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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?"
I don't know what I'd do without all those time wasting presentations.
Enlightenment is a pipe dream. So where's the pipe?
"The desktop has become a lot like teenage sex: a lot of people are talking about it but not many people are doing it," Szulik said.
/.!
Well, it's the reverse here on
Powerpoint isn't the show-stopper. I've given presentations using OpenOffice and although the fonts can be a bit interesting when you change computers, it works.
Nah - the killers for me at least are Excel, Visio and Project. The OpenOffice version of the first doesn't scale near to where I need it, and porting macros is way too much effort, and the second two still don't have any real equivalents in the Linux space.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Kerrnel.org
Talk Like A Pirate Day was last month.
We've already /.'ed Kerrnel.org?
I think a mirror is at http://kernel.org./
Hurry up and release the Netscape-LDAP 100% free and unencumbered.
/phew.
Pick an open project for calendaring/mail and make Outlook work with it.
Create better tools for identity management.
The problem with people not embracing open source is not with open source, its that nobody knows what they're looking for with open source. Focus on what small business needs, and what open source can offer. Create small, turn-key packages. Create an LDAP authentication server. Create an LDAP mail server that operates as a drop-in replacement that works with the identity server. Create a Document Management System that works with OpenOffice, so that you have it part of the file-save dialog. Give business the tools it needs to work, and work efficiently!
The tools are better. Everyone keeps saying that they are. The design is sound, the pieces are there, but nobody has stepped up to the plate and sewn it all together. Stop the development of new tools. Take the tools that we have already and put them together. Industry needs more than Google and a Howto posted on an undergrads website.
Everybody knows that there are a million ways to authenticate a bunch of workstations to one or more server. LDAP, LDAP and Kerberos. GSSAPI, Radius, whatever, but for the love of all things sane and holy, pick one! Pick one, and build the turnkey solution to do it.
Anyhow, Szulik tends to hang around many of the more larger conservative kids, I mean companies, and even then in the backrooms a lot of it is going on that the CEOs and CIOs would like to admit ( I'm talking about messing around with Linux desktops, geez you guys have dirty minds ).
If Szulik were to hang around with more of the leaner mid sized less well off young companies he would find a lot more physical experimenting going on, especially with thin client Linux ( what else would they be doing ).
And as for local, state and federal governmental bodies around the world, they are begging for it, which at least is better than them always doing it to the tax payers.
That's easy:
Where does it come from? Apple.
Who owns it? Microsoft.
For those interested in Excel errors, here are other sources:
Hmm...
Redhat. Lets think about this.
Oh yah. They do large amounts of development work and stabilization for the 2.4 and 2.6 series kernel.
Hrm. I don't seem to be remembing anything abotu rewriting stack smashing protection and getting it actually incorporated into the GCC 4.x series.
Oh, and making SELinux usable. Na. That couldn't be Redhat. Could it?
Getting OO.org 2 ported to work with the gcj compiler instead of requiring a java runtime for many of it's features. THat couldn't be Redhat, eh?
Or how about GCC? Redhat couldn't be putting developers and resources into that project either, right?
And open sourcing GFS.. or netscape directory services, or developing and improving the ext3 file system.
Or how about Cygwin? I bet Gentoo did a lot of work on that one. Didn't they? That couldn't be Redhat could it?
I guess that doesn't amount to jack shit compared to your massive contributions to F/OSS software.
This couldn't be the company that allows projects like CentOS and Whitebox to download source code to their entire operating system and build 100% compatable clones either. Gee since they don't do that I would expect that Redhat would be big hypocrites.
Hey, how about this. Maybe Redhat has a business, and has employees and stockholders that they are responsable for. Hrm. Seems to me that each peice of software they buy or develope ends up being open source, isn't that funny for a company that doesn't give a shit?
Seems that they would behave more like original Suse did and rely on closed source management tools like Yast, or be like Gentoo, whose founder now works for Microsoft.
Give me a break. All Redhat does is:
1. Charge money for support
2. Protect their trademarks (which if you don't protect you loose unlike copyrights and patents. It takes a active effort to protect trademarks or they are invalid and anybody could use Redhat icons and call themselves redhat; including MS or IBM)
3. Don't provide binary downloads for free, except thru Fedora and Rawhide.
But they do provide the source code for everything they use... which is pretty open source, isn't it?
In a word: BULLSHIT.
OpenOffice's Present module can give a customer with PowerPoint software something they can use. Likewise, Visio can be replaced with any of a bunch of drawing programs (xfig with transfig can export to a number of formats).
If you don't want to run Windows, you'll find that there's few business reasons really compelling you to do so.
If your company runs Exchange, then Evolution (Linux) or Apple Mail (Mac OS X) can run as a client just fine.
If your company requires Office, then OpenOffice is a great tool (Linux--try NeoOffice for Mac OS X).
Your argument worked a few years ago, but the offerings for non-Windows systems have improved remarkably. Macintosh graphics software has always been great, and Linux has had a few of its own great programs as well. However, some great software is now available multi-platform, and the reason for sticking with Windows (or Linux or Mac) is no longer as compelling.
You can now make a business justification for using any operating system nowadays. If you want to keep shoveling money to Microsoft, fine. If you want a great desktop experience, there's Apple ready to sell you some really sexy hardware and software. If you want to go dirt cheap, there's Linux. It's all a matter of taste... and saying that "your business requires you to use Windows" only works if your only customer is Microsoft.
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
OK as somebody that has MS on there laptop because of visio. Visio is not a drawing program for most it's a macro / layout program. Try walking into an unknown undocumented network there are no good network mapping tools for Linux and only two for Windows and those need visio to display. Yea you can put pretty stencils in visio but for my business it's all about it's macro and API as a lot of software builds ontop on visio.
No sir I dont like it.
Mixing free and closed software is like mixing oil and water. For example, you can copy share, do business with, and distribute Linux all you want. Stick a proprietary piece of software or media on the same CD, and now you are dead in the water.
Free markets are about freedom. When people have it, they tend to use it to create wealth and prosperity where none ever existed before. Closed software is not about freedom, copy it and you can be sued or go to jail. Some people call that an "intellecutal property" right, but just because someone calls something a property right doesn't mean that it is.
True property rights don't derive from incentive, they derive from just allocation of things that have limited supply and demand. Just property rights lead to strong incentives, but coerced incentives do not lead to just property rights.
Fedora is very stable. Not to mention Fedora has one of the most active mailing list and user-base community of other distros. Redhat has to make money- they are charging for service and support if you need that. Boo-hoo. Waahhh. Suse is following in Redhat's shoes, as it seems to work as a good business model for a Linux company.
This is actually a really good point; I have yet to see a *single* PowerPoint presentation that I would in any way consider useful, informative, or basically anything other than a complete waste of time. Reasons for this are twofold:
1. Speakers use the PowerPoint as a substitute for actually knowing the topic; they just go over whatever it says on the screen, rather than being able to articulate the topic.
2. PowerPoint is a one-way communications mechanism; you can't readily make drastic changes to a PowerPoint presentation on-the-fly, the way that you can with a whiteboard. When I hold team meetings, I generally just write down the key points on a whiteboard, and as ideas get brought up, they get written down. Sure, it's low-tech, but it works a hell of a lot better than PowerPoint.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Exchange keeps rising in market share because its: (just to name a few) 1. A solid product that is easy to manage. 2. Lot of different software solutions integrate with it. 3. Its one of Microsofts main server platform.. therefore it gets alot of attention and money. 4. Outlook is a solid easy to use email client, that has been around for years. 5. Works nicely with Windows Mobile 6. Part of Small Business server... This helps small businesses to get a Enterprise class email server. Just at the feature enhancements since Exchange 5.5 to 2003... There is no reason why it should have grown in market share.
In my workplace we are finding out that Visio doesn't scale well enough. We have ~100MB of source code branched into say 10 different variants, with comparable amounts of documentation in visio and word.
CVS takes care of configuration management in the code but in the doc we have to have multiple copies of everything and merges are totally manual.
We are just unable to maintain so much documentation. I am working on a project to port the docs to xml and svg, and commit them to cvs.
There are many free svg programs out there which will do everything we are doing with visio.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not true, you forgot AutoCAD.
To date, there is no CAD software for Linux that even half resembles the capability of ACAD. The best thing I've found is Cycus, but it is nowhere close. I wish everybody would stop fiddling with icon suites and desktop skins and get to work on a real GPL CAD application.
The entire design, building, and construction industry is hinged on AutoCAD. Oh sure, there are plenty of so-called competitors, but when #2 (Microstation) decides to flip its entire file format to AutoCAD's proprietary format that's a pretty good indication of who owns the market.
The pathetic thing is that AutoCAD is a house of cards. It is a mishmash of Lisp, VBA, C, C++, DCL, VB, dotNet, and is wildly unstable. The features are always changing and every release crushes all previous version file formats. It is the biggest assembly of bolt-on code for such a huge pile of money you can imagine.
But AutoCAD still rules, nobody in GPL-land is really paying attention.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
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!