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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."
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.
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/
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.
"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.
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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.
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?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
That's funny, I was thinking the list should at least contain 4, if not 5.
AIX and HP-UX are here to stay. If you look at RISC Unix sales, you'll realise that the market is still contains 3 significant market segments.
Sun is trying to position its OS in the commodity space, aka equivalent to Linux and Windows. Take a look at their renewed interest of Solaris on x86. However, in my experience, companies make choices regarding a) discount commodity computing, or b) enterprise/robust computing. You buy Solaris servers for different reasons than why you buy a Linux or Wintel server.
People are reacting to this market-speak in the wrong way...they're preceiving it as an attack on Linux, but only in regards to ownership of linux (waaahh!!! its not just Redhat!!!). His commentary is more finely tuned... he's trying to bring Solaris down-market to make $ on volume. The pitch will be "Why buy Linux with that convoluted vendor stategy and ownership problems? Get the stability of unix at discount pricing on Operton!!!".
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
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?
But linux is a toy... relative to the big Sun iron boxes.
Seriously, Linux is useful for things but it's still quite young and toyish, especially when compared to the likes of OpenVMS, Tru64 *sigh* and yes, even Solaris.
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 use this expression a great deal. Typically when describing variations of linux. Red Hat's Linux vs. (insert flavour here). Much like saying "This is Avron's car". It does not suggest that all cars are mine, rather that *this* one is.
It is amazing the way that people take a contextually accurate statement, and skew it to blow something out of proportion.
"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?
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.
> 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.
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.