Perhaps it might be fun to have a pop at HP or IBM for a change?
he's just "whistling past the cemetary" to ignore OSX and the BSDs. If yesterday's /. discussion of the potential of an IBM/Apple alliance were more than talk of rumors, there would definitely be a "final four" with OSX gaining customers and not lacking for longterm funding.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
If he was refering then, to Red Hat's distrobution of linux, he's incorrect. Doesn't SuSE have more installs world wide?
So it's down to Microsoft ( Default Choice )
Sun ( Server only )
SuSE ( Best god damn operating system ever put together )
I'm not bias
*DrugCheese rants*
Mr Fujio Cho, president of Toyota, was quoted as saying "Honda's mid sized SUV no good." Clearly, Mr Cho was saying Honda owns all that is, in essense, the mid-sized SUV.
Good lord, people...
Sun has their own Linux platform as well, ya know. All Schwartz was doing is comparing the enterprise-ready offerings that appear to be dominant in the market. It was a freaking COMPLIMENT, if anything at all. And really, AIX is still a strong contender, and if it weren't for IBM making it obvious they're moving to Linux, AIX would be just as strong a contender as Solaris.
There's "Redhat's Linux," theres "SuSE's Linux," there's "Gentoo's Linux," etc etc. SuSE has a very strong desktop presense, but RH is definately the strongest linux distro in the enterprise market, and in the US desktop market.
Knee-jerk, anyone? Can people stop trying to find weird ways to twist what others say for just a moment, collect their bearings, and realize for once that they're silly?
Somebody break this one down for me and explain it... this guy is similar to a UK First Lord of the Admiralty and war time prime minister because he a> 'mobilizes the English language at least once a week' and then b>talks about how his company is better than another computer company..
err...
Everybody knows SCO own Linux.
Shit. Read the text - where does he "pretend that Linux belongs to RH"? He says that it's down to three players in OSs - Win, Solaris, and _a_ Linux distro from RedHat. What? It's his opinion (funny one - definitely _overall_ MacOSX is no less a player than Solaris, but nonetheless). He does not say that RedHat owns Linux - or so I read - he just says that he does not consider SuSE's Linux, Slackware's Linux etc to be competitors to Solaris.
BTW - Solaris looked to be a nice system last I mingled with it, but marketing is marketing. Also - no need to bash RH more than they deserve, they still probably have their karmic value in black, despite the "let's make a name and then charge the suckers" move of recent times. But that's the nature of businesses, I realistically expect Google, for example, to pull the same in due time.
Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map
Use it lest ye be +e# $Uxx0Rz.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
1.) With regards to the Churchill references, Winston was not above rhetoric that served his purposes, which is pretty clearly the case here.
/. crowd for no good reason, like all the tricks the mainstream writers used to pull in '98 and '99 to get /. eyeballs to their sites. An advertisement for Sybase is at the top of this page, /. wouldn't have earned money from Sybase if I hadn't that that this article was such an obvious troll.
2.) Within context, I think he can claim to be correct in referring to "Red Hat's Linux". Not, as anon. reader so reactionarily supposes that he means that Red Hat owns or *is* Linux, but that the "OS wars" are down to those three vendors.
3.) If Schwartz is to be condemned for anything, IMHO, it's for putting Solaris in the mix. Solaris, is relegated to serving niche purposes.
This seems to be inflammation of the
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
I agree with others and don't necessarily believe he meant "all your Linux are belong to Red Hat." I thnk the more interesting story is that he thinks the 3 players are Sun, M$, and Red Hat. I think this is more a way of distributing propaganda than anything else. Sun has seemed to be in campaign mode and if they can burn into the psyche of the public Sun, Microsoft, and Red Hat (oh my!) then they keep themselves in the mix. Negating Novell in this is a huge mistake but it's outside the scope of what they are trying to accomplish with this "story."
I don't think too many people here have actually in fact read John Schwartz's blog.
Extracted from his blog (his words):
Red Hat does not equal linux, and linux is not evil. But, linux in the enterprise datacenter (that is, not your basement or startup or dorm room or gamebox) does equal Red Hat - and competing against a company is what we do for a living
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/2004072
But really the OS wars are down to two: POSIX/*nix/whatever you want to call it and Windows Technology(r), and there are two wars, one for the desktop and one for the server (lets ignore embedded for the moment).
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
the actual extract came from the link *to* the URL posted above; you can grep for it at the main page
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan
...as the intro paragraph hints with "phrases likely to spread virally through the Net", all it really takes for something like that to cause big problems is for one of the mass-media outlets to get ahold of it (insidious little phrases like that have a way of making it onto the evening news or into the morning paper all too often) and, since judges and legislators seem to be more influenced by information they get from the (clueless) media than by actual professionals (or even actual hobbyists!) in whatever given field... well, you know the rest.
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
"Red Hat's" Linux simply distinguished it from "Suse's Linux", Mandrake's", etc, etc. The only implication is that Schwartz sees RH as the most important brand/distro or whatever, according to his commercial criteria, which may be debateable, but hardly insulting to "the community".
Why didn't the submitter link to the actual blog, instead of someone else selectively quoting from it? Schwartz's blog is here:
And he followed it up with an explanationHow about the fucking submitter, or editor, RTFA before wasting everyone's time with a beatup like this?
...or Novell, or IBM.
Sun is also trying to distract from the fact that the biggest "software as a service" vendor on the planet also stands behind Linux.
Schwartz is trying to flimflam everyone into believing that Linux doesn't also include Novell, SGI and IBM. Each of those players is in some way superior (far superior depending on who you ask) than Sun.
He's trying to distract everyone from the giants while screaming about the midget.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
90% of PEOPLE have never heward of linux. Of the minority that have, 90% have never heard of RedHat, SUSE, Debian or any other distro, and just know it as "Linux, that strange geeky thing that geeks use". The rest of us fall intot he 1% of "know what we are talking about". Not a large %.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
You guys are really reading into this the wrong way.
All that he's asserting is that it's Red Hat's flavor stands the best chance of taking marketshare.
That's actually MORE tech-savvy than just saying the L word like everyone else. When you read the quote, think in terms of the COO and marketshare, not in terms of Richard Stallman.
(puts on fire resistant suit)
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
It's Redhat's GNU/Linux. Please, be clear!
... and Ive just finished installing debian on a sparcstation 10!
At the corporation I work at all our LINUX is RedHat, and thats because its on systems we bought from IBM.
Senior managers feel safer with IBM support, rather than a small LINUX distribution. If IBM ditched RedHat I guess we would follow.
I'm tired of reading "JS said this, wrote that". The guy is obviously speaking out of his ass and the only way he knows to attract attention is "to be controversial". I distinctly remember that Sun's BoD or shareholders tried to gag him several times because he costs the company too much, not only in public reception.
While SCO stories have some value as entertainment, JS seems to be more boring each time. How can I filter my Slashdot front page to remove stories about Schwartz?
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Hmm but all the other distributions together make up a lot more than 50% of the total linux marketshre. A statement like that is an attempt to cut down the significance of the total by reducing it only to Redhat's share.
What next? Complaining that he didn't call it Red-Hat GNU/Linux??
Whatever.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
> But Churchill would never have tried to pull a
> fast one by disingenuously describing Linux as
> "Red Hat's Linux"
Of course he would have had he thought he could get away with it. A statesman is just a dead politician.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
they call it Java Desktop, of course.
Mod parent up! The article is not newsworthy.
AnimeNEXT anime convention
Schwartz mentions that HP's currently having a crisis due to a dying HP-UX market. I thought HP was primarily a hardware company?
We all know that Schwartz's blog just isn't aimed at geeks! He's aiming at suns critics on wall street, analysts and some of suns customers. He's using that wonderful marketspeak which he does so well. :-)
:-)
He seems to be doing a good job of it too as people keep reporting what's on his blog on various news sites
Schwartz is keeping up the company's marketing blitz on Red hat, as they were (and probably still are) losing sales to RHEL. This is a Solaris Vs RHEL thing not a Solaris Vs Linux thing.
all your linux are belong to redhat?
Churchill was a famed speechwriter, and greatly admired in his time for his rhetorical and debating abilities. This is what I assumed the quote referred to.
Don't just mod the parent up, update the article with that second blurb. Not everyone reads comments on slashdot.
"[1] Please, whether or not Mac OS X is or isn't "UNIX" or "Unix" or "UN*X" or "UNIX-based" or "UNIX-like" or "not UNIX", etc., etc., etc., is the subject of another discussion, and really derails the essential, widely accepted concept (by normal, sane people, anyway) that Mac OS X is "UNIX"-based."
Mac OS X is the M & M of computers. Candy Coated shell with a Chocolate BSD center.
JDJ is a "SYS-CON Media Publication"
Also, this asshat's earth-shaking statements have generated a grand total of 9 comments in 2 days.
"Churchill Schmurchill, Schwartz is a technology mischief-maker not a technology statesmen."
And that's different from Churchill how?
...are belong to RedHat!
ok, firefox has this about:config. has thunderbird something similar ? some hidden creepy configuration parameters =)
Rich
Hint : these are not posessions
It's not as bad as it sounds -- he's just saying that Red Hat is one of the three remaining systems in the OS Wars, as he sees it. Red Hat probably is the most popular Linux distribution, but on the other hand there are probably other Linux distros that are as popular as Solaris. Speaking of which, as has already been said, there are more than 12 million installations of Mac OS X, and I understand it's starting to pick up a bit of speed in the server and high-performace markets, especially servers, due to the low cost of Xserve G5s.
No need to explain. Crap metaphor says it all.
Winston Churchill was one of the greatest people of the past century. We all owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. Here is a starting point for a glimpse into his life. He was also the master of the snappy comeback. My favorite: "Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your coffee. Winston: If I were your husband, I'd drink it."
Schwartz also seems to think "linux" is the generic technology name and "Linux" is Red Hat's name for it. Look through any of his older posts and notice "Solaris", "HP-UX", "Windows", "Java", but always "linux" unless he's talking about Red Hat. (In one egregious case, note "JDS/linux" alongside "JDS/Solaris" and "JDS/Windows".) He abuses the trademark whenever he feels like it. Wonder if he believes in IP belonging to Linux as well.
useful link!
This is a no brainer: if you are using Oracle, and want to use Linux, then you have to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is the only thing that is supported.
Of course you could switch to MySQL or Postgres, but now you have convince the IT guys to swich operating systems and databases at the same time. That just doesn't happen.
This is a complete non-story. "Red Hat's [version of] Linux" is what what was obviously intended.
(Actually, technically it would be "Red Hat's [operating system for which their own tweaked version of the] Linux [kernel is used]," but we all know that "Linux" is used to refer to operating systems using the Linux kernel, no matter how much any of us hates it. )
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Schwartz must still be dreaming.
my top three are
Microsoft windows
Linux
and FreeBSD
I dont know where he got his "SUN OS" in
The kernel *is* the operating system. Linux is most definitely an operating system...upon which multiple distributions or what one might refer to as operating *environments* are built. Basically, Windows is both an operating system (NTKRNLPA.EXE, NTOSKRNL.EXE, etc.) and operating environment (EXPLORER.EXE, IEXPLORE.EXE, etc.) bundled together...which compares to where the Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, etc. folks come in: bundling the operating system with an operating environment. (Frankly, I like Core Linux for an operating system and environment bundle.)
Windows does compare to Linux (infavorably, imho). It is perfectly legitimate to compare the various parts of the operating system. It's like saying the Chevy 454 engine is better than some gasoline-electric hybrid engine.
It just so happens that Microsoft has tightly coupled a bunch of things into its operating system that Linus, et. al., have left to third parties...prefering instead to make an awesome engine around which a car can be built (using your analogy). Microsoft just decides the cigarette lighter should be embedded in their engine...where many might believe it doesn't belong.
All that aside, let us not forget: the job of the operating system is to be an interface between the hardware and the applications the user wishes to run...Linux, all by its lonesome, is that. If one of the apps you want to run is X or bash or something else, fine.
Something around 280ish currently in English.
The question is this: how many of these are viable contenders in the market[s] shared by Solaris and Windows?
SuSe, backed by Novel, is a viable contender. Mandrake and Debian are not utterly out of the running. And the multitude of contenders in the wings will leave anyone trying to wipe Linux off the map in a protracted whack-a-mole (or penguin) game. For that matter, the BSD *nix flavors ought not be ruled out ofthe running, although they're more of a long shot and largely non-commercial.
On the other hand, if a time traveller were to call me and tell me that in five years a Linux distribution would wipe out either Windows or Solaris and asked me to guess which distro did it... I'd guess Red Hat. (I'd also guess Solaris.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Yes, and so he should have mentioned the operating systems that still matter: "increasingly evident the OS wars are down to Microsoft Windows, Red Hat's Linux, SuSe Linux, Debian Linux, and Macintosh OS X".
According to DistroWatch interest in RedHat is at 14 and falling. There were 270 pages hits for RH and about 9,500 for the 13 distros above RH. That's a 2.8% market share for the top 14 Linux distros, worldwide.
i l298.ht ml),
...
FC, MDK, SUSE, MEPIS and Debian are the top 5.
Not very impressive if corporate users also contribute pages hits to DistroWatch.com, otherwise it doesn't mean anything for corporations.
Schwartz is very well read, very quick on his feet, has the gift of gab and dominates all discussions he takes part in, if for no other reason than others can't get a word in edgewise.
As the newest member of the "Gilmour Gang"
(http://www.itconversations.com/shows/deta
which is an excellent show, btw, he controlled the discussion and turned it into a 40 minute Sun advert with the other guest reeling from his rapid fire assertions, claims, statistics and humor. I'll wager he talked his way to the top of Sun.
He knows that there are other versions of Linux on the market besides RedHat. He also knows the difference between preferences of Americans and those of Europeans. He also knows that the GNP of the EU about matches the GNP of America. He knows that SUSE dominates the EU corporate market like RH dominates the US corporate market. He knows that Solaris has no chance in the EU. So, as a corporate mogul he knows his competition in corporate America is RedHat. RedHat replaced Sun in the server room so all of Sun's guns are leveled at RH and Schwartz is firing away with everything in his arsenal, including his mouth.
Unfortunately, Sun has a record they can't escape from, and one they don't appear too apologetic about. Funding SCO, settling with MS (Schwartz's idea?), withholding OpenOffice from their corporate umbrella of MS lawsuit protection, entangling alliances with MS, repeatedly badmouthing the GPL, Linux and Open Source,
Why would a corporation leave one single source proprietary hegemony merely to embrace another?
They won't.
--
GreyGeek
this was true about 5 years ago, but now they also support SuSE Enterprise Server, and two flavours of Asianux Inside. For existing Oracle products shipped with United Linux support (new products will NOT be supported on UL), they support TurboLinux and Conectiva powered by Unitied Linux 1.0.
I think he meant Red Hat's "offering" of Linux, not necessarily implying that they were the only one, just the only contender at that level.
Yes: that is exactly why it bothers people, since Schwartz's statement is both arrogant and wrong.
SuSE is at least as much of a contender than RedHat. Debian is arguably even more important.
On the other hand, Sun Solaris is already out of the running and not a serious contender anymore.
The stategy for killing off linux is to marginalize it to a single company, and then kill off that company. Some of the details are here. "Microsoft and Sun know they can attack Red Hat's limited resources and create doubts around its product and the company's support."
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Were he to point out the growing threat of SuSE Linux too, he would be giving Novell/SuSE and IBM some free advertising. I see even HP now sells their high-end x86 servers with the option of SuSE install/support in addition to RedHat. Oracle supports SuSE Enterprise Server (despite the continuing urban legend they only support RedHat; they support six brands of Linux distros.
Only Sun thinks Solaris is "in the running". To everyone else, it's one of those dead OS's like HPUX, Tru64, AIX, or IRIX.
(BTW, I know that those are all still modern UNIXes, but they're seriously on the decline--just like Solaris.)
"Wow. Why do people think the only place Macs are used are in "design"?"
Perhaps because that's the image fostered by the Apple community.
Or to put it in a more familiar context. You reap what you sow.
At the end of the day if Redhat Linux was nearly as robust and industry prooven as Solaris was 5years. Taking into account that Redhat and linux in general has come along long way especially since the introduction of the 2.6 kernel series. Its still not as industry prooven and its support policies at an enterprise level are often more than c*ap. We have several hundred *nix *bsd and linux of various breeds.. At the end of the day we pay for our Enterprise linux subscription and the only godo thing about that is rhn. but enen that has heavy limitations. Especially when trying to run with Redhat and Dell hardware or VIA motherboard IDE chipsets. Often requiring special kernel compiles etc to make it work correctly. I personally if it was my choice would remove all redhat systems from our business and replace them with other flavors of linux. Basing this move on a) way over grown dependancies that clog everything up. b) shit performance at the top end. Requires heavy modifications to get it to really perform. possibly due to the huge amount of dependancies and large binarys running. c) support from redhat is crap we support all our own systems in house and have at least 20 high quality unix / linux system administrators. We dont have issues except when we want to get BUGS FIXED. Releasing a bugzilla can take months for what we would classify as critical bugs. With our sun support contract those bugs are often fixed fairly fast or advised how to make the work around to resolve issues. Im not saying that linux is a crap OS im just saying that Redhats Business model needs alot of improving before becoming what they see themselves as being. Clearly both redhat and sun see themselves through rose colored glasses.
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
There are now over 12 million Mac OS X systems in use (source: 23:40 of WWDC keynote).
That's Apple's claim. Where are the facts to back up that claim?
Apple is the single largest vendor of "UNIX-based"[1] systems in the world. (Probably over 13 million now, according to sales since then.)
That's a meaningless statistic. Apple's OS is probably still far behind UNIX or Linux in terms of absolute installed numbers. The fact that it has large proprietary components and comes from a single vendor is a disadvantage, not an advantage.
It's GNU/RedHat's Linux!!!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
This is slashdot. We constantly call things the wrong names, attribute the wrong functionality to the wrong things, etc. I think we're in no position to get on our collective high-horse and pretend this actually matters.
The statement above just clarifies that Red Hat's Linux is the particular distro under consideration. I don't believe it is a plot to assign ownership of all things Linux to Red Hat.
I fully agree that that was his intent. What it really is is either a profound misjudgement of the Linux market on the part of Schwartz (implausible), or a deliberate distortion of the facts. In reality, SuSe, Debian, and OS X are far more important operating systems than Solaris, and Schwartz should know that. By distorting the truth, Schwartz is just trying to inflate the importance of Solaris.
Someone care to enlighten me (or Jon) how Sun helped to "found" the FSF ? AFAIK, SunOS was never free. And RMS was sitting in his cubbyhole in MIT churning out Emacs and talking up GNU long before Sun jumped on the bandwagon.
I for one am so glad he is way behind the times in his information.
.
redhat was the defacto linux in datacenters 3 years ago.
today it's Novell's offering. and that is increasing fast as redhat refuses to do what is needed to keep their headway that they had.
Redhat was on its way to being numero uno. now they are rapidly falling to last place with prices and contracts that suck as bad as microsofts.
We started switching to the Novell offering 3 weeks ago ripping out all the older redhat systems
this trend will continue and bury redhat into a footnote in histroy.
and if the COO if sun thinks that redhat is on top, he is a complete fool.
So people are irritated he didn't explicetly say Red Hat's Version of Linux, or Distribution of Linux. Geez folks, give people a break and try to look at what they mean.
I don't remember where, but I believe there was a previous article (also on /.) that mentioned Sun's marketing premise was to first get the market to associate Linux with a single company, in this case Red Hat, and then go after them specifically.
The problem for Sun is that Linux is available from a variety of sources. They try to compete against companies, and now face competing against a movement.
Someone figured out that if they could associate Linux with a single vendor, then they could launch what they hope to be an effective marketing effort by targetting that vendor individually.
To me, this is not an accident, and is part of a deliberate marketing ploy Sun is hoping to use to combat the threat of Linux to their platform. While Sun iron makes a lot of sense on the high end, they continue to face increasing pressure at the high end from IBM, and at the low end from PC based servers. And, Linux runs on that entire range of hardware. I'm sure Sun's profit margins are a lot slimmer, especially on their higher volume equipment, than in the past. It's the lower priced, higher volume equipment that Sun faces the biggest challenge, IMO, from Linux.
I would like to know what percentage of their overall revenue comes from higher volume sales v. the rest of their line and products. If I get motivated enough, I'll look up their financials to see if they are split out like that.
Plus, with Oracle promoting Linux for their databases, Sun can't just rest on its laurels for high-end databases. Especially with Oracle's Linux clustering. Think about it. Oracle is another very expensive layer for enterprises. Oracle can use Linux to lower the effective total operating costs of an installation. This is what Sun is competing against now. It seems to me, that in some significant way, that Oracle is helping push Sun towards commoditizing their hardware/software similar to how Intel is now. The margins are a lot slimmer, and are forcing Sun to become more creative in shoring up and growing their revenue.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The article talks about Sun's strategy. Steps 1 and 2 are very interesting:
Coincidence? I don't think so.
There are two more points which you can check directly going to the link above.
Also I suppose this will mean some more astroturfing in the short term trying to convince us all that Linux = Red Hat.
diegoT
The people at sun are not stupid. They are well aware that RedHat does not own Linux. However, from a commercial point of view, the only Linux distribution that Sun competes against for business is RedHat as they are more or less the defacto in large enterprises which is where Sun is competing.
Sun can't compete against a community developed operating system but it can compete against a commercially developed and maintained operating system. Fortune 500 companies are not running community developed operating systems, they are running RedHat or SuSE or something which is commercially supported.
If you have read earlier blogs from Jonathan, you'll see that what I say is supported in his blogs.
While they worry about "Red Hat's Linux", just watch the real Linux run over them.
Penguins in Black, cover the flanks.
Seriously - if we need to soothe the ruffled feathers of every Eskimo language Linux distro that runs on my espresso machine then Microsoft has already obiterated us.
The Bigger Picture, people, the Bigger Picture.
regrettably, Solaris and RHL only qualify as competitors due to a technicality - windows cannot deliver in the (secure) server / enterprise arena. in real terms, these products aren't even in the same orbit in raw sales. as long as unix know-how is an operational prerequisite for these products, they will only ever be a distant tie for 3rd place, after OS X - the only serious competition on the desktop.
I think a lot of you, especially the one that brought this article to /., are reading too much into this.
It's obvious that he's saying RedHat is the most upfront player in the OS wars with regards to what companies purchase, and I honestly don't think he meant it to say that Linux belongs to RedHat; he simply referred to RedHat's VERSION of Linux.
I swear, some of you guys can get so damn picky over what words say and twist them around just to have something to debate about.
From http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20040721 #competing_against_a_social_movement
"And a social movement is morphing into a single company "
He did get it wrong. By mistake or on purpose. As he says, they cannot fight a social movement, so lets pretend its a company. It could work if everyone else believes him
OK, you guys have read the other articles from Sun about GNU/Linux, have you not?
Here is how Sun's market actually works.
Company X says "we need a new database server that can handle 10,000 transactions per year, and we'd like to hear proposals."
Company Y and Company Z each submit to Company X a total solution saying "we can provide such a server for a trillion rubbles."
Company X compares the bids, and based on a lot of factors, it decides on either Company Y or Z's proposal, and enters into a contract with one or the other.
What you have to understand is that is what motivates everything that Sun says. It is totally clueless to go "Sun is claiming Red Hat owns Linux." They are talking about Red Hat's Linux distribution. The word Distribution is implied, just like when you talk about Debian Linux or SuSE Linux or GenToo Linux.
IBM and HP both were shipping Red Hat for a while. Most independent contractors will pitch Red Hat as a solution. From Sun's standpoint and viewpoint, Red Hat is their competitor, not Linux.
They've been very clear and very consistent in that view point from day one. They live or die off of enterprise grade systems, not off of a handful of individual servers bought by random small IT departments. It's the multi-million and multi-billion dollar contracts, contracts with companies like Walmart, that Sun makes its money off of.
Right now, that market is being hotly contested and the players Sun identifies are, indeed, correct.
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.
It might offend some but this statement is true...at least for EE EDA tools.
Look at what the big players (Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor) support. Its all RHE. The industry consortium that tries to align things has RHE. This doesn't mean the software won't work on other platforms but most corporations don't want to mess with that and will just license RHE.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
That seems reminiscent of this proposal.
Another great one is: Woman: Mr Churchill, your drunk! Churchill: Yes madam, but in the morning I will be sober but you will still be ugly.
I'm a EE design engineer. The EDA software we utilize can run well upwards of $100K per license. The big players are Synopsys, Mentor, and Cadence. Now, if you look on all these sites you'll see they support RHE. Thats it. So at least in my realm the statement is right on.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Most users of Windows do not get support from Microsoft. Generally most support is in-house, and for that rare problem that your internal staff simply cannot fix, you can hire Microsoft (for cash) to try and fix it.
Executives in general may have an instinctual belief that their support staff can "call up Microsoft" if they need to, but this is both rarely necessary and expensive.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Last count Microsoft have.
WinCE.net windows 2003, windows XP, Windows Tablet PC edition, whatever there making for the military and whatever the XBox runs.
So saying 'Microsoft's Operating System' is like saying 'The OSS communities OS' and including Herd in there.
Typically M$ will try to pull off some Windows 2003 servers, windows XP desktops and Tablet PC's instead of laptops, maybe throwing in a few phones running WinCE.net.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
> Churchill Schmurchill, Schwartz is a technology mischief-maker not a technology statesmen.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Churchill would protest if he were not at times characterized as both. =)
He is the man "And you madame, are ugly," fame, after all, and the statesman who tried to get a ride across the channel with the first troops. (Before the king showed up and told him if Churchill went, he'd go too.)
Way, way up! :D It's obvious that anyone who cares enough to bother with a piece about Sun and Jonathan WhatsHisName will certainly know that Red Hat does not own Linux. They probably even know who Linus Torvalds is. Oh well, it sure makes for a great sensationalist headline. Kudos, Slashdot editors!
i am always amazed at how much the open source community hates SUN. This subject is taken out of context and blown out of proportion. In comparison to what Sun offers, Redhat is the only *Linux* competition out there.
So in both senses, it makes him look pretty dumb.
this COO really baffles the mind..
A question hwo many OSes is IBM and HP selling and supporting..answer more than 3..
why do HP and IBm win and sun ont?
Because instead of concentrating on competing in sevices this COO woudl rather tell FUD tales than do honest relfection on managment issues in the way of profits..
He makes Enron top brass look like saints..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Is it me, or does anybody else get the creepy feeling that "An anonymous reader" could in fact be....
(wait for it)
Richard Stallman
DA DA DA!
if i wrote an article containing the words "dell's servers," does that mean i'm saying all servers belong to dell?
no.
come on don't be idiots and just get on with your lives.
-judging another only defines yourself
This is a story? The story is Cmdr Taco's bizarre interpretation of Schwartz's comments.
Let's try my interpretation:
"There are only three commercial operating systems of importance left: Microsoft's Windows, Red Hat's version/distribution of Linux, and Solaris."
Technically, that is correct. Ask any ISV out there, and they don't certify their Linux apps to "Linux" or even a particular Linux kernel, they certify them to certain distributions, primarily Red Hat and SuSE. And from a market share perspective, Red Hat has about 90% of the commercial Linux market. And Fedora has a large percentage of the non-commercial Linux market because it is Red Hat's distribution. And the Fedora users are mostly people trying to avoid Red Hat's pricing model.
I remember the Slashdot articles that pop up every couple of years saying Red Hat is the new Microsoft. The truth is, we all should be concerned that Red Hat essentially has a monopoly on the commercial Linux market. And the commercial Linux market is where the future of Linux is: Oracle on Linux, BEA on Linux, IBM DB2 on Linux, etc., etc. This builds an ecosystem that makes Linux grow more. It causes major commercial ISVs like Oracle to contribute major technology to Linux. At Oracleworld today, you didn't see Linus Tovalds or OSDL sharing the spotlight, it was Red Hat.
Linux is at risk of becoming like other open source projects like MySQL and StarOffice where there is only one vendor of commercial, supported versions of the product. This is not good, because that version becomes a defacto standard.
Red Hat already has the power to create its own custom kernel in RHEL AS 3.0, its own custom destktop, etc. Yes, it is still open source, but where is The Bazzar? Does anybody still remember when Linux distros had pretty much the same kernel and the difference was in the layered software, package managers, and installers?
TurboLinux used to be a player, before Red Hat expanded to Asia. SuSE used to dominate the european Linux market, until Red Hat expanded into europe. Perhaps Novell's acquisition of SuSE will create a commercial Linux duopoly, but I doubt it. My guess is in three or four years Novell will be focusing on add-on and systems management software for Red Hat Linux, just like it eventually did with Windows.
So Schwartz is right. The only version of Linux that matters among commercial users of Linux (that is anyone using packaged ISV apps), is Red Hat's version. It is unfortunate, but it is true.
Does anybody know what the origin is of the whole Churchill Schmurchill, Nasa Schmasa, etcetera schmetcetera thing? I believe it's pretty old but haven't found a reference (it's hard to google for such a thing).
The correct way to refer to Red Hat's offering is, of course: Red Hat's GNU/Linux.
At least, that's what I hurd.
Looks like deliberate strategery to me. Be warned, Schwarts: heavy-handed FUD has a way of backfiring.
ObOldMovieRef: The Schwartz is NOT with you.
I guess I have to take the debian off of my sunblade 100 I just put on and put redhat on it.
the distribution redhat publishes is colloquially their linux as only nerds make a distinction into kernel and everything else. The error lies mostly with the overly biased reader. Redhat is one of the, if not the single most successful commercial linux vendor right now making his statement correct. Potentially include Novel, but that's about it.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I tried installing Oracle 9.2.0.4 on Red Hat EL 3.0, and it was a nightmare. RHEL3 is not-ready-for-Oracle-primetime. So I switched to SuSE Enterprise 9.0, and it was a breeze! Thank you, SuSE! I'm liking Red Hat less and less, and SuSE more and more.
While probably a good business decision, I'd imagine that the number of Fedora installations is much greater than the number of Red Hat installations, and probably other distributions now outnumber Red Hat also.
Yes, but which product brings in more money? Does Red Hat Enterprise Linux sell for more and bring in more money from support? I'd think that in many companies eyes, the number of installations is less important than whether you're bringing in more money than your competitors.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
A statesman is a politician (living or dead) who is admired and respected. Dead politicians are more often elevated to being called "statesmen" since they no longer need to be political animals and can be judged strictly by their accomplishments. The manuevers necessary to respond to the politics of the moment tend to make all politicians look alike and statesmanship is rarely one of the attributes that is visible.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Schwartz: Competing against a social movement we helped to found
Parent: Someone care to enlighten me (or Jon) how Sun helped to "found" the FSF ?
This is just a nitpick, but the FSF is a nonprofit corporation, not a social movement. Furthermore, the FSF isn't even entirely representative of everyone participating in said social movement. Not everyone who believes in free (as in speech) software likes Stallman or even necessarily the GPL.
Now, as far as the extent of Sun's contribution to said movement is concerned, you have a point.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Huh...
We all know, that it's GNU's Linux, not
Red Hat's Linux.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
First, the FSF != The open source community or movement. Though they are a huge part, they are not synonymous terms.
/.ers with a better knowledge of the 80s want to chime in?
Sun is, I believe, still the number one corporation for donating to Open Source. They have given more code to the OS community than anyone else. Openoffice.org, which didn't help 'found' the community, but gave it a strong leg to stand on.
NFS, is one. There work with BSD OS, etc.
They have given a lot back, and were there early on in BSD's development.
Any other
He may have a point but it's not necessarily valid and definately not concrete.
OSS, Free Software grew out of something. it didn't just happen. Back in the days before the FSF, people, especially in acedemia, used to share their work. BSD was around before linux and one of the Founders of Sun was a key developer in the BSD world. Which is also why the original SunOS was BSD based.
They have also released a lot of their work as open source, including making the sparc architecture an open standard that is maintained by a third party.
I know it's wrong to defend sun on here but if you don't have a long term memory problem, Schwartz isn't completely off base in his statement. Things were obviously different back in those days, especially after some of the original employees have left, but things seem to be turning around. Hopefully it works out and Sun becomes more like the company it used to be. It seems that might be the case. A lot of people would like that. It probably wouldn't be good for Red Hat if that happens. But that doesn't mean it would be a bad thing.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
He doesn't specify at all what he's talking about, and that gives him bad rapport. He simply says "OS Wars," which to me doesn't necessarily describe only the non-desktop market, in which case he's clearly left out OS X as a player. If he is referring to the supercomputer market he has also brushed OS X aside, is completely unaware of the difference between it (and in turn any other number of other flavors of BSD) and Linux, or is completely ignorant of the existence of it altogether. Windows likely doesn't run on any of the fastest supercomputers in the world, but I don't have stats to back me up, the top500 list doesn't keep track of OS, but we do know that OS X does so it is at least a contender there as well. If he's talking about the server market, I really can't say. I couldn't find any statistics that showed Apple having any presence in the server market, so let's just give him the benefit of the doubt and say they have 0% of the server market. That means he would be correct in 1/3 of the markets, but since his statement doesn't specify that when he broadly says "OS Wars," as if he means "all computers" with even an implied "and embedded devices and anything running an OS at all," he is either missing a large portion of the picture or just not that good at writing out complete thoughts. Sure it was a blog, but it was a Corporate blog. An avenue for expression of personal opinions, perspectives, and goals for the bigger picture. It certainly doesn't inspire confidence in his readers. Shareholders beware.
Came across this quote from the fortune utility:
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
(and nobody cares about it).
-- Bill Joy 6/21/85
Not entirely relevant, but humurous nonetheless.
-Pete
You've got to admire anyone who can come up with such gems as "HP-UX is on its way to Hewlett Packard's industry leading collection of dead architectures." Hilarious! Did he write that himself, or are The Register's scribes moonlighting again?
Seriously, leaders are supposed to lead. He's articulated his vision for the future, and he's rallying the troops to take them there. Good for him!
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
Steve Jobs could easily say; "The OS wars have come down to three; Microsoft Windows, Red Hat's Linux, and MacOS X." Also, I think what he meant was Red Hat's distribution of Linux, not that Red Hat owns Linux or anything. The GNU/Linux community (that's a lot of us) should be somewhat dismissive of statements like this, even. Does it really impact me that he thinks Red Hat's distro is the best? No. Is it? Maybe, but not to me. Is Debian dead now that it's been marginalized by a COO of a company that is busy getting marginalized? Well let me check, apt still seems to work. Debian.org still resolves. Fhew.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
...*sigh* that's why I can't depend upon SUN packages to properly load OS applications because it decides to put them in /opt/sfw instead of /usr/local - and munges up the ENV to boot.
Linux rules, Solaris drools.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I thought Churchill was the one who stood up to the evil empire and won. At least I don't remember the speech that went:
we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; Then we shall come to a $700 million agreement with Germany and spend the next six months telling everyone our former allies are a load of bastards
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
He won't include any of the other distro's, like Debian or Gentoo because he can't easily put a dollar figure on their sales. He has blinders on...
When I say "My Pontiac" I'm not implying I own Pontiac- just that I own an instance of a Pontiac, and I'm referring to that instance right now (as opposed to someone else's) "Red Hat's Linux" can very easily mean the same type of thing. Learn English.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Linux is just the kernel. GNU is the programs that go with it. Who cares if Red Hat claim the kernel is theirs... Let them, we all know that the majority of the work is done by those on irc.linux.org.
Why UNIX?
We should all stop paying attention to any and all Sun announcements. I don't know if they realize this but they are more a voodoo cult than a technology company. Lotsa talented misguided folks, spewing lotsa crazy nonsense. I think Schwartz likes to make controversial statements so that if he ever turns out to be right people can call him a visionary. Fact is I think Sun has a smaller market share than Linux as a whole, and if they don't turn out some redeeming products they will fade away. Remember: Rhetoric doesn't buy many hamburgers.
He was also a bit of a cunt who liked gassing people. Maybe Johnathan Schwartz is in the wrong business?
It is obvious he is saying the Linux that is distributed by Red Hat. In other words... Red Hat's Linux or Red Hat's (Version of) Linux.
This is a new type of intelligence test where it is is measured as an inverse of your ability to read drama into everything. This is like the cheerleader saying "Oh my God! Did you hear what Sally said about Susie?"
Breakfast served all day!
LOL. I'd love to see his numbers that blatantly disregard Mac OS X / Mac OS X Server. Sounds like a spin doctor, to me. I could care less about his Red Hat statement.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Lockin is where you can't migrate. In your example the customer can migrate. That they don't want to spend the time doing so isn't relevant. The key of point of running Open Source software is that you can alway switch to someone else, or do it yourself.
It's why I would never buy a car I couldn't, or wasn't allowed to open the hood of the car. That said opening the hood of my car doesn't do me any good. The engine doesn't look anything like the ones I knew as a kid. I take it in for service at the dealer, and don't even change the oil myself. Why because it would be far more effort myself, and I trust the dealer where I bought it. At the same time I know if I have issues with the dealer I can always take it some where else.
With open source software you can always hire someone to fix any issue that your vendor will not address. It may cost you, and may not be worth it, but you have that option. I know a couple of companies who discovered bugs in windows that left them unable to run their app. In one case they located the bug in the windows source code, and offered to pay MS for the developer time, or hire some one themselves to no avail.
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
The Open Group's trademark guide says:
3.5 The UNIX Trade Mark There is no logo for the UNIX trade mark and, other than the need for the mark to always be reproduced in capitals, no specific form is prescribed.
So MacOSX is unix, it's just not UNIX.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The interesting aspect of JS's statement is that if he can get the market to equate Linux with Red Hat and not think about any other distribution or vendor, then by attacking Red Hat they can attack Linux at the same time. By reducing their opponents they make life easier for themselves. Normally Linux is thought of as a variety of distributions, but that's too difficult to fight. So, they need one opponenet, one corporation (one face) to represent all of Linux and then fight that. That's what it seems like they are doing. Also, Red Hat makes the most sense because they have enterprise sales aspirations, so probably they are seen as the biggest corporate distribution and hance the biggest threat by Sun execs.
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
Could it be that he wasn't assigning all of Linux to Red Hat, but saying that of the dominant players in the OS game, you have MS Windows, Sun Solaris, and Red Hat Linux.
I think he is atleast arguably right. I would venture to say that a large majority of your Linux users buy it *gasp* out of the Red Hat box.
Alot of the 'free thinkers' and 'free software' guys are really going to hate this, but Red Hat is the first company to put a face on Linux for the general public. There will be many who associate the two as mutually dependant. They aren't, he didn't say they were.
Red Hat is the most prolific distro of Linux and will be the only one really garnering any attention from Sun and MS. Get used to it.
It is fairly obvious he meant Red Hat's Linux in the context of Red Hat's version of Linux. Ass.
Why can't datacenters and ISVs (independant software vendors) type "make install"? They are the ones that should know what they are doing, for crying out loud, not the feeble windows users that he paints in his blog. And what about other OS distro's with quite possibly better package management like FreeBSD and Gentoo Linux. Plus there are all kinds of great distributions such as Mandrake or Debian. If anything, the market is diversifying into more specialized OS'. And why would anyone want to write something claiming a 3 OS market, when there are clearly many more great OS' that are quickly gaining ground?
Man... this is why I don't like reading trade magazines...
-=Zeus=And=Hades=-
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I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
take note, the true power of linux at work! giving control to the customer instead of the vendor. i still can't get that through the heads of my management, but i keep repeating it every time.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.