Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Red Hat's New CEO
mjasay writes "Red Hat just got a new CEO, Jim Whitehurst, but based on a recent CNET interview with him, he's cut from the same cloth as Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's former CEO. He won't buy an iPod because it won't play Ogg Vorbis files. He refused other CEO roles because he 'must have a mission.' He suggests that taking proprietary shortcuts is a fundamentally wrong way to build a software business. And he believes Red Hat should be doing $5 billion, not $500 million. It's a question of operational excellence and on focusing on its core businesses, according to Whitehurst."
I bought my wife an iAudio mp3 player from Cowon for the very reason that it plays ogg files. It works beautifully.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
Great News! I hope this guy does as much as he speaks!
Red Hat is a great company, has very good products, but still has to enhance its support. Also, with Ubuntu getting market share on desktops, and SuSE trying to grab some piece of the servers pie (although I don't think they will after the Microsoft deal), Red Hat needs someone like him to lead it so that it keeps its leadership.
I wish well to Mr. Whitehurst and sincerelly hope he can make Red Hat grow as much as he plans to!
I worked for SGI when I was an intern. This was back when they were realizing that nobody wanted to pay $20k for a workstation anymore.
SGI had some pretty kick-ass server gear and had just purchased Cray, so naturally they responsed by coming up with a half-ass NT desktop that, likewise, nobody wanted. They played to their weakness rather than their strength, and the result was that they lost bigtime.
This strikes me as being similar: They're playing to their weakness, trying to get to where everyone else is doing well and not realizing that (a) the space is already fairly saturated and (b) the competitors waiting for them there are better than they are at the sort of thing they do.
And who gives a shit if he's a OSS zealot? The way to help out our common interest here is to succeed -- I don't care if the guy will only listen to 8-tracks, I want to hear his plan for turning the company around. This isn't like an airline where your ass can be bailed out by the cyclical nature of the business -- while people always need an airplane to get someplace, in the end they really don't need your distro. You can't just keep flying and charge $5 for snack boxes.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"I believe what you believe ... blah blah blah ... trust me, I'm good, not evil ... blah blah blah ... again, I believe what you believe ... we're great, but we should be 10x better ... blah blah blah ... you need to work harder, focus more, and buy our stuff .. blah blah blah".
If this is "News For Nerds" to you, then you've been living under a rock for the last 30+ years...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
"It's a question of operational excellence and on focusing on its core businesses" - whoops, looks like his corporate speak backing statement is talking about cutting costs, not top line growth. You can make a company more profitable with these tasks, but it doesn't outline how you're going to make more money.
Gosh, what is it with people that think linux needs this or that to "survive". Linux is by far the most ported OS of all time, it works everywere in embeded devices, probably in your wifi router, probably in your home isdn/cable/ADSL router.
It powers google, a good chunk of yahoo and im pretty sure some good part of the online infrastructure at microsoft, ibm, hp and many other non-it related companies.
Linux is NEVER going to die, with or without adobe on board. Adobe is not porting due to they feeling its not worth it. But FOSS may very well give them a run for their money. Weve done it before, we will do it again and, when the time comes that Adobe sees a market for linux, they may very well end up being the underdog in our ecosystem due to them not starting to compete earlyer with equivalent foss solutions.
Now. Is Linux going to Conquer The World? I dunno. I hope it does.
NO SIG
I looked into buying the RH supported version of JBoss recently. The LOWEST priced supported version is $2000 per year! I'm not exactly sure what market RH is going for here, maybe the Fortune 500 and large institutions, but it sure as hell isn't me.
I'll stick with the unsupported free version, thanks. I just can't see getting $2000/year value for just some extra support I'll likely never use anyway.
AccountKiller
But his point is still sound. He won't buy an iPod, because Apple are not supporting Ogg Vorbis. Just because you can replace the firmware does not change this. Apple still get the money from you.
I love CentOS as much as the next guy, but lets face it, their job is to compile srpms giving a clone of RHEL. They do it well, but thats hardly a "contribution" to anything.
It's a contribution to Redhat. When people who've been using CentOS at home or for development want support at work, which distro do you think they'll buy support for? It's also a contribution to the community, because they explicitly make sure all the GPL code stays available and compilable. I wouldn't doubt if they find and report (and probably fix) bugs as well.
"He suggests that taking proprietary shortcuts is a fundamentally wrong way to build a software business."
Its not likely that people are going to switch to linux because one popular proprietary application runs on linux, OSX, and Windows. They'll likely take the easiest route and stick with the status quo and purchase the Adobe software to run on their existing Windows/OSX box. Which means the effort required to get Adobe to port their apps to linux is pointless. If anything its a benefit to Adobe to port their apps if they want to sell them to people like me who are currently outside of their market possibilities because I refuse to run Windows or OSX, I use linux for my desktop.
I take his stance to be that if the open source apps on linux are not good enough then the correct solution is to put effort into the linux alternative apps, not take a short cut and try to get a proprietary vendor to port their closed source proprietary apps.
And given that the effort to do it the right way will be more difficult than giving in to short cuts, the pay offs would be bigger as well. If Red Hat can undercut the cost of a Windows/OSX system and Adobe apps for a development workstation by utilizing 100% non-proprietary open source applications then they will have a compelling reason for people to switch and consider Red Hat subscription services to support their platform choice.
Undercutting the massive profit margins on proprietary software is far more compelling than giving in to the same.
His refusal to buy iPod has also to do with that stuff called "vote-with-your-wallet" that /.ers are often talking about.
...On the other hand, at least the iPod isn't some PlaysForSure crap...
Yes, by buy an iPod and replacing the firmware with Rockbox he *could* get OGG/Vorbis to play on his iPod.
*BUT*, by doing so, he would be giving money and thus encouraging a company that refuses to support OGG/Vorbis out of the box and that is known to actively discorage homebrew hacking of their hardware (see iPhone).
He would be better giving his money to a company that does openly support OGG/Vorbis (Samsung or the countless no-name asian USB stick/media players) or at least a company that publicly encourage 3rd party developers and 3rd party media codecs.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Which is downright idiotic. When it was free, Redhat was EVERYWHERE. Almost the instant they stopped putting isos out, that changed. Sure, you have fedora, but its such a moving target you can't really use it on sort of stable system. I hope that by focusing on their core business, which is distributing and supporting open source software, they'll see the light and start to ship a free enterprise level distro again. Yes, I use CentOS, but that doesn't really contribute to the Redhat name, or provide a path for them to provide support in exchange for money when its needed.
This includes Sansa, Archos, iRiver, Cowon and others.
All Cowon players support Ogg out of the box (as well as just about every single other audio and video format). They actually have a really nice line-up all around; some of the best sound quality you will find in portables, too.
Now if only they hadn't crippled the A3 with that "you've-got-to-be-joking" battery life...
sic transit gloria mundi