Red Hat CEO Decries Open Source Pretenders

OSTalent writes "The Register has an article about Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik's recent remarks...'For all his enthusiasm about the community and sever-side Linux, Szulik provided something of a reality check on the much debated theme of a Linux desktop. According to Szulik, the huge presence of legacy infrastructure like Microsoft's Exchange and PowerPoint has prevented a lot of people making the move.'" From the article: "It's very difficult to shape the development agenda of the community... every day people comment to us on the quality of our products through Kerrnel.org. What's important is staying true to the premise of the GPL model ... It starts with the APIs now, then it moves into content. Try to put [Microsoft's] Windows Media Player into Firefox and see what it looks like. In a world where application-to-application interaction becomes the norm, where does that innovation come from and who owns it?"

Comments

More evidence of excel errors

[Noksagt]

I assume I was modded troll by someone who didn't realize something from Redmond can contain mistakes. F/OSS also has errors, but one hopes they can get fixed. Which is what the first link said--Gnumeric replicated errors of Excel and, when statisticians complained, Gnumeric got fixed & Excel didn't.

For those interested in Excel errors, here are other sources:

• Problems with Using Microsoft Excel for Statistics
• Fixing Statistical Errors in Spreadsheet Software: The Cases of Gnumeric and Excel
• Using Excel for Data Analysis
• Statistical Flaws in Excel
• On the Accuracy of Statistical Distributions in Microsoft Excel 97
• On the Reliability of Microsoft Excel XP for Statistical Purposes
• Use of Excel for Statistical Analysis
• Reliability of Statistical Procedures in Excel
• Association of Statistics Specialists Using Microsoft Excel
• Statistical Analysis Using Microsoft Excel

What the VCs are saying about desktop Linux.

[russbutton]

I've been in some serious conversations over the past year with a number of VC's, investors and IT managers about Linux as a business desktop. As much as I have the Religion and consider myself to be a True Believer, it is clear to me that the problem Linux has is much, much more than compatibility issues between MS Office and Open Office.

I sat down with the Directory of IT Security for Kaiser Permanente, a major HMO here in California. He liked the Linux desktop concept I put in front of him, but then stated that they have over 2000 home grown Windows applications that they built in-house upon which they are dependent to run their business. Other people have told me about how they can much more easily develop useful applications with Visual Basic than you can with Gtk and other standard 'IX tools.

We may sit here and go on about the shortcomings of Windows and Visual Basic, but in the world where you're actually trying to sell product, the perception of your market is also their Reality. Is there another tool, similar in ease of use to Visual Basic, that is available for people to quickly and easily create applications on Linux?

For some time I've believed that the first place that desktop Linux would get into would be those shops where the users are production workers who spend their day doing repetitive tasks such as data entry, medical transcriptions, or work at call centers. As I've been researching call center operations, I've come to find that dialing and "Computer Telephony Integration" software are the mission critical applications. Of course they're all written for Windows. So how does Linux break into that market?

What keeps kicking around in my brain is that the early adopters of Linux on the desktop are governments - China, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Israel. All are moving to Linux.

When I talk to college IT directors, the idea of using Linux desktops gets met with that "deer in the headlights" look when they anticipate the mass revolt they'd experience from the faculty and student body.

The $64 billion question is, who's going to use desktop Linux and how are they going to use it? If y'all could suggest some industries and/or markets you feel that Linux could easily be adopted into, I'd love to hear it, because if it's really there, I'm gonna go get it!