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Red Hat Promises A More Vibrant Fedora
loki99 points out a CNET story about the direction Red Hat's development has taken (and changes in the wind), writing "Michael Tiemann, vice president of Red Hat, admits that after exclusively concentrating on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in recent years, they left those 'early adopters' behind. 'It insulted some of our best supporters. But worse, we lost our opportunity to do customer-driven innovation.' Tiemann said." The recent Boston FUDcon (mentioned in the linked article) is one example of how the company wants to revitalize non-corporate interest.
Too late ... they had a stock of goodwill a mile wide but they threw it away. Customer loyalty (really, any loyalty) is earned, and accrues over time. Can Red Hat get it back? Possibly ... but it will take a significant effort and they will really have to work to build up any sense of trust on the part of the "non corporate" parties out there. Nobody likes being abandoned, particularly after exhibiting brand loyalty not unlike that which Apple receives (of course, Apple has a long history of dumping on loyal customers, but I guess Apple users have short memories.) We'll see, but it's gonna take time.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I started out running Redhat - but when they dropped us Real People(tm) in favor of their Enterprise users, I decided I didn't want any part of them OR their distro. Switched to Suse, and been happy for the last couple of years; I'm not about to switch back just because they finally realized they pi55ed off a bunch of their user base and want (need?) them back again.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
I think somebody just woke up and realized that Mindshare is the key for RH to become the big player that it wants to be.
It's the key to being the group that sets the standards versus the one that is forced to adapt to and follow everyone else's.
It saves a lot of work in the long run when you have a critical mass of people selling the product for you by default, adapting innovations to your product by default, submitting bug reports, helping in forums -- for free -- simply because it is what they are used to using. A company like MS can take this for granted, but RH really shouldn't.
*waxes cynical*
They must have realized that the bandwidth costs won't be as bad anymore, now that everyone is using torrents.
Purchased CD Distro's now shipped with personal pleasure devices?
Sorry I have a fiance, I guess thats why I use yOs.
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA