The Differences Between Red Hat and Novell

Tiberius_Fel writes "A former Novell employee has done a comparison at InfoWorld, reflecting on the business practices of Red Hat and Novell. They focus on such areas as customers, culture, and partners." From the article: "Red Hat has a hard-charging, take-no-prisoners approach to the market. If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear ... This has led the growing open source ecosystem to Novell, which is partner-centric and easy-going almost to a fault. Ron Hovsepian is changing this, and Novell is starting to become much more choosy about opportunities (customer and partnering) that come its way."

Comments

well

[know1]

"If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear"
they make that sound like a bad thing, there aren't many for profit organisations that are any different i would imagine.

The second comment in the blog has it right

[ReformedExCon]

Redhat is where it is because it is the company that employs the people who write Linux, most notably Alan Cox. There is a lot of code in the Linux kernel and periphery that simply wouldn't be there if Redhat wasn't around to pay these programmers to put it in there.

So if we consider the authors of the source as the ultimate support channel, then Redhat will always filter its way to the top. Throw in the existing momentum behind the platform, both on the "child" distros side and the business side, and you've got an unstoppable (for now) juggernaut. Want embedded Linux? Montavista's got a custom RedHat Linux for you. Want some esoteric hardware supported? Redhat's gone through the trouble to port a driver for you.

It's so far ahead of every other commercial distribution that it's not even funny.

Is it ahead/better than non-commercial distros like Debian? No, probably not. But they aren't really competing against each other.

Re:The second comment in the blog has it right

[Anonymous Coward]

First SuSE labs (Novell) employees some Linux kernel developers.
Even IBM does.

Second all three employees GCC developers though they are not all equal.
RedHat has more global write maintainers than any other company but that is because they started working on GCC before any of them. RedHat's GCC developers are leaving Redhat and are going either to Apple (at least three examples) or Codesourcery (a couple) or AMD (one example though he was at metrowerks for a while). These are main developers of GCC and not just some unkown developers. Novell is gaining more and more mainainership of GCC in general, and already employees the maintainer of the x86_64 port which is one of the major ports for the comming year or two for servers (even though I don't really want to say it is as I am more of a powerpc person).

Any other point is Novell is getting more and more into free software they have to go slowly and choose and pick their partners otherwise they will find themselves in a way of the internet bobble.

-- a semi unknown GCC developer.

Re:The second comment in the blog has it right

[PimpBot]

Is it ahead/better than non-commercial distros like Debian? No, probably not.

This line rubs me the wrong way. The reason why folks choose commercial distros like RedHat or Suse is because they are better for what people need -- they provide a supported, easier to configure setup which allows them to solve whatever problem they or their organization have with a minimum of fuss. Distriubtions like Debian/Ubuntu/Gentoo/etc. are useful for the tweakers of the world (and yes, given enough gumption could be used to replace RHEL/SES), but they're not ready out of the proverbial box.

Am I missing something here? Is there some other reason why Debian et al is better?

Re:The second comment in the blog has it right

[maxwell demon]

RedHat has more global write maintainers than any other company but that is because they started working on GCC before any of them.

I'd say it is because they bought Cygnus, a company which had entirely specialized on gcc support.

If you're not making them money, you're not going

[melted]

>> If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear

Hmm, maybe it's time to invest in RHAT.

What needs to be done

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what needs to be done if Linux is ever going to take over as the "Main Stream" OS. Novell needs to leave the server stuff alone, RedHat has got linux on the server down to a science. What Novell needs to do, is take what it has in SUSE, and work on getting more linux on desktop users machines. If both companys would realise this, and work on it, it would pose a VERY big threat to Microsoft, and push Linux as the mainstream os.

~Alan

Re:For profits are like that

[Ithika]

I'm fed up and sick to the back teeth of reading the words "for-profit" and "company" in the same sentence, especially when they are used to (attempt to) justify antisocial business practices.

I can't find any definition of the word "company" which wouldn't imply that its aim is not profit; that would be a "charity". Thus, "for-profit company" is a tautology.

Why does being in business mean someone's ethics have to be flung out the window? My work does the occasional freebie for local community projects, we do discounts for charities and the like. Being in business does not imply being an arse.

Re:Because

[kfg]

And for what's good for one customer being good for another: market research, market research, market research.

That's funny, my experience is that market research always ends up telling me to get fucking lost, because I'm interested in buying solid technology for a fair price, not chrome, tailfins or squids with tits on 'em at porno rates.

KFG

Ecosystem.

[bubulubugoth]

Partners are needed for having a good sustainable bussines ecosystem.

There is the need of a supply chain. And Novell has a much more longer experience than Redhat, it also has a long standing user base around the world, there still are a lot of novell 486/3.11/4.0 running, 5 to 10 users, and not wanting to go with Microsoft.

Novell and SuSe, also spend lots of money at developing OSS, ximian, mono, X, drivers, kernel patches, kde and gnome stuff, also redhat.

And even more... SuSe born in germany, and it has a huge user base at europe, Redhat has born at U.S.A. and there is a LOT of countries, that doesnt want to be working with U.S.A. enforsable companies... so there is the reason why, at Linux there will be very, very, very hard to have a "single vender Enterprise distribution"...

Re:For profits are like that

[Paul Jakma]

I can't find any definition of the word "company" which wouldn't imply that its aim is not profit;

Actually, no such aim is implied by "company" at all.

The general aims of a company are defined in its articles of incorporation and typically expanded on in its memorandum of association, including whether or not it intends to operate for profit (generally a company doesn't restrict itself from making a profit, unless explicitely noted). Companies whose aims do not include profits often can avail of tax relief, and possibly other forms of relief.

That companies typically exist to make profits does not mean all companies do, nor that the definition of company implies for-profit.

Enterprise environments

[recharged95]

Nice article, but it doesn't say much about the importance of the two companies co-existing and creating a market for OSS. In the end, it comes down to who has the better product--so far Red Hat has the market since it was the first on the scene as a legit business. It is attacking the right industries (Financials and Gov't-i.e. DoD), and has a strong university presence. SuSE had a lot of respect before Novell and the acquisition was looked upon as promising with all the international support, but they were slow in getting 10.0 out the door. SuSE has hardly any university presense and Novell hasn't focused on any industries aside from what IBM or Sun had before the acquisition. Though you can't beat Novell's networking knowledge base. That's the diff.

As a developer & user, Red Hat needs to tighten up on their edge releases (FC4 and it's migration to EL for instance). FC4 maybe used by more folks out there, but it's too klunky for the application developer market and less stable that OpenSuSE. And app-development is where the real cash is made.

Novell, aside from focusing on a couple of markets only needs to increase [kernel] performance as SuSE (and openSuSE) are much more polished for a enterprise environment that RH. I find that application development is much easier on SuSE where kernel dev is easier on FC4. I picked out the F/OSS projects only because companies are moving to the model of developing against the 'F/OSS' version and then deploying on the paid 'OSS' version, hence delaying the licensing/service purchase. It makes sense since if forces the developer and vendor share the risks and have mutual interests to succeed.

Novell's a lot more than just a distro though...

[aapold]

When all of their administration tools (Zenworks in particular), it makes for a fantastic management environment. Their linux stuff isn't quite up to par with their windows desktop integration yet, but it is getting there. These things are much more useful in a corporate environmnet.

Re:For profits are like that

[wolf31o2]

The Gentoo Foundation is a not-for-profit company. We are not a charity. Donations to Gentoo cannot be written off. Our goals have nothing to do with making money and everything to do with making software.