Red Hat Sales Surge

head_dunce writes "Red Hat has reported earnings from its third quarter, and it did quite a bit better than expected. Even with the movement within the business by Oracle and SuSE/Microsoft, Red Hat came out quite a bit ahead. TheStreet.com reports on the company's $29.6 Million dollars windfall, and some of the tough times the company has had in the past year. From the article: 'CFO Charlie Peters said on a conference call with analysts that the company is "cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity."'"

Comments

Next year is RH's year

[Anonymous Coward]

Early 3rd quarter, when RH starts to release new software with the new kernel 2.7.0.0. That will also be around the time they incorporate Compwiz into every release.

Make up your mind

[ArcherB]

Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst? Now this?

Well which one is it?

The weekend is coming and I need to know what to believe!

Re:Make up your mind

[someone1234]

Maybe Redhat Enterprise Linux is not specifically for the desktop?

Re:Make up your mind

[sammy baby]

I suspect that since very few people are running RHEL on their desktops, there's no real contradiction here.

Re:Make up your mind

[Kelson]

Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst? Now this?

Unless I missed something, the article doesn't break down the figures into server and workstation. It's possble for the surge to have been an even mix, mostly desktop, or -- more likely -- mostly server.

No need to freak out on contradictory reality just yet.

Re:Make up your mind

[Arker]

Actually I don't believe RH even markets workstations anymore. They're very focused on servers.

Re:Make up your mind

[Kelson]

Yes, they still offer workstations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS

Ideal for power users and a wide range of high-performance technical client applications such as visualization, software development, and engineering design. Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS supports large-memory client systems with up to two CPUs.

Red Hat Desktop

Designed for general users who need a variety of software from email to web applications. Red Hat Desktop is designed for volume deployments that require a secure and centralized management infrastructure for client systems.

Re:Make up your mind

[morcego]

You are mistaken, since there is RedHat Enterprise WS, for workstations. I don't know how well it sells, but I never saw one. Only AS and ES editions.

Re:Make up your mind

[Anonymous Coward]

There is about 50,000 of us running RHEL inside IBM.

Re:Make up your mind

[hdparm]

+1 over here, unrelated to IBM. It really is very good product. With DAG rpm repo, it makes beautiful option for mass market, too. I have no idea how nobody (big PC sellers I mean) came up with that one yet.

not surprised

[theMerovingian]

I hear membership is booming.

Re:not surprised

[bubulubugoth]

Never heard of Red Hat society...

Followed the link, and a nice and informative surprise.

I think my mom will care more about Red Hats from now.

Re:not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of Red Hat society...

Are you kidding? Where have you been? They recently recruited Marge Simpson and robbed Mr. Burns's mansion.

In non-PR terms

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity.

Meaning: we clench our teeth, say a prayer, and hope that the Novell/MS deal doesn't bury us, but we'd like our shareholders to believe that it might actually do us good.

Re:In non-PR terms

[truthsearch]

Or he believes that a deal between Microsoft and a linux provider adds "legitimacy" to linux in the eyes of other corporations and governments, helping the linux market overall.

Re:In non-PR terms

[Anonymous Coward]

Meaning: we clench our teeth, say a prayer, and hope that the Novell/MS deal doesn't bury us

Hardly. Microsoft brings nothing to the table and Novell has been competing against Red Hat for a few years now. And even with Oracles cheaper offering to support Red Hat linux installations there is still a high level of customer loyalty with Red Hat.

"98 of the top 100 Red Hat customers have renewed this year, including 24 of 25 (up for renewal) in Q3. It may be that some customers are fickle, but not Red Hat's core customers."

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/ 2006/12/red_hat_earning.html

All the ego induced chest pounding, smoke blowing, and chair throwing in the world from certain CEOs will do little to convince Red Hat customers to run away from their highly ranked service for the much lower ranked service of the outspoken competitors.

IMO Red Hat wont have any serious competition until we see competitors who actually believe in open source, i.e. http://www.canonical.com/support. Having a CEO which is obviously against open source or even wish washy on the concept will scare customers away no matter how cheap the offering.

burnin

Re:In non-PR terms

[marcello_dl]

But it's the first thing I thought. Red hat rising? Could be the Novell deal that make potential Novell clients flock to alternatives or face another possible "SCO-the-kamikaze-company" case. Only, it seems too early to have affected RH sales in the 3rd quarter.

Re:In non-PR terms

[Antique Geekmeister]

If it threatens to, the main author of Samba just gave Google a shovel. From the article at http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200612210 81000710:

        "Unfortunately the time I am willing to wait for this agreement to be changed to remedy the GPL violation has passed, and so I must say goodbye."

He starts work for Google in early 2007, and is answering a lot of questions with silence. But his letter is painfully clear. I think we can also expect Samba development to get a real boost from this.

Are we still angry with them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember what the slashbot stance was on RH??

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

You're two episodes behind. It was SCO, now it's Novell. You gotta stay focused man!

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[spun]

What we need is some clear cut way of knowing who to hate at the moment. It wouldn't take long, probably not more than two minutes...

[KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK]

Yes?

Who we hate at the moment? I didn't mean that! I know we've always hated Novel, let me go! I'm a loyal Slashbot, I tell you!

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[Kelson]

I think we're supposed to scream and yell about how they're a money-grubbing Corporation (with a capital C) that never did anything for Linux, while ignoring all the @redhat.com addresses on contributions to the kernel, RPM (which, like it or not, *is* used by other distributions), various config tools (which, while no one else seems to be using them, are available for other distros to use if they want), debugging, funding of various projects, etc.

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans^W^WRed Hat ever done for us?

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[drinkypoo]

I'm both angry at them and happy that they exist. I'm angry enough not to use Redhat Linux, because of what they did to the free RedHat scene - turned it into a legion of beta testers. I'm happy about all the money they spend on various open source projects. Of course, RPM is a giant pile of shit that should never have been invented - who is the fuck-ass who thought up using cpio with a fucked up header on it so you have to use dd (or something) before you can even manually unpack the archive? He needs a serious ass-kicking. But that's a digression and something I can forgive them for :)

They've clearly done a lot for linux and OSS in general. It doesn't mean I have to like them. They're not doing any of it out of altruism. They're doing it because it makes good business sense. I'm supporting Ubuntu instead, because they're making actual promises not to change the entire way they do business overnight.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[rawtatoor]

Why is using redhat users as beta testers bad? Redhat makes its money off of companies and the fanboys get redhat for free, plus they get to take part in development.

However, RPM is wronger than nuns in a tampon commercial.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[Junta]

When I have a choice, I go with a debian derivative. However, more for technical reasons. Red Hat even before the Fedora core days had a bad habit of making wrong decisions (i.e. gcc "2.96") during each 'dot-oh' release, and evolving something stable in .1,.2,etc.. Fedora Core reminds me a lot of classic RH without anything but dot-oh releases in the installs I've seen, and reserving .1,.2,etc like stability for RHEL (and derivatives). The RHEL stuff I'm still not big on, but it does seem to at least be manageable. I don't think it's all that bad, their preferred vision of the world consists of only Fedora Core for enthusiasts/testers/developers, and RHEL for companies, but the reality is there are more options, even if you want to stay true to RH, CentOS is a viable option they can't get rid of.

What I am a bit frustrated with is RH people tend to think they are solely responsible for the widespread adoption of linux. I wasn't surprised that some of the most annoying devs I worked with ended up at RH (though they do have some cool devs there too). I'd wager the business types wished RH would have pushed a BSD platform, so they could close it up for the Enterprise install and have a relationship closer to OpenDarwin/OSX between Fedora and RHEL. They probably think any platform they would have chosen they would have made a winner...

Anyway, enough of my RH rant...

who is the fuck-ass who thought up using cpio with a fucked up header on it so you have to use dd (or however... something) before you can even manually unpack the archive? I think RPM is seriously lacking in flexibility, but your statement seems to imply a grave misunderstanding of cpio (dd??). What real benefit do you have from using tar or ar (debian uses ar currently)? They picked a perfectly viable archive format and went with it (the cpio format they picked has no particularly quirky limitations I am aware of).

My basic gripe about RPM is that is is fairly simplistic. You have dependencies and provides, no suggestions or recommendations. Also, no diversions seem to be possible in modern rpm implementations, if two rpms have the same file in their archive, they will conflict with no graceful way around it (a la dpkg-divert).

My other gripe that has little to do with RPM design itself is that a lot of uncaring/naive developers putting crap in pre and post-scripts that don't belong. I.e. cping files around really screwing with the reliability of rpm -qf...

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[Matt Perry]

And don't forget Red Hat's employment of developers of GCC, glibc, GNOME, and PostgreSQL. Thanks for your support, Red Hat. I'm glad your business is doing well.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[asuffield]

Of course, RPM is a giant pile of shit that should never have been invented - who is the fuck-ass who thought up using cpio with a fucked up header on it so you have to use dd (or something) before you can even manually unpack the archive? He needs a serious ass-kicking. But that's a digression and something I can forgive them for :)

If you think that's the real problem with RPM, you've never looked at the source. I can forgive the screwey and kinda limited file format - but the unmaintainable pile of vomit and demon bile that they call a source tree is a mortal sin against humanity. It contains slightly-forked copies of (and this list is incomplete): libdb, file, popt and sqlite (and the changes to these are not really documented). Variable names are frequently either hungarian, or just random single characters. Comments are almost non-existent in most of the code, except for doxygen tags.

Most of the reasons why RPM is irritatingly limited stem from the fact that very few people can bear to do any work on the thing. It's not something you'd want to touch unless you were getting paid really well.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[PMoonlite]

They've clearly done a lot for linux and OSS in general. It doesn't mean I have to like them. They're not doing any of it out of altruism.

Are you saying you only like altruistic people?

Plenty of people join Red Hat out of love for Free/Open Source Software. Very few people join Red Hat just for a paycheck. There are generally easier jobs that pay more.

I'm supporting Ubuntu instead, because they're making actual promises not to change the entire way they do business overnight.

Promising not to change business methods is either disingenuous or foolhardy. Do you really think businesses in the tech industry can just keep doing the same thing for ten years and expect to survive? The world changes out from underneath if you stand still. Canonical just hasn't been around long enough yet to notice this.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[swordsaintzero]

I hate redhat as well but cpio2rpm works well for unpacking them. I guess I have to keep tying since the oh so clever anti botting software felt that reply was made to quickly.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[myowntrueself]

I'm angry enough not to use Redhat Linux, because of what they did to the free RedHat scene - turned it into a legion of beta testers.

Hey, the entire population of Linux users are beta testers!

Except those that run Debian Stable.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[killjoe]

That doesn't mean we don't hate SCO anymore.

Anyway for those who are confused here is an easy way to tell who to hate.

"Hate companies and people who do evil shit. It is fair to take the evil shit into context. It's fair to forgive a company who has a long standing tradition of doing good if the one act of evil was due to being fucked with. At the same token when the company or person does something good it's fair to consider all the evil shit they did in the past and not give them a free ride".

You are quite welcome.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[jfenwick]

Even with that diatribe you're not going to gain any coolness points with the GNU zealots, seeing as how you mentioned Ubuntu. Their plans to put binary blob video drivers into the standard install is stirring the zealots up into a frenzy.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[Antique Geekmeister]

I agree with your assessment, but remember that RPM originally had to work in a very, very tiny boot medium (floppies!) cpio is ocnsiderably smaller and less feature-filled than GNU tar: it fits in a lot less binary space. So historically, it makes sense. Similarly, putting a header on the front with the package informaton is faster than putting it on the back, even if you have to strip it off with 'dd' to get the actually package bundle. And rpm2cpio works pretty well to make that painless.

But I agree with you about careless/naive developers. RPM package management has a very poor history of even its main corporate package reviewers performing and propagating absolute insanities, such as inconsistent naming schemes, and extremely poorly written pre and post-install operations. After all, is it libgimp, or gimp-lib? kernel-source, or kernel-devel? Who can tell? Should we save a copy of httpd.conf as httpd.conf.rpmsave, or just overwrite it? What's the right default behavior?

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Amen. Debian benefited from .deb nazis who insisted on good and consistently written packages, making it much easier to read. RPM has suffered extensively from a lot of Perl-novice like code and feature promulgation, and the result has been extremely painful to work with.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[drinkypoo]

I think RPM is seriously lacking in flexibility, but your statement seems to imply a grave misunderstanding of cpio (dd??).

It is you that has a grave misunderstanding of cpio, which is not dd. dd converts data from one format to another and resolves block sizes, and some versions do some other data conversions. That's its job in life. Cpio is an archive format like tar, and there is nothing wrong with it - in fact it was selected because at the time tar did not do as good a job with certain file attributes, so arguably it was a better solution.

Unfortunately, the way RPM utilizes cpio is fucking retarded. Rather than simply making an archive which contains a file which has the package instructions, RPM also prepends a header onto the CPIO archive, meaning that if you want to manipulate the archive with cpio, you must first strip off the header - which is usually done with dd.

I hope this clarifies things for you.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[Junta]

I know what dd is, I was thinking you were implying dd was needed to extract cpio, but I realize you were just talking about doing rpm2cpio manually with dd.

I don't think the format of having a header that can be parsed without extraction is a bad thing, so long as the header provides all the functionality needed, which rpm does not.

Re:Are we still angry with them?

[drinkypoo]

Their plans to put binary blob video drivers into the standard install gives me hopes that one day I will have a linux distribution that actually supports all my hardware out of the box, which hasn't happened since I started using 3d acceleration.

Must be all the Santas

[DrLZRDMN]

I mean think about it folks, Christmas is but a few days away and sales of "red hat" are surging.

Re:Must be all the Santas

[Anonymous Coward]

lol good one

numbers.

[sammy baby]

Wanna see the actual numbers? Red Hat's report to investors is here.

Is it just me, or did they spend almost twice as much on marketing as they did in the same quarter, previous year?

Re:numbers.

[Silver Sloth]

Is it just me, or did they spend almost twice as much on marketing as they did in the same quarter, previous year? Yes, that's what the figures say, and maybe an increase in marketing is the driver for the increase in turnover. However I'm more impressed by the line below

Sales and marketing 37,575 20,505 105,883 61,296
Research and development 19,200 9,644 51,084 29,846
General and administrative 18,024 12,357 49,579 34,067

which shows a greater, in %age terms, increase in R&D, and the next line which shows an much smaller increase in 'General and adminstrative'

It seems to me that a company concetrating on R&D and marketing is one which is healthy. The (dis)organisation I work for seem to have got that one arse about face!

Don't lump...

[Alcibaides]

People love to lump every distro under the sun together. There are significant differences. After all, not ALL are in bed with Gates, right?

This might have something to do with

[superwiz]

how bad Suse has been lately. Despite all the deals they made with MS (recent news) they have a bigger problem. Suse has become fundamentally bad. 9.3 was great. 10.0 was ok (but much worse than 9.3). 10.1 can only be described as unbearable (wouldn't even install half the time). And 10.2 tried but couldn't really to improve on 10.1. FYI, it does install now... after days of synchonizing package information with suse website. Google search for "suse 10.1 sucks" yeielded more hits than I cared to count. Debian is having internal infighting. Until the dust settles, RedHat is all that's left.

Re:This might have something to do with

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have to agree, SUSE 10.1 was not one of it's finest efforts, in fact a back step from 10.0. Tried 9.1 but not 9.3, I liked 10.0 the best and still run it. Maybe time to see what RHAT it up to these days, haven't run Fedora for awhile either.

Re:This might have something to do with

[postmortem]

Yes, but RedHat haven't released new version in 2 yrs. Nothing beats that. By now so old kernel 2.6.9 should get in the way for many apps and hardware.

Re:This might have something to do with

[morcego]

RedHat has a release plan, and they won't deviate from it. In any case, RHEL 5 is already in advanced beta stage.

I really don't know what you mean about 2.6.9-EL getting in the way. True, it does use mostly 2.6.9 API/ABI, but not strictly (as anyone how tried to compile some external kernel modules, like ieee80211 and ipw2200 have found out), and also contain lots of updates. The only external driver I use is ipw2200, and that only because I wanted monitor mode. And, since I was already recompiling it, I went the upgrade path as well.

Many people see 2.6.9 and think: "OLD!". That is really not the case. Using the latests version on any production server is very dangerous. In any case, "STABLE" beats "NEW" every time in my book.

Lastly, please remember it is 2.6.9-EL, and not 2.6.9. They are very different beasts.
Please read "speaks backport".

Re:This might have something to do with

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is having internal infighting.

  Wowee, son! You bagged the rare double-redundancy! I mean, external infighting is about as rare as Debian Mailing-List Amity Night.
  Hell, if flamewars on the debian mailing-lists were a good reason to use Red Hat, there'd be no debian left!

Re:This might have something to do with

[ronanbear]

That's nothing. Microsoft waited 5 years and they're pretty profitable. Applications do far more to sell OSs than the other way around. Growth takes time at first but goes through phases. Red Hat has a lead because it is good at what it's supposed to be doing.

Re:This might have something to do with

[Kesha]

I hated 10.1 as well, and stuck with 9.3 for most of the time, than upgraded to 10.0 for the last 2 months before 10.2 came out. I am running 10.2 on all of my machines now and I don't have much to complain about. There is 1 kernel issue with my 32bit TV cards not working because my x86_64 system has 4GB RAM, but that's not SuSEs fault, it's a driver problem, and I already filed a bug for it in the novell bugzilla.

Anyway, I don't think openSUSE 10.2 sucks as much as you claim it does. It's at least as good as 10.0.

        Paul.

Re:This might have something to do with

[Daniel Phillips]

Debian is having internal infighting.

What makes you think Redhat doesn't have internal infighting?

Re:This might have something to do with

[Chandon Seldon]

Debian is having internal infighting.

Debian *always* is having internal infighting. Always. It's one of the things that slows down their releases a bit, but it's nothing that you shouldn't be expecting after nearly 10 years of it. It doesn't change the fact that what they do release is one of the most stable and easy to administer distros out there.

RedHat is all that's left.

There are two other major distros that you forgot: Ubuntu and Mandriva. I haven't really been watching Mandriva (ever), but they still seem to be going strong. Ubuntu, on the other hand, remains my top choice for a full featured Linux distro. It's got almost the stability of Debian, with all the package management power, better hardware support, and worldwide enterprise-grade commercial support from multiple vendors.

Re:This might have something to do with

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Debian is having internal infighting.

And? Debian has always been having internal infighting.

Re:This might have something to do with

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw; the 2.6.9-EL kernel doesn't hold RHEL back at all. In fact, I saw RHEL4 happily install on some early pre-release hardware that Intel had lent my employer, whilst the latest version of SuSE at the time just hung. RHEL4 had been out for a month or so at that stage, the latest version of SuSE was less than a week old.

UNIX

[MichaelSmith]

Every single site which I know has moved away from Tru64 unix has gone to RHEL or a close derivative of it. Maintaining those systems 5, 10, 15 years into the future is going to deliver a lot of work to RedHat.

Re:UNIX

[protohiro1]

My team is going to be migrating 600 servers from bsd to RHEL in 07...and I know we are part of a trend. I think a lot of people are moving from Solaris et al to linux but still want support.

Quite nice

[icepick72]

"did quite a bit better" " came out quite a bit ahead"

They sound quite pleased.

It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[nortcele]

Those of us that work with the RedHat products will note that not all things are as they seem. Our company feels that we are not getting value for what is paid. Our loaded cost for a Windows machine is cheaper than that for Linux. I'm a die hard linux evangelist, but the numbers don't lie. Linux makes for better servers, and Windows for a better desktop (for now). Redhat changed their licensing for RH8 to RHEL3 right while many corporations were in mid-stream of adopting RedHat Linux. Corporations cannot change course that quickly so all this money RedHat made is from businesses following the corporate plan developed pre RHEL3. Our company adopted RedHat as our Linux standard based on RH8 and the costs at that time. Many company plans and projects began to be based on the use RedHat Linux. RedHat blind-sided us with their licensing change and it didn't make many here very happy. Corporations don't like uncentainty, thus the initial choice of RedHat instead of a less stable distribution. We really don't need the support. It's sort of like a security blanket. There... but really not needed.

We are a large enough company to be nearly self-supporting on Linux issues. Thus the RedHat cost per RHEL3/4 Workstation license is out of line for us. The only feature we need of the RedHat server is multiple CPU and memory capability. We don't use GFS or any of the other stuff. So the $1k server cost is WAY out of line. All the RedHat support we sometimes use are the updated RPMS for the distribution. Yet RedHat seems pretty oblivious to this until recently. We have bought more licenses in the last half year than all previous. Many of our data crunching processes are moving from Windows to Linux (Linux is fast and perl/python work better there.) Yet... we are unhappy with the perceived value. We paid RedHat enough last year that we probably should have just hired Linus to come work for us and gone with Fedora or Whitebox.

My point is this. RedHat is too expensive for what you get. Oracle and MS/Novell smell opportunity and have only begun their campaign. When Oracle comes out with their version of Linux, watch RedHat get completely ejected from corporate use as Oracle database servers (the $1000+/yr cash cow licenses for RedHat). When viable alternatives become available, will we evaluate them? Oh yeah.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[Anonymous Coward]

When viable alternatives become available

And there in lies the key.

Oracle is not viable, their CEO does not support open source and has made it clear that you don't put value into open source because then your competitor has the same value.

Microsoft is not viable, do I really need to go into this one, just read the many press quotes from Microsoft's CEO.

Novell is somewhat viable, but they've been selling SuSE for a few years now and haven't presented much competition for Red Hat. In addition I supsect the Microsoft deal will do more to scare away customers rather than bring more into the fold.

Corporations don't buy into linux for altruistic reasons, they buy into it because it makes business sense. That said it doesn't make sense to purchase linux support from a company that has made it clear that they intend to destroy open source as a competitive strategy when your own business relies on open source solutions. Most decision makers are going to look at statements coming out of Microsoft and Oracle and they'll know that they are not the proponents of open source that they want their businesses to depend on. Red Hat is just about the only true open source enterprise level support available.

I think you have some valid points concerning the changes Red Hat made and to this day I think they are missing out on some easy revenue with smaller companies/individuals that need an inexpensive support solution, but some of what your saying doesn't make sense.

You see no value in Red Hat's services, yet you continue to buy them.

You see Windows as a cheaper solution, yet you use Red Hat linux.

You can support linux yourself, yet you want to hire Linus so you can use an unsupported distro.

There must be more value there than you personally see because not only is your company expanding their use of Red Hat's services but so to are many other companies.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[petrus4]

Our loaded cost for a Windows machine is cheaper than that for Linux. I'm a die hard linux evangelist, but the numbers don't lie.

Then go here and learn how to create your own system. You can also use such services as this and others in order to stay on top of security vulnerabilities. There is also this site which talks about designing network infrastructure.

You'll need to do some homework, and it might seem daunting at first, but the amount of money you could save surely makes this at least worth thinking about. I can't understand why this unique ability that FOSS gives you (to strike out completely on your own, independent of a vendor) isn't capitalised on by more organisations. There is absolutely no need to pay a Linux vendor a single cent if you don't want to...it is entirely a choice.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[BigGerman]

I dont know what kind modded you down. I worked for several large Linux-centric corp over last few years and these are my impressions as well.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[Kennon]

"In addition I supsect the Microsoft deal will do more to scare away customers rather than bring more into the fold." Dude, you're drunk. Maybe in small orgs where the Sysadmin actually still makes most of the IT decisions you might be somewhat right but in the corporate world the M$/Novell deal is exactly what most CIO, CEO types were waiting for. Ask someone who works sales for RedHat which is the toughest nut to crack sales-wise and they will tell you that it is the big Unix shops who have not converted to Linux specifically because of IP/Patent litigation fears. To even talk about the M$/Novell deal in the context of this article is very premature to say the least. "Red Hat is just about the only true open source enterprise level support available." This is just a flat out lie.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[Chandon Seldon]

Another one of the unique abilities of FOSS is the fact that it allows you to rely on the work of others. Rather than screwing around with Linux From Scratch (which is an amusing thing to do once as a hobbyist, not a serious business solution) it's perfectly possible to chose another Linux vendor with a better product pricing model... say Canonical with Ubuntu. If they're more attached to the Red Hat model than they are to decent external support, something like CentOS might be appropriate. There's no need for people to be hand-rolling their own distros.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[petrus4]

Another one of the unique abilities of FOSS is the fact that it allows you to rely on the work of others.

Coughing up $300 or so for a box with an XP CD inside it isn't relying on the work of Microsoft? ;-)

There's no need for people to be hand-rolling their own distros.

Yeah...that might actually involve self-responsibility and intellectual proactivity, (horrors!) and at all costs, we CAN'T have people exercising either of those, can we?

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[Rutulian]

My point is this. RedHat is too expensive for what you get.

Correction...from what it sounds like you are saying, Red Hat is too expensive for what you need. You are buying support, but not using it. You are not using the functionality of the software you are buying. You are getting a hell of a lot...you're just not using it. If you don't need the support, don't pay for it. Seriously, try CentOS. For companies that actually use all of the stuff that Red Hat sells, though, I would say they are getting a pretty good deal. Comparable support packages from Microsoft are $$$$.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[Chandon Seldon]

Unnecessary replication of effort is a waste. If you need a general purpose Linux distro, at least start with something like Ubuntu or CentOS.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[LeneJ]

"I think you have some valid points concerning the changes Red Hat made and to this day I think they are missing out on some easy revenue with smaller companies/individuals that need an inexpensive support solution, but some of what your saying doesn't make sense."

It is interesting that in the 10 years Red Hat was doing just that, we hardly broke even. Only when we went Enterprise did we start making money. Having been in the company both before and after RHEL, I know I sleep better knowing that we actually make money, and there is a good chance that the company has enough money to pay me.

I work for Red Hat because it is a seriously cool place to work (although I work in a sales office...). I believe in Open Source (one of the reasons I started working there), and I am extatic that management "got it" from that perspect. We are not perfect, far from it, but we are working on improving the things we're bad at, and continue doing the good things we do.

Re:It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell

[NDPTAL85]

It isn't capitalized because it is an amateurish way to run a business. You don't roll your own Linux to run your company's infrastructure on unless you own the company yourself. Do you think limo companies build their own limos? Or computer retailers build their own computers?

I know those two items have intrinsic costs that free software doesn't but still the one common cost they ALL have is time and a lack of someone else to call and blame if something goes wrong.

"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[FallLine]

It seems to me that, contrary to the vision espoused by RMS/GNU/etc, most of these companies which are based around-GPL products truly aren't making their business by selling "support", i.e., actual people delivering support by phone, in person, or by other electric mediums. "Support" instead has devolved into the fairly convoluted idea of delivering a stream of updates while the other GPL/Linux companies really depend on selling closed-source licenses to their GPLd products (e.g., MySQL). I'm glad Redhat is succeeding thus far, but it seems to me a fairly unsustainable business model given the realities....

It seems to me that is only a matter of time until one or several happen:

A) RMS/GNU will complain that Redhat is violating the spirit of the GPL by not providing 100% equal access to free-loaders and then change the GPL

B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts...

C) Redhat will be forced to include some proprietary software that will truly seperate them from the free-loaders...

Either way, the system seems unlikely to generate the kind of revenues needed to pay for massive improvements to the open source components of the linux platform over the long term... without some pretty fundamental shifts at least.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[Gibberx]

B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts...

Isn't Oracle doing that already?

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[Junta]

I think also saying they make their money from "support" may be a strong word, but it isn't so far off, they make money by selling the promise of support. I've seen numerous installations where the organization deploying knew for all practical technical reasons, they could go with either RHEL or CentOS and have the same experience. However, they were willing to pay for the support contract they more often than not never use.

This is not new to the business, or even the *nix world. Few years back I was part of a Solaris admin team. Before I joined, they already subscribed to a really expensive SMB server product for Solaris, which charged ungodly amounts monthly for even just a 2 concurrent client access license. I recognized that users were understandably upset over being 200 people who could rarely access their files from their windows boxes unless their department ponied up funds for a commercial nfs client for windows. I suggested samba as a viable alternative, but was denied because they couldn't possibly call for support at the time. I asked if they had ever actually called the vendor for support, and the answer was no, but they perpetually lived in fear of having to, so they paid the exorbitant fee.

It *seems* like they are selling an essentially free product hoping no one will notice, but the customers are mostly damn well aware of the free alternatives, and they make the conscious decision. Liability in a sense of the word is applicable. If IT uses their budget such that they have a couple more servers with money saved from not buying RHEL licenses, no one will notice or give them praise. However, if it hits the fan, even if the technical result ends up the same, if CentOS was installed, the finger pointing stops at the IT dept, if RHEL was installed with support contract in place, IT can redirect the finger to RedHat as not delivering on promises if it comes to that

As to your points:

A) RMS/GNU will complain that Redhat is violating the spirit of the GPL by not providing 100% equal access to free-loaders and then change the GPL Not likely, CentOS is the perfect counter-example that RHEL is following the GPL fine and the license is working as intended without loopholes. RedHat hasn't been overly noisy, but some acts they've done clearly demonstrate they aren't keen on the existence of CentOS, but accept they can't do anything about it.

B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts... That is in essence what Oracle is doing. That's one of the scary competitors that RH has been talking about. If they were too successful in impairing RH's ability to fix the core stuff, they must either pick up the slack themselves or the product will perish (much like a parasite that gets too greedy will die when the host is killed). Too soon to tell if this relationship ends up parisitc (but perhaps mostly harmless) or symbiotic.

C) Redhat will be forced to include some proprietary software that will truly seperate them from the free-loaders... At one point I know RH shipped with the package some extras, including a JRE. Don't think they've done anything serious yet outside of GPLed projects. That does seem like a reasonable path if Oracle or Novell start achieving overwhelming success and RH is finally forced to differentiate themselves from the competition on a technical level.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[essdodson]

Not likely, CentOS is the perfect counter-example that RHEL is following the GPL fine and the license is working as intended without loopholes. RedHat hasn't been overly noisy, but some acts they've done clearly demonstrate they aren't keen on the existence of CentOS, but accept they can't do anything about it. Such as?

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[burnin1965]

A) RMS/GNU will complain that Redhat is violating the spirit of the GPL by not providing 100% equal access to free-loaders and then change the GPL

B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts...

C) Redhat will be forced to include some proprietary software that will truly seperate them from the free-loaders...

Either way, the system seems unlikely to generate the kind of revenues needed to pay for massive improvements to the open source components of the linux platform over the long term... without some pretty fundamental shifts at least.

A) RMS/GNU will not likely complain about Red Hat not living up to the spirit of the GPL because they do. The GPL is about access and redistribution of source code, all Red Hat's contributions to linux are open source, everyone has access and can change and redistribute the code. Your confusing Red Hat's network and personell resources people pay for to provide updates, installation support, and training with the source code coming out of Red Hat and available under the GPL.

B) While anyone can setup a business to deliver Red Hat's updates at a lower price, i.e. Oracle, its not likely that most Red Hat customers will be foolish enough to fall for fake open source proponents to provide support to the open source solutions their businesses depend on. Oracle and Microsoft are not a threat to Red Hat because they are obviously against open source and contrary to supporting it would actually like to stamp it out when it appears threatening to their primary business models.

C) Rather than Red Hat being forced into including proprietary software in their code base its more likely that customers will demand that other vendors support Red Hat by either developing and testing their proprietary products on Red Hat or by open sourcing their proprietary product so the community can provide the value of open source developement to the customer and the customer's vendors.

And either way, arguing that costs of developing linux and its components outstrips any possible revenues is a weak arguement considering linux came from $0 revenue to a serious competitor now generating billions in revenue. Yes I said billions. Red Hat is a small part of the linux market, there are several other vendors, IBM, Dell, HP, Novell, etc. who are making hundreds of millions off linux as well. Server hardware sales of linux based machines alone is over $1.5 billion a year.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[petrus4]

A) RMS/GNU will complain that Redhat is violating the spirit of the GPL by not providing 100% equal access to free-loaders and then change the GPL

I can't see RMS denouncing Red Hat, for a couple of different reasons. The first is that despite Stallman considering corporations evil, Red Hat still works to bring them into the fold. Corps using Red Hat means corps finding out that Stallman exists, which can in turn at least potentially mean more people which Stallman has influence over. You'll never hear him say it, but power is what Stallman is primarily interested in. He also believes that the most effective way of getting it is to create at least a very convincing illusion of holding the moral high ground...hence why all the other stuff surrounding him is there.

The second thing to realise is that despite what it might sound like in speeches that he gives at times, Stallman doesn't have as much of a problem with money as people might think. He might not like the idea of other people making it, but he has no qualms whatsoever about it flowing in the FSF's direction. Corporations using Red Hat again means that organisations with potentially very large amounts of money fall under the FSF's legal jurisdiction, via the GPL...which is really something to widen the gnu head's smile.

Stallman is also a member of that particular branch of anarcho-communism which advocates using the infrastructure of the pre-existing society in order to bring about its' downfall...which means utilising what corporations can do for him at the same time as working to destroy them.

Also, in a recent half-page interview with Red Hat's XO, he used the word "community" probably four times. Red Hat knows exactly which side it's bread is buttered on, which also explains the attempts to revitalise the Fedora project. Probably the main reason why Red Hat wouldn't enter into something like Novell's agreement with Microsoft is because it knows that to do so would be biting the hand that feeds it.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[Junta]

The stuff as an outsider I've noted are some nastygrams from RedHat toward CentOS on copyrighted stuff they can legitimately get CentOS on for not being careful enough about replacing. It's not overly damning, but it is an example of them making life harder on the CentOS guys.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[morcego]

A) RMS/GNU will complain that Redhat is violating the spirit of the GPL by not providing 100% equal access to free-loaders and then change the GPL

Like every other CentOS user, I would like to call your bluff on that one. Not only that, but RedHat is very receptive, and is even willing to answer questions from the CentOS staff.

If RMS/GNU/FSS decided to complain, I hope they do it to Mandriva, which doesn't provide the source codes to free-loaders, as you call them. They actually don't even answer e-mails with requests on the subject. Disgraceful.

B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts...

Not as easy. RedHat offers support (true), but they also offer standardization and a certified platform, as demanded by many software shops.

C) Redhat will be forced to include some proprietary software that will truly seperate them from the free-loaders...

Actually, unless I'm very much mistaken, Redhat provides less proprietary software today than in the RH8/RH9 days (if you've got the box, not download).

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[morcego]

RedHat hasn't been overly noisy, but some acts they've done clearly demonstrate they aren't keen on the existence of CentOS, but accept they can't do anything about it.

Like forbidding CentOS from using the "RedHat" trademarked name even on their homepages ?
Or maybe you mean the many, many times people from RedHat answered questions from CentOS developers and helped them to better understand the redhat way of doing things ?

I'm sorry, don't take this question as an attack, but are you really involved on CentOS, or do you only read the news ?

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[Junta]

Only read the news, and the measures you describe are the acts I said clearly demonstrate their distaste for CentOS. Ultimately, they have to and do accept CentOS's existance (otherwise the nastiness you describe would be just the tip of the iceberg, and the reason why I bet they wish they were a BSD that wouldn't have to put up with that crap if they wanted.).

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[morcego]

Ok, I read the news too, and it looked like RedHat was fighting CentOS, so your mistake is very much understandable.

But you see, I gave two examples. One of RedHat "fighting" CentOS, and one of RedHat "helping" CentOS.

As you can see, RedHat was not defending its Linux distribution. It was defending its trademark. If you consider the trademark laws in USA, you will have to agree that RedHat really had no other option.

RedHat knows off, acknowledges and accepts CentOS existance. Sometimes, they even help. As long as CentOS don't use RedHat's name, brand or logos. So what the CentOS team was pretty much like a sed 's/RedHat/upstream/g' and poof, all solved (the logos and other branded material were long gone already).

Trademark law is the point here. Unless you actively defend your trademark, you loose it.

I, for one, would like to thank RedHat for all its support (albeit unofficial) to CentOS. Of course they don't do this because they are nice (people are nice, companies aren't). They do it because CentOS helps them increase their market and sales (including training). If someone is moving from RedHat from something else, it is much better for RedHat if they move to CentOS. If nothing else, it is easier to recapture them back and it would be if they moved to, lets say, Debian.

I only with other distros were as receptive to rebuilders like RedHat is.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[Junta]

As you can see, RedHat was not defending its Linux distribution. It was defending its trademark. If you consider the trademark laws in USA, you will have to agree that RedHat really had no other option. Yes, to a point. However, we are using the Red Hat name right now in our comments. This sort of dialog is being forbidden by Red Hat on CentOS' web site as well.

Anyway, I'm glad both exist. RedHat for my gripes proves the viability of the platform as a professional endeavor, and CentOS' existance is a nice check and balance to remind RH what the GPL can mean to them, and, of course, to let users partake of whatever RedHat does achieve.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[morcego]

Yes, to a point. However, we are using the Red Hat name right now in our comments. This sort of dialog is being forbidden by Red Hat on CentOS' web site as well.

Actually, I was not required to go that far, even tho the CentOS people did go to some extra mile.

The main problem was that, on the main (front) page of the site, it was being said that CentOS was a RedHat clone or something like that (I don't recall the exact phrasing). Also, there were referenced to RedHat on the CentOS documentation.

What really called this problem to attention was the reference on the front page. Of course the people at RedHat knew about the various referenced to RedHat all around, but RedHat (the company) had to do something when you started searching for RedHat on Google, and would get some CentOS pages.

I'm also very glad both exist. I would still use RedHat ( I think ) if CentOS didn't exist, but not on all my boxes. On some (where I use CentOS), I would use some other distro, which could have led to a site-wide change of distros.

I basically used RHEL when I need warranty and/or certification. Oracle servers, critical data clusters and such. On other places, I use CentOS (including my home machines and notebook).

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[buddha42]

I think also saying they make their money from "support" may be a strong word, but it isn't so far off, they make money by selling the promise of support. I've seen numerous installations where the organization deploying knew for all practical technical reasons, they could go with either RHEL or CentOS and have the same experience. However, they were willing to pay for the support contract they more often than not never use.

You're actually more right than you know. When a company like redhat sells support, people who pay for it actually benefit from it *without even making one single support call*. The reason is simple: support costs money. Call centers, employees, training, management, frustrated customers. None of that is cheap. The end result is that it is in redhat's own *fiscal best interest* to do as good a job as humanly possible to provide a stable, secure, and most of all well-integrated product. Because the better job they do, the more likely that they'll only have to field one support call per X licenses sold. Their goal is to stretch that ratio as much as possible.

Point being, just because you don't use support, doesn't mean its not worth something.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[hdparm]

I can't see RMS denouncing Red Hat, for a couple of different reasons. The first is that despite Stallman considering corporations evil...

You clearly do not understand Richard Stallman at all.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[smash]

I think also saying they make their money from "support" may be a strong word, but it isn't so far off, they make money by selling the promise of support. I've seen numerous installations where the organization deploying knew for all practical technical reasons, they could go with either RHEL or CentOS and have the same experience. However, they were willing to pay for the support contract they more often than not never use.

Exactly. For example, we run a system called "Modular Mining" on Redhat enterprise.

We have never used our support. However, if for example we were to have a critical problem with it, the loss in productivity from not having the modular system up and running could be in the order of millions of dollars per day.

Again, we have redundant servers for this application, but in the scheme of things, a couple of grand a year/month is "nothing" in terms of the "insurance" it provides.

Put it this way - in our environment, if the system was down for 3 days at a cost (in reduced production efficiency) of a couple of million $, and it was discovered by management that support for 2-3k per year was available that could have helped get back up and running within hours/1 day, and you didn't take it - do you think you should keep your job?

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[juhaz]

It's blatantly obvious from the way they license their own stuff they don't have any wish to be BSD.
They hold all the copyrights, they can license it whatever they want, BSD, even proprietary. But they don't, it's all GPL, because that's what they wish to and are committed to use.

Even with only GPL they could make life for clones much more unbearable if they had any wish to do so. They could use 3a clause and send source on physical media to their customers for example, or they could probably distribute just the original sources and patches instead of SRPMs. Either way, CentOS would instantly become impractical enough that it would probably not be worth the hassle to continue the project.

Like the gp said, they were defending their trademarks, and they have to. I've seen no instances of really obvious distaste, and there's have been plenty of chances for that.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[rohan972]

RedHat hasn't been overly noisy, but some acts they've done clearly demonstrate they aren't keen on the existence of CentOS, but accept they can't do anything about it.

If Redhat wanted to make rebuilds harder, they'd release source tarballs instead of source rpms. That would still be 100% GPL compliant. What they're not keen on is trademark dilution, as another poster commented. I don't know that they could really do much more to make rebuilds easier.

Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer

[jsoderba]

According to US law, trademarks are only valid as long as they are enforced. You can't blame Red Hat for protecting their name.

redhat too rich for your blood?

[Anonymous Coward]

My point is this. RedHat is too expensive for what you get. Perhaps you could run centos and shut your damn pie hole! --Merry Christmas

CentOS

[Zeio]

I would just buy one or two RedHat for support (if you really need it, RHEL tends to work fairly well out of the box.)

The rest would be CentOS. I really get tired of expiring updates, and up2date not working unless you pay, and multiple channels for the same product (AS, ES, WS).

CentOS is free, is binary and ABI compatible, and is supported for the full 5 years for free.

Seriously, the CYA / "no one ever got fired for using (Cisco/Microsoft/Redhat)" actually applies to using centos, it doesn't run out and leave you exposed to security exploits.

The fact remains is RedHat uses extortionist tactics (by letting your defenses down) to keep you paying for support. Even the loathed MSFT lets you download security updates when in automatic mode even if you pirate the OS and they know it.

Software vendors should be held liable for exploited systems and damages caused after exploitation if the vendor uses extortion tactics against customers. CentOS is free and open and forever supported.

Remember, please try CentOS - it is RHEL minus the extortion.

Re:CentOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft releases security updates to the public for download.. RedHat releases security update _source code_ to the public. Not to mention the code base for the entire OS. Where is the extortion? Or perhaps you'd like a definition of what the word extortion actually means?
#

# Extortion is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person obtains money, behaviour, or other goods and/or services from another by wrongfully threatening or inflicting harm to his person, reputation, or property. Euphemistically, refraining from doing harm is sometimes called protection.

now go d/l the SRPMs

Re:CentOS

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's not extortion. If you need core support, or even more important new features for RedHat software, or QA testing with new hardware before you buy dozens of expensive systems only to find out the kernel doesn't support their new hardware, you pay RedHat to get that support. And the CentOS packagers aren't the authors of some core modern features, like the clustering software or new file system. If you need that sort of thing, you can pay and train people in house, or you can buy it from RedHat.

If you've got the expertise or desire to do it in house, you hire your own people.

Re:CentOS

[JacksBrokenCode]

You're forgetting that, here at Slashdot, any reasonable expectation of monetary reward for service(s) rendered is pure evil. This isn't reality, it's Slashdot.

Re:CentOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you have never done this. The SRPMs kind of compile, but funny, they never quite end up being the same thing you would get out of the RedHat channel. Many companies use GPL code and the do tricks to make sure their build environment and lots of non-GPL glue prevent you from actually tracking the changes.

You have spoken without having done what you suggest. You are a dangerous person and should seriously try things before suggesting them.

I' so irritated reading your god damn response every time, I could assail you for hours on this one but I've got other things to tend to.

On the other hand...

[MAXOMENOS]

...Mark Shuttleworth is making it very clear that Ubuntu is a for profit venture. He could very well start charging money for something soon, and end up ticking off the Open Source world the same way the heroes of a decade ago (Red Hat) tick you off now.

If you want purity of purpose, you'd be best off with Debian, and good luck with it.

Re:On the other hand...

[kripkenstein]

"...Mark Shuttleworth is making it very clear that Ubuntu is a for profit venture. He could very well start charging money for something soon"

Like support, which they already offer?

Re:On the other hand...

[fdfisher]

I 2nd this statement. In fact, Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu have already begun doing things that undermine the idea of free software. For example, Ubuntu now ships with binary blobs in the kernel, non-free wireless drivers, and proprietary nvidia drivers (for which free alternatives readily exist.) See Scott James Remnant's blog for details. Likewise, it's been reported and substantiated that Mark Shuttleworth is preventing the Debian GNOME maintainer (who also works for Canonical) from updating GNOME packages until after Ubuntu LSO had shipped. Of the two top committees governing Ubuntu, the Ubuntu Community Council and the Technical Board, are both made up of Mark Shuttleworth and people he employs, and Shuttleworth has been given "benevolent dictator for life" status within the project. A lot of people do not trust Shuttleworth either, and some, such as Debian Developer, Otavio Salvador, have made comments like, "what he says and what he does are different." You should be wary of supporting Shuttleworth's efforts as there's good reason to question his commitment to the ideals of free software and to the interests of the rest of the community.

Re:On the other hand...

[drinkypoo]

At least he's making everything very clear, and not trying to hide shit from the user base. Redhat was sneaky, it is the very opposite of open. The source is open but the business process is closed. That's okay if they want to do business that way; I'd just rather deal with someone else.

Re:On the other hand...

[drinkypoo]

proprietary nvidia drivers (for which free alternatives readily exist.)

No they don't. The free nv driver doesn't support my QuadroFX's 3d capabilities. I'm reduced to using it in VESA mode, which is not "working" by my standards (providing access only to a tiny slice of the card's capabilities just doesn't do it for me.

I wish you people would stop lying about this. You know the truth. Why do you persist in spreading falsehoods?

Likewise, it's been reported and substantiated that Mark Shuttleworth is preventing the Debian GNOME maintainer (who also works for Canonical) from updating GNOME packages until after Ubuntu LSO had shipped.

That certainly sounds like a bad thing, but ultimately it takes two to tango and if the GNOME process depends on one person, then we have just discovered a point of fragility in that process that should be addressed.

You should be wary of supporting Shuttleworth's efforts as there's good reason to question his commitment to the ideals of free software and to the interests of the rest of the community.

If the licenses are working, then it doesn't actually matter. Anything he does will further the cause of free software.

If they are not, perhaps the thing to do is to update the licenses instead of whining about how Ubuntu supposedly doesn't give back to the community.

Nice but expensive

[curious.corn]

I appreciate RH very much where I work; once machines are registered it is quite stable and feels clean and familiar. What I don't think is good is the pricetag: 2.5K per GFS node, 6K for a client limited Satellite and an extra 200 bucks for management and provisioning entitlements. Once you add up it becomes pricey, especially compared to MS sitewide licenses. I understand it beats hands down other UNIX platforms but it's difficult to resist the MS pressure within the datacenter.

I wouldn't mind to see some price cuts, or better bundling/volume discounts.

viable alternative....

[Anonymous Coward]

When viable alternatives become available.....

Uhhh.....Solaris?

Um, market manipulation for 2 million

[Jack9]

This is clearly a hedge fund pump and dump move. Sales up profits down? Heck, there hasn't been a single newsworthy item that justifies the massive spike. As any money manager would tell you, this is how big money makes more money for free. Pump it up on speculative news with a massive buy, wait, wait, dump it.

Re:Um, market manipulation for 2 million

[dcavanaugh]

Your theory works just as well in reverse. Perhaps the Oracle threat was wildly hyped and exaggerated. "Unbreakable Linux" turns out to be Centos with a different logo and shrink wrap. And Oracle support is...well...Oracle support. Perhaps the market overreacted to the last quarterly report. I have seen truly awful companies whose stock price holds through all kinds of bad news.

Although the "spike" brings the price to 22+, the company is not much worse off than when it traded at 30. I really thought Larry did that whole Unbreakable Linux thing as a tactic to drive down the price and take over RHT. But it's too late for that now.

Re:Um, market manipulation for 2 million

[burnin1965]

Sales up profits down?

Don't believe the headlines from journalists who don't actually follow Red Hat's financial performance. Sales are up massively and profits are down by a small fraction. Last year Red Hat's press release financial reports did not include stock compensation, however, their SEC filings did. If you compare last quarters sales and earnings to the pro forma numbers in the SEC filing for the previous year you find that sales went from $73 million in 2005 to $106 million in 2006, pro forma earnings went from $15 million in 2005 to $14.6 million in 2006. So while some headlines are screaming 37% drop in profits its actually a 2.7% drop while the revenues are up over 40% year over year.

See page 10 of last years Q3 SEC filing for the correct numbers to compare this quarter against.
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFra meset.aspx?FilingID=4120608&Type=HTML

IMO Red Hat needs to get a better handle on stock compensation, but make no mistake the 40%+ growth rate in revenue and the previous 16 quarters of similar growth are justification for the spike in the stock price.

burnin

Just as the more sage predicted...

[surfingmarmot]

Oracle's entry did not hurt Red Hat as much as it legitimized Linux all the more in the enterprise market. Multiple trustworthy vendors are needed to make a market. Microsoft saw this coming which is why they entered into the agreement with Novell to provide a legal base for a future intellectual-property-based attack. This is about to get very, very interesting indeed. It will make the SCO-IBM fight look like a warm-up bout before the title bout.

Re:Just as the more sage predicted...

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, don't be so certain that Linux will be as easy to beat. With two federal judges looking over Linux source code and saying 'its clean, nothing stolen from anyone' after the SCO/IBM fight, microsoft saying "Linux stole our..." really is calling the federal judges ....liars? But their rulings are final. The SCO/IBM fight, might have just taken every last bit of wind from microsofts sails. The final verdict is that Linux is ultra-clean. Further, you jest when you say 'M$ will do damage'... Rubbish! Remember who was defending Linux in the IBM/SCO fight? IBM has the massive 40,000+ patent portfolio. Microsoft has less than 500 (and Linux alone has 300 patents of its own). This is not a fight M$ has the slightest chance in hell of winning. The half-second microsoft tries to actually pull this kind of stupid patent fight, IBM will be shutting Redmond down (all the offices, all the staff, all the packaging, all the websites, the games consoles, the whole thing). Cease and desist all around. Microsoft will in an instant, stop being the golden-egg laying goose, and become the cooked one. Not that they haven't been doing anything but flopping around the last seven years anyway.

People are moving from SuSE

[borgheron]

People are probably moving from SuSE to Redhat in reaction to the MS-Novell agreement.

GJC

Your sig

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

IT workers should unionize.

Oh sure. Just what we need: a mass of dot-com bubble-era Windows 98 "admins" and VBA "programmers" having the ability to out-vote the minority of skilled techies who actually know what they are doing.

Oh, and it would also make it harder for you when you finally get fed up with the crap and quit to work as an independent consultant, because now your customers can't hire you because they're not allowed to use non-union workers.

And no, this won't solve the problems of insecure software, DRM, patents, spam, or anything else like that. I don't understand why a skilled IT professional would want to deal with the politics and the stupidity of a union.

shut the fuck up

[Anonymous Coward]

take your advertisement elsewhere

Re:shut the fuck up

[Anonymous Coward]

CentOS is free, so its not advertisement, its advocacy, and your lack of a cogent response to this means you have nothing to say.

FOAD.