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Sun's COO Pretends Linux Belongs To Red Hat

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-kinda-anyway dept.

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."

12 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid by the_mad_poster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  2. What's the problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Non-inclusive possessive pronoun.... by SuperDuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. Mac OS X? by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. SCO's? by Zentac · · Score: 5, Funny

    or for that mather SCO's

  6. Perhaps he meant something else by oexeo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Perhaps he meant something else by Lxy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Thank You.

      It amazes me to no end what passes as "news" these days on Slashdot. One person misinterpreting something automatically becomes news, and not just any old news, "OMFG the sky is falling" news.

      Of all the distros out there, Redhat easily holds the market share on the corporate end. It makes sense to bundle Red Hat in a corporate statement than Slackware or Debian. Sure, they're fine distros, but when it comes to market share in the corporate world, it's hard to deny that Redhat has the biggest piece of the pie.

      At any rate, the sky is not falling, and Sun's COO is NOT implying that Redhat owns linux.

      --

      There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
      :wq
  7. Semantic niggling by sczimme · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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.
  8. Re:Market Share by Soylent+Moose · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Okay, think about it from an IT manager's perspective. Say I'm an IT manager at a medium-sized bank and the applications we use are based on Oracle. I'm about the buy a bunch of machines so I can run Oracle on them. This is a production environment, so I don't want to just download some random Linux build without support -- I need to pick someone who will sell me real support, with guaranteed response times, etc.

    What are my choices? Oracle on reliable hardware is a huge market for Sun, so that's obviously one choice. Which Linux would I pick? Probably RedHat to get their support offering. Oh, and yea, I could always go the Microsoft way.

    I don't know, Jonathan's comment doesn't seem that bizzare to me.

  9. Re:he's right though by weileong · · Score: 5, Informative


    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/20040721 #competing_against_a_social_movement

  10. Re:Could be worse... by avronius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Reading the wrong way by akaina · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.