Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Reaping Benefits From Novell/MSFT deal?
Ho Kooshy Fly writes "It seems that at least one software group has seen the use of Red Hat substantially increase over Novell as of late. EWeek theorizes that this may be backlash from the patent deal with Microsoft. From the article: 'The survey's findings can also be extrapolated to the broader open-source software industry and are not limited to those enterprise customers using Alfresco software "because of the wide range of open-source and proprietary software use cases captured and the large sample size of the survey," [Ian Howells, Alfresco's chief marketing officer] said. "We think these findings accurately reflect the broad technology trends across modern stacks in organizations of all sizes." Gallup polls about U.S. presidential candidates typically survey about 1,000 likely voters, while Alfresco surveyed more than 10,000 people, he said.'"
I'm not convinced that this is unbiased, especially the claims that Novell adoption is slowing due to backlash. Give us the stats if you want, but let us draw our own conclusions. Also, why did the report separate Fedora and RHEL while not separating openSuSE and Novell SuSE? Certainly interesting data, but like I said, I don't really want their conclusions. On a side note, PostgreSQL seems to be used a lot more than I originally thought.
Why Microsoft went into these deals anyway? Sure: "FUD".. Whatever, that's not a good reason enough. You can't stop Linux with just some random deals with minor distros and some FUD.
Does anyone have a hint of what their actual strategy is? So far they are just eliminating some smaller distros on the market and making it easier for the bigger distros to gain further traction.
Is this the idea? Help consolidate the market, so you have only 2-3 major distros to sue eventually for patent infringement?
I did a survey of surveys and found them only 88.1% accurate.
hypnosis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAcMRvInazA
The eWeek story got it wrong. Internetnews.com got it right. From their article: "in an interview with internetnews.com, Howells admitted that he lacked that empirical evidence to back up his allegation. "All we've got is the raw statistics," Howells said. "We expected general trends to be similar, but what we saw was a big divergence going from the two platforms being almost the same to one tripling in size. We were looking at various reasons for that, and there may be a number of reasons for that but we don't actually know the specific reason." Among the other reasons why Red Hat users may well have increased is the emergence of a new Red Hat release -- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL) -- which was released in mid-March just a few weeks ahead of when the Alfresco study began. Novell on the other hand had no similar product launch event at any point near the Alfresco study. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3 690141
No, Novell's marketing is spot-on, it's the MS deal that's done it.
Novell haven't the faintest idea how to promote and articulate SUSE (do most people even know it's SUSE outside the geek community?) and are bleeding the people who can at a rapid rate, at least the ones I know.
CxO's don't give a toss about deals with MS, they care about brands and RedHat are as strong as they come backed up with better marketing.
I don't work for RedHat and I'm a Mac bigot, so I think I'm reasonably balanced.
So if I were a company evaluating whether to choose Novell over Redhat based solely on the Microsoft deal, I would definitely choose Redhat. Novel's deal with Microsoft has so many exceptions in it (doesn't cover "clone" or "foundry" or "other" products) and contridictions between the two companies (GPLv3 is/isn't covered) that all it seems to do get Microsoft's attention better for their "who could we sue" list. Because the deal surely doesn't protect you from getting sued, given all the exceptions.
I would rather go with Redhat where there's far less confusion going on. They offer protection anyways, through OIN.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
"Gallup polls about U.S. presidential candidates typically survey about 1,000 likely voters, while Alfresco surveyed more than 10,000 people, he said.'"
That does not matter.
Sorry, I don't programme outdoors; I'm in my parents' basement!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
PostgreSQL has grown dramatically since 8.x was released. Easy Windows support really helps because, like it or not, a lot of developers write on Windows and publish on Linux.
People tend to move to PostgreSQL when they find they need features MySQL lacks, get hung up on some of the odd issues MySQL can have, or find they have licensing issues with MySQL. The biggest drawback for PostgreSQL is that you actually have to configure it when you install it, or it will think it's running on a system with very minimal specs. It's also more complex than MySQL, but still nowhere near MS SQL Server 2005.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Good for Alfresco. They've gotten loads of publicity over a non-scientific survey, a poorly written eWeek article and now, the Slashdot front page. And way to go Slashdot, maybe an editor will dupe the false story about FreeType and the MS/Novell patent agreement as well. Apparently, neither eWeek or Slashdot employ editors.
c k-week-an-experiment-in-innovation.ars ?
So, why would trash like this get published on Slashdot instead of something actually interesting, like http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/novell-ha
Gallup polls about U.S. presidential candidates typically survey about 1,000 likely voters, while Alfresco surveyed more than 10,000 people, he said.'"
I recall that my statistics professor explicitly pointed out a common mistake in statistics: "Contrary to what people typically believe, the size of the sample is often not as critical as getting an unbiased sample." If you call the home phone number of people during daytime and ask the ones who answer whether they are employed or not, you will not get good statistics. Regardless if you reach 1 000 or 10 000 people.
I have no idea if there is such a problem with the statistics presented here. I just want to point out their claim of sample size can not be taken to mean that their statistics are better than Gallup's.
Open Materials Database
We used Suse way before Novell bought it, and the deal with Microsoft while good for the board of Novell fails in every other respect. Open means choice - not fud or payments to Microsoft for 'mob insurance'.
Instead of keeping Suse - we moved distro and yes we are happy. Move back to Novell ? - no thank you.
. It is a good stategy, and some open source people really do fall for it. GPL3 from a corporate perspective is not a very positive thing. So i would think that community is already showing lots of divide, although that could just be because there are lots more people in it now.
So switching to the left hand puts you in a better mood?
Glad to see that people still understand some of the finer points in statistical sampling.
Congrats, dude. Or condolences, depending on..
I have a buddy in the oil and gas industry, he has a small geophysics firm. The firm writes software and their customers have eschewed Windows, they don't want windows server/client components anymore, they want Linux. It used to be that they got quite a bit of requests for Linux and Windows but nobody is asking for Windows anymore. Nine times out of ten the customers want the software available as an RPM for RHEL. They also test on CentOS and Fedora but the vast majority of their customers want it to work on RHEL. I found it very interesting when I discussed it with him.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, when I have finished the act of love, I too post on Slashdot.
My best guess is that Microsoft wants to tell the world (especially those that are watching their anti-trust behavior and those they are trying to convice that their OOXML should be a standard) that Linux companies CAN and DO license their POS IP.
The important phrase to take out of the article;
"Alfresco did not specifically ask community members the reason for their Linux choice"
So we have a self selecting sample, from which they've drawn conclusions on an issue they didn't even ask about. We're also left in the dark as to how Redhat compared to the other distros (like, for instance, flavour of the month Ubuntu) in recent months. So we don't know if the supposed surge in Redhat is more down to Redhat itself than disapproval of SUSE.
My analysis; this report is insignificant PR fluff, to which some fanboy has added cherry picked data to "prove" a political point he wished to make regardless.
Am I the only one that read "Alfresco" and started thinking italian food?
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
release the survey weasels now, they're known for their impartiality and ethicality in these matters, possibly backed up by some ombudsman badgers, what could go wrong?, at the very least they'll stop the squirrels from spying
prepare the survey weasels.
My read is that once you sign with Microsoft, Microsoft is free to attack you. Or Novell is doing better than Redhat. Or Redhat doesn't have to sign because they are partners with Microsoft in Microsoft's linux. ... Novell Content Exchange ('00), IBM Workplace ('04), Zenworks 7 Management ('00), Extend Director 4 ('03) ... Novell users simply don't use Alfresco. Not before signing or after.
But who cares, this is Microsoft's stupid marketing because
See, I've always said that switching hands makes it feel like somebody else is doing it! //wow, my captcha is "escorts"
If you check out here you will notice that Alfresco is listed at the number one project on the Red Hat Exchange. So maybe their downloads are three-times higher because Red Hat advertises for them for free. I dunno about you, but I would won't believe the results until they adjust for that (i.e. "Where did you hear about Alfresco?").
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Event 1: Microsoft and Novell sign patent deal
r _hoc.
Event 2: Redhat has better sales than Novell
Conclusion: there is a backlash against Novell and is losing customers.
This a logical fallacy of the type "Post Hoc ergo propter Hoc", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propte
Because Redhat's increased sales happened after Microsoft/Novell deal, doesn't mean there is a fallout. I doubt that is the case especially among 'corporate' customers. It could've been just better and targeted marketing on the part of Redhat to counter the deal.
As much as I like Red Hat based systems I'd switch to Debian in the blink of an eye if Red Hat signed an agreement with Microsoft, like Novell did.
Microsoft opposes everything that Linux has come to stand for. Linux is the best OS on the planet and it's completely free. If Microsoft was ever able to gain control of it those ass hats would start selling CALS for Linux servers, OEM stickers for Linux workstations, and sue your ass off if you didn't buy them. If you give Microsoft an inch they will walk all over you and they'll try to walk over you even if you don't. Just look at how hard Microsoft is trying to ramrod MSOOXML through the ISO standards committee. Do we really want Microsoft playing games with Linux? To hell with Microsoft's monopolistic games and any Linux distribution that signs with them.
Is there a backlash against Novell? Yes. The question isn't "Is there a backlash?" The question is, "Is the backlash large enough to make Novell's executives take notice."