Red Hat — Stand Alone Or Get Bought?

head_dunce writes "It seems that this economy has inspired a lot of businesses to move to Linux, with Red Hat posting profits that beat everyone's expectations. There's a dark side to being a highly profitable company in a down economy, though — now there are talks of Citigroup and Oracle wanting to buy Red Hat. For a while now, we've been watching Yahoo fend off Carl Icahn and Steve Ballmer so that they could stay independent, but the fight seems to be a huge distraction for Yahoo, with lots of energy (and money) invested. Will Red Hat stay independent? What potential buyer would make for a good parent company?"

Comments

What potential buyer would make for a good parent

[djupedal]

Red Flag Linux....the PRC, of course.

Why is redhat worth so much?

[grahamsz]

I have to admit i've always been at a total loss as to why redhat could have the same sort of market cap as someone like Sun (at least pre-takeover rumours).

I suppose it's certainly more profitable to take other people's work and package it up, but what does that offer to a buyer?

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[jav1231]

Support. It's a lot easier to call a vendor and bitch than it is to post your bitch on Slashdot. No wait...

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[grahamsz]

I feel like i've heard a lot of grumbling about the quality of redhats support. Ultimately they are supporting something they didn't build so I find it hard to believe they can provide the same level of enterprise support as someone like ibm or sun would provide (though plenty grumble about their support level)

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[iYk6]

Support. It's a lot easier to call a vendor and bitch than it is to post your bitch on Slashdot. No wait...

I would say it is much easier to post your bitch on Slashdot, but calling a vendor might be more productive.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[aztracker1]

If Sun and IBM combined with Oracle and RedHat, that would really make a powerhouse corporation in terms of offering Linux+Java based solutions. It would probably allow for a portfolio to truly compete against MS on most fronts even. I don't necessarily like the idea myself, and am not a big fan of Java itself. But the thought is compelling.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Jurily]

The software maker has started a "free-to-pay" marketing campaign to persuade businesses that they would save money by subscribing to its services because they would not have to hire as many Linux programmers.

They're using the Microsoft Argument. I wonder if they mentioned TCO.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't IBM and Sun also offer linux support?

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you underestimate how involved Red Hat is paying employees to contribute significantly to project components up and down the software stack that makes up the linux ecosystem. I don't think you can really say that all Red Hat does is support stuff they don't build. Their employees are there in the trenches impacting the roadmaps of a lot of components from the kernel on up. Sure Red Hat doesn't do it all, but no one can argue that don't do their fair share of the work in upstream project development.

They succeed as a business model exactly because they can position their development involvement in upstream projects as a value proposition for customers who need critical support services.

There are always going to be complaints about support, nothing is perfect. In fact I doubt one support model fits all possible customer needs..and that's fine. The proof is in the pudding. Red Hat is consistently retaining customer subscriptions in large enough numbers to sustain their business and more importantly for the larger open ecosystem taking that financial support and using it to paying for manhours to sustain the development of open technologies across a broad front of technologies...from the kernel on up.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[rackserverdeals]

I have to admit i've always been at a total loss as to why redhat could have the same sort of market cap as someone like Sun (at least pre-takeover rumours).

I suppose it's certainly more profitable to take other people's work and package it up, but what does that offer to a buyer?

RedHat is the leading corporate contributor to the Linux Kernel.

What they do for the buyer is make sure that their distro will work with certain software so that ISV's can certify the platform.

For example... You want to run SAP CRM. Maybe you can get it to work on Debian or Ubuntu, but SAP won't support it, and you likely need SAP support. They have certified it to run on RedHat Enterprise Linux so you can use that.

That's what most people care about. ISV support. If all you're doing is running a LAMP stack, then you probably don't care and will run CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu Server, etc. In fact, I believe a lot of hosting companies have been switching to CentOS ever since RedHat no longer provided a free version other than fedora.

They also have other products that run on RHEL.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[SEE]

I suppose it's certainly more profitable to take other people's work and package it up, but what does that offer to a buyer?

1) Assuming by buyer you mean "end consumer":

Nobody asks, when they buy a copy of a board game, who invented the game or who made this copy. They worry about price, and how much enjoyment they will get out of it, and such. If they like chess more than Risk, they'll buy chess, even though nobody has a copyright on it. If you point out they could make their own chess set instead of buying one, they'll point out that they'd rather buy one than spend the time and effort, thanks. If they'd rather spend the time and effort, they'd have already started making their own.

So, go ask the buyers of Red Hat product what value they're getting. Buyers don't generally give a damn who did the work, as long as they're getting something they value for their money.

2) Assuming by "buyer" you mean "stock purchaser":

The reason for business is to make money, not to own technology. Since the buyer of the stock is interested in making money, he buys stock in companies that make money, and doesn't in companies that don't. He only cares about a company having unique technology insofar as the unique technology allows the company to make money. The same applies to every other feature of the company.

The reason to buy Red Hat, then, is that you expect Red Hat to make lots of money. The reason to not buy Sun is that you expect Sun will not. This applies whether you're buying just one share, or buying the whole company.

Very, very occasionally, a company with marketable technology will have utterly miserable, incompetent management. In those cases, there may be a realizable profit if you buy the mismanaged company or their technology and put new, competent people in charge. In general, this very rarely happens. Like pretty much anything, quality of management follows a bell-curve distribution, and you'll usually swap managers in the middle of the curve with experience for new managers in the middle of the curve who then have to learn new stuff.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[carlzum]

It's even easier not post at all, here's your answer "it's open source, fix it yourself" :) But seriously, licensing costs are lumped into the total cost and no one cares how the software's developed. Companies pay for support, quality, and brand reputation. Red Hat has been able to compete in all three areas.

If RH produces their product for less than Microsoft they have a competitive advantage. It's not just Windows vs Linux, JBOSS is also doing well against IBM MQ.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[larry bagina]

Sun is a leading corporate contributor to solaris.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people that actually PAY for RedHat support and none of them have a problem with it.

The free support is no better than the free support anywhere else.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[rackserverdeals]

It's not just Solaris.

According to this, in 2006, sun was the leading corporate contributor to open source projects that were in the Debian distro.

Here's another look at Sun's open source contributions.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[advocate_one]

The reason to buy Red Hat, then, is that you expect Red Hat to make lots of money. The reason to not buy Sun is that you expect Sun will not. This applies whether you're buying just one share, or buying the whole company.

there is another reason to buy a company... if it's eating into your own market then you buy it so you can shut it down and strip out anything worth keeping thus preserving your own market.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Zeio]

The support is quite dodgy, really. I carry licenses for RHEL so I can get help with CENTOS via that licensed RedHat if I need it. I've done a lot of work with RedHat OSes in the past, and have used RedHat "EL" since 6.2EE when I was helping out with running OpenMail on Linux. I've had about 3 cases on my $2600 or so / year premium RedHat license and they never fixed anything in a timely fashion (if at all). I ended up fixing a problem with a module they load that crashed the machine by using install in modprobe.conf, there was a bug for crashdumps which "resolved itself", the case I filed was never resolved but some kernel that was 14 months newer finally fixed it magically, and I had a few problems with udev, etc. I'm so fed up with RedHat EL support I don't think I'll be buying another year, they are really the bottom of the barrel for one-off customers. You will get next to nothing for $2600/year IMHO.

Oh, when my subscription to the EL5 channel ran out on RHN, the case they never solved kept constantly emailing me but I could no longer log into support to close the case to have it stop emailing me all the time. Frustrating, and a lot of the service offering is "half assed" - you might think the same if you paid $2600 per year for something and get as little return on the scant number of bugs I filed cases for.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[IntlHarvester]

I have to admit i've always been at a total loss as to why redhat could have the same sort of market cap as someone like Sun (at least pre-takeover rumours).

Ahahaha, RedHat has been ridiculously priced from day 1, but this guy is a 'troll' for asking a perfectly reasonable question.

To answer, Linux is perceived as a growth market, and Intel and others have invested a ton of money in RedHat to insure that they are in a strategically dominant position in the Linux ecosystem. There is only one organization that can coordinate changes on every level of the Linux stack, and that's RedHat.

However the actual value of that position in terms of revenue is still an open question.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Hognoxious]

Would you ask the troll if it would like a dessort, or perhaps some coffee?

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[BikeHelmet]

Big companies stagnate easily. I wouldn't want them to fall into that trap.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, the folk who hang out on the CentOS forums are bunch of very helpful people.

My big problem with RedHat is that if some bureaucratic mishap (or malice) stops the payment of your RedHat subscription, you suddenly have a bunch of unpatchable insecure boxes. Sure, you can point yum at the CentOS repos, but if you're going to do that, why pay RedHat in the first place?

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Bert64]

Most companies care about having support available, but will never actually use it...
Because most of their customers never actually use it, the support is rather lousy.

The people making the purchasing decisions seem more concerned about being able to blame someone else if something goes wrong, rather than trying to minimize the risks of something going bad, and trying to mitigate the damage that could result.

Blaming someone else is not going to help the business.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun was also a leading contributor to the lawsuit brought by SCO against IBM, and their customers.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed! I fondly remember reading Alan Cox's blog in the 90s about his Linux work while on RH's payroll. He was fixing hard, non-sexy things.

Cheers Alan!

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[alexborges]

Well...

It seems youve never even seen any kind of support outside of sun and ibm I guess. Cause i tell you: there is no comparission at all.

FOSS bussiness people have a good take on corporate support AND we will actually provide it without you having to sign your soul to us, without you risking loosing any "warranties" because you touched a file.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[nchip]

Shutting down red hat wouldn't work. The developers would just start a "Blue Hat" company and start building a distribution called "sombrero".

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[LWATCDR]

A lot of people don't understand the value in support. Big companies do.
Do you fix your own car? You will save a lot of money if you do the work yourself.
Did you build your own home?
Time has value. If you LIKE working on cars then fixing your own is fun. If you LIKE building building your own home sounds great.
But for a company they make money doing x and a computer is just another tool. It is better to pay an expert than to do it yourself.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[lordtoran]

Actually, Red Hat is the company working most actively on the Linux kernel. Source (scroll down to the "Who is Sponsoring the Work" paragraph).

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[lordtoran]

I'm scared of your thoughts. There are already enough monopolies around that charge us extra for basic goods and services.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[rackserverdeals]

Sun was also a leading contributor to the lawsuit brought by SCO against IBM, and their customers.

There are a lot of reasons to choose Solaris over Linux but one of them for me is the community. These type of childish remarks get old quick. Seems Linux wants to be what Solaris was in the Unix OS space and what Microsoft was in the FUD space.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[rackserverdeals]

One of the reasons a stock goes up or down is because it beats or misses analyst estimates.

If a bunch of analysts estimate that company A will have a quarterly EPS of .20 and they come in with an EPS of .15, the stock price goes down.

If a bunch of analysts estimate that Company B will have a quarterly loss of .80 per share and the company comes in with a loss of only .70 per share, the stock price goes up.

Easy to manipulate.

I think it says more about the analysts than it does about the company.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[petermgreen]

Nobody asks, when they buy a copy of a board game, who invented the game or who made this copy. They worry about price, and how much enjoyment they will get out of it, and such. If they like chess more than Risk, they'll buy chess, even though nobody has a copyright on it. If you point out they could make their own chess set instead of buying one, they'll point out that they'd rather buy one than spend the time and effort, thanks. If they'd rather spend the time and effort, they'd have already started making their own.
The thing is there are loads of manufacturers of chess sets. If you are cheap you can buy whatever is cheapest. If you want something better you can ask friends for thier experiance with different brands, read reviews or whatever. OTOH if you want Risk there is only hasbro, take it or leave it (or possiblly make a pirate copy).

Both the retailers and the end users can easilly dump thier vendors if the quality of your chess sets goes down, the price goes up or the lead time gets worse. OTOH if the quality if hasbros risk sets goes down, the price goes up or the lead time gets worse people who want risk still have to keep getting it from hasbro (or pirating it but pirating a board game is a lot of work)

The same applies to linux and windows. If you want to carry on using linux (even redhat-like linux) but don't like redhat there are other options who will supply and support almost identicaly setups (or you could just download centos and forgo the support if you don't think you need it any more). If you want to keep using windows you have no choice but to keep buying from MS (or pirating it but pirating for a buisness is risky)

To put it another way Redhat's value is almost entirely in it's customer and employee goodwill. Both of those are things that are easilly lost in the SNAFUs that follow a typical merger.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[SEE]

To put it another way Redhat's value is almost entirely in it's customer and employee goodwill. Both of those are things that are easilly lost in the SNAFUs that follow a typical merger.

An excellent point, and a very good reason for people to avoid attempting a hostile takeover of the company.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Registered Coward v2]

Shutting down red hat wouldn't work. The developers would just start a "Blue Hat" company and start building a distribution called "sombrero".

We'll that's teh rub, isn't it? What is to stop RH's staff from leaving after a buyout and starting a new company based on OSS? Does RH have enough proprietary add-ons to differentiate themselves?

Where is the value? The software or the development / support staff?

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[Nevyn]

This is highly misleading way of interpreting that data. Esp. given the caveats that lwn.net has to do just tracking the companies for linux kernel development. From what I can tell they unpacked all packages in Debian, and then assigned the "corporate contributor" ... so all of OpenOffice and user space NFS goes to Sun, even though they did little more than a code dump, 10 years ago, in the later case.

In general I'd hope that "the community" is not using Solaris now because they see through BS stats. like the above, and know that Sun are much less of a participant in the community than Red Hat. But then, given the free ride Canonical gets sometimes, I do worry that it is just a case of network effects working against Sun.

Re:Why is redhat worth so much?

[rackserverdeals]

In general I'd hope that "the community" is not using Solaris now because they see through BS stats

How are these BS stats? Sun didn't perform the study, the part about Sun was just a minor part of the study and I can't find any reference that they funded the study. OpenOffice.org is an important application. It was a proprietary product until Sun bought it and open sourced it. NFS hasn't had a major version release in about 10 years.

They also did quite a bit for Gnome and participate in other projects including X.org and Mozilla.

Sun participates in a lot of open source projects both their own and others. Don't know what you're talking about there. Unless you're talking about the Linux Kernel community which is just a small part of the open source community.

I'm not sure why so many people on the lkml have a bug up their ass when it comes to sun. Especially in recent years. In the past, I used to remember a lot of comments that would compare how something was done in Linux and Solaris. This was before Solaris source was made public. The reason it seems people were able to make those comparisons were because of information Sun freely published or that sun engineers shared.

While Sun hasn't been perfect, it is unfair to discount their contributions. What's going on with Harmony is unfortunate but we shouldn't forget all the other JSR's Apache was able to implement. Hopefully that gets resolved.

But I don't see it any different than some of the things RedHat does. I can't download RHEL for free and use it and get ISV support. I can get CentOS but I can't get ISV support for it.

Things can be hair when going from proprietary to open source and a couple of speed bumps shouldn't negate all of their substantial contributions.

I've been very happy switching to Solaris. Especially with java web apps where I've seen performance increase and memory usage decrease significantly.

RedHat for the people

[deets101]

Citigroup....
That belongs to the tax payers now, right? That means we will ALL own RedHat!

Re:RedHat for the people

[Mockingbird99]

Citigroup does not want to buy red hat and will not buy them. The citigroup analyst is speculating that now is a good time for some one else (Oracle, IBM, Sun) to buy them.

Re:RedHat for the people

[iminplaya]

Since Citigroup got all that money they could call it "Stimulix"

Re:RedHat for the people

[pallmall1]

Since Citigroup got all that money they could call it "Stimulix"

If it involves Citigroup and Oracle, they should call it "GreedyPrix".

Re:RedHat for the people

[rackserverdeals]

Citi also had the idea to push for less bank regulation and was a big player in subprime and CDOs.

How could you not take their advice?

Re:RedHat for the people

[tomhudson]

As you pointed out, Citigroup deosn't wnat to buy RedHat. None of the self-styled "Analysts" quoted in the story knows what they're talking about, whcih isn't surprising. Look at the "follow-the-crowd" phenomena - one says they expect shares to go from $16 to 17, so the next one says from $16 to $18. All this based on earnings of $0.22 a share, instead of $0.20. "Wow, a 10% raise!" So, all of a sudden Oracle is going to want to buy them? I don't think so, Jack Shit.

Call me when P/E gets below 10.

Re:RedHat for the people

[alexborges]

Cant afford to!

Next....

Re:RedHat for the people

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I don't know why a bank, with it's own financial difficulties, would want a company that develops on operating system. Even if you thought you misread the article, it just doesn't make sense if you take out a second to think about it.

Re:RedHat for the people

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

Citigroup does not want to buy red hat and will not buy them. The citigroup analyst is speculating that now is a good time for some one else (Oracle, IBM, Sun) to buy them.

You get what you pay for. If these analysts are giving their advice for free, ya gotta ask "why?" OTOH, if citigroup is listening to its own analysts, and buying the stock which the analysts recommend, that's a different story. You might as well listen to one of those guys on CNN or whatever who shout about stocks -- at least they, presumably, poll other "experts." All the citigroup analyst is accomplishing is to generate speculation, which, if you turn the whole thing around, implies that the intent is to manipulate the market. Maybe citigroup is looking to unload their redhat stock and are jacking up the price? Not that you would ever find written evidence of such a scheme...

JBoss...

[wandazulu]

Whereas I'm not too concerned about Red Hat Linux (especially since Oracle already has a version of it they brand as their own), my *real* concern is for JBoss, one of the best app servers out there.

If Oracle had not bought BEA, I'd think they'd buy up RH and replace oc4j/App server with JBoss, but since they *did* buy BEA, they now have WebLogic and JRockit; they'd probably just put JBoss out to pasture, which would leave a lot of folks who have deployed JBoss high-n-dry.

Yes, they wouldn't do it right away and yes, there's always the possibility of a fork, but it would make it that much harder of a sell to the boss who wanted to go with JBoss because it was a lot cheaper than what Oracle wanted for their app server.

Re:JBoss...

[Nutria]

they'd probably just put JBoss out to pasture, which would leave a lot of folks who have deployed JBoss high-n-dry.

Just before they sold themselves to Compaq, DEC sold it's self-written DBMSs (the relational Rdb and DBMS, a CODASYL system) to Oracle.

We all thought that Big O would quickly force us all to migrate to RDBMS, but too many Important Customers doing Important Things rely on Rdb/OpenVMS, so 12 years later it's still under active development. (Of course, mostly by greybeards who have been working on it since the 80s...)

Oracle 11g on Linux, though, is winning lots of converts, so I wouldn't be surprised if it "soon" goes into maintenance mode, coasting along another decade until HP finally puts VMS out to pasture.

Re:JBoss...

[upside]

I am worried. RedHat has embarked on a patenting strategy and the company may be bought by someone with less scruples.

Re:JBoss...

[ta bu shi da yu]

I'm more concerned for the employees. I work for a company that was recently assimilated by a very big three letter company. I have never seen so much incompetence and selfishness in all my life. They come in promising roses, but really they want to screw every last employee of the company.

Re:JBoss...

[Znork]

Well, the good thing with Redhat is that as they've been very consistent with avoiding proprietary components, the employees could easily quit and start a new company off CentOS or something, and the customers would probably come along with them.

Redhat is rare in the computing field in the sense that the customers they have are their customers completely by choice. Many other companies wouldn't survive a day in that situation; their customers would slam the door with the sales guys head still inside.

Re:JBoss...

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat has embarked on a patenting strategy and the company may be bought by someone with less scruples.

Even if that were the case, do not forget that Red Hat contributes their patents to Open Invention Network so they are available royalty-free to anyone who promises to not assert patents against Linux.

Re:JBoss...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for heaven's sake. Haven't you heard of the Red hat patent promise? Its a binding promise not to do evil things with Red Hat's patent portfolio. The URL is http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html and it's linked at the bottom of *every public page* on redhat.com. Remember the binding part, too - at least as regards the current set, even being bought out couldn't change the usage rights already granted by that document.

Now, if Oracle buys Red Hat... I'm pretty sure I won't be the only one looking for a more palatable place to hang my fedora.

Re:JBoss...

[Anonymous Coward]

All this talk about 'good matches' is a crock of shit. In truth, the worry is not about the first buyer, but the later down the road spin off buyer. With the first buyer, the original management team has a little say about who sells them down the river, dismembers the company units, eviscerates the personnel, and generally flushes everything that made it what it is...down the porcelain convenience. Not so with the subsequent buyers. Soon after all the aforementioned fun stuff happens to the bought entity...see what happened to Westwood when EA bought them... and the good people have all headed for the exits, the company will get sold to whatever trash with a buck and a promise that the original team would have thrown out on its ears. Look what happened to NCR! Look what happened to the original Santa Cruz Operation..........like...SCO? Once a company is sold, it is gone forever. Look also what happened to my favorite Linux distro, S.u.S.E.! You'd never recognize it now! Novell has even made the damn box RED instead of green like the SuSE gecko. And Geeky the Gecko is nowhere to be found anywhere...now! There is hope however, as these linux acquisitions are all collections of free software. The buyers are only purchasing anthology editors, to borrow a phrase from the publishing industry. And new anthologies can come out all the time. Ubuntu comes out with a new one every six months, just like SuSE used to. Can't tie up all linux. You might as well rope smoke! And what's with that fuckin spell checker that says that linux is a mis-spelling? Is slashdot part of microsoft now?

Re:JBoss...

[rtb61]

I see you really have no understanding of why a big three letter company buys a small company. They buy it because the big company lacks expertise and they are trying to buy it in. Perversely the existing employees at the big three letter company now go into job preservation mode and attempt to undermine and remove (fire or force them to quit) employees of the small company because they threaten the jobs and promotional opportunities of those that have clearly demonstrated their incompetence, after all they had to buy in the expertise because they were incapable of developing it internally.

So rather than a corporation you are dealing with all the individuals in the corporations and their own personal motivations. In corporations you don't get promoted because you are good at your job, you get promoted because you a are good at getting promoted or have relatives in senior executive positions ie. typical corporate politics.

With open source the reality is, if you want it to succeed you must develop it internally you can not buy it in because the existing corporate environment has actively blocked it's internal growth. So the hard bitter way is the only way it really works, retain the windrones that want to retrain, sack the ones that refuse and hire skilled penguinistas where ever you can beg, borrow or steal them from (as their numbers grow they eventually will get cheaper). To get the real growth in open development you need to change the corporate philosophies in those areas and it needs to be done organically to produce quality results.

Re:JBoss...

[ta bu shi da yu]

Doesn't explain OpenOffice.org or MySQL :-)

But I agree with the first 2 paragraphs.

Re:JBoss...

[rtb61]

Sun had made a move to open source prior to openoffice, even then they struggled for years with star office, I bought the first version available from sun and that was more than 5 years ago. Over that period they really struggled with the open source transition, trying to keep one foot in each camp and just getting their legs spread, ready to be done over by M$. It is only in the last year that Sun has started to become more successful and they still have a long way to go.

Now compare that to the out and out leaders in open source revenue, all with no real open source package of their own even though they have contributed significant amounts of code, IBM. They developed their skills organically, didn't buy into any significant open source package, but supported all the more popular ones, they really have been the quite achievers in the open source world.

Re:JBoss...

[Anonymous Coward]

The other alternative is for a big three letter company to buy a small company, simply to remove it from the market. Note the many examples of where Microsoft has done that very thing, or where Microsoft has "hired" a key Open Source designer, to remove the competition, and force the customers to buy Microsoft.

Note: it's just not Microsoft that does this, other companies do it as well. It's just that the /. crowd will remember more of the Microsoft examples.

I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[einhverfr]

I can't think of a good match. Maybe IBM just because IBM's service arm seems to be doing really well, but then that would be bad for the whole industry for IBM to own an enterprise Linux distro.

It would be kinda funny if Microsoft bought them and actually tried to make money off Red Hat Enterprise Linux, though....

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[Tubal-Cain]

but then that would be bad for the whole industry for IBM to own an enterprise Linux distro.

You do realize that there isn't much preventing IBM from spinning their own, right?

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm surprised that IBM doesn't have their own edition of Linux, but it's probably a very complicated set of considerations that they must weigh.

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[nicolas.kassis]

They want to be agnostic, sell you support for everything. They don't care what you run, they have some non-native english speaker somewhere that can help you with it.

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM has already SuSE Linux. IBM owns part of Novell.

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[moderatorrater]

There is no good match. There isn't a company that would be willing to buy them that has also had the commitment to open source that Red Hat has. Losing Red Hat would, IMHO, be a big blow to Linux for years to come, even if it was lost to a buyout to an company like IBM.

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[Znork]

Yep, there isn't a big company available that would be capable of running Redhat; most of its value both to customers and community (and through that to shareholders) is derived from the strategic consistency and reliability. IE, the huge amounts of goodwill available to the people that make up and control the company. It's unlikely that that would survive through a takeover, and both customers and employees could easily move along to a derivative.

I hope and think IBM is smart enough to understand that Redhat is worth more to them as an independent than as an assimilated component; one might very well hire IBM consultants to work with Redhat related stuff, but buying an actual distro from them and relying on IBM support? Hmm. No.

Oracle might not be quite smart enough, but the amount of egg on Ellison's face after first starting his own Redhat ripoff, then buying Redhat, then losing those customers would probably be a bit too much to bear.

Microsoft? Well, Microsoft might buy them to put them down, but that'd be pointless due to the derivatives anyway.

In the end, Redhat is largely protected by the ultimate poison pill; the fact that the company intanglibles are it's main worth and part of them are already available to anyone who wants them for free, and the rest can walk any day. Anyone who thinks they could run a better Redhat is free to do it; if they don't think they can there's little purpose in paying good money for something whose value they'll probably lower.

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[arth1]

The money isn't in the OS -- it's in the support, add-ons and switches.

If IBM bought Red Hat, for example, expect some leveraging of "managed hosting" (like WebSphere and DB2) and "managed support". And once your managed web hosting solution inevitably strains and croaks, you sell them z-series mainframes. After all, you can run Red Hat on those too, and IBM will be just too happy to help you with the required porting.
If IBM buys Sun, the benefit would be even bigger. There are an awful lot of java shops out there who could be lured into buying more products, as long as they all were supported by the same vendor.

Secondary to that is Red Hat's patent portfolio. As the smarter people here have pointed out for a years now, "preventative" or "defensive" patents don't work, because whoever buys you out are not bound by the promises you make (and neither are you, for that matter). If a company really wanted to guarantee protection, they would have donated the patents to the public domain.

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM have their own Linux distro, of sorts. It's called Open Client, it's based on RHEL 5, and it's currently only available for internal IBM use. From what I can gather there has been talk of releasing it to external clients, for example to help IBM sell integrated Notes/Domino setups. They're working on ways of integrating their own stuff with other distros too, e.g. Debian/Ubuntu.

Acquiring Red Hat would keep IBM's internal costs down, as I'm pretty sure that the RHEL basis of Open Client means IBM has to pay Red Hat license fees, but I doubt that enough IBM staff are using Open Client that the fees are significant. Having seen from the inside the state of IBM bureaucracy and the mess they make of package management (their Windows software control is a hack, and the Linux package management seems to be based on the same idea, instead of relying on yum), I don't hold out much hope of them making a decent independent Linux distro of their own. If they were to acquire Red Hat I'd fear for the future development of RHEL etc too. Still, at a push I think I'd prefer IBM to Oracle.

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[zaivala]

Um, excuse me, but doesn't IBM already own an enterprise Linux?

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[einhverfr]

They own a part of Novell, but not a controlling share. There is a big difference.

I own a couple of Novell shares too. That doesn't mean I own SuSE Linux.....

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[maxume]

Redhat has about $650 million in revenues. IBM has about $103 billion. Redhat represents about 2.5 days of a year for IBM (actually quite a bit less if you throw out weekends and such).

Redhat is growing pretty fast, but probably not so fast that IBM would be real worried about buying them (rather than creating their own operation).

(None of this contradicts anything you say, the numbers bring a little bit of perspective)

Re:I would like to see RedHat stay independent

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

IBM have their own Linux distro, of sorts. It's called Open Client, it's based on RHEL 5, and it's currently only available for internal IBM use.

Not much info on that, unfortunately. What do they sell customers who request Linux? -Thufir

oh noes.

[girlintraining]

Does this mean we're going to have those "What's in YOUR wallet" commercials switch to "What's in YOUR computer?" I can see it now...

"Hi, I'm a Mac."

"Hi, I'm a PC."

"Hi, I'm a viking maurader. Bleeeeaaarrrgh!"

Red Hat Linux: Sneak attack, bitches.

Re:oh noes.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's better than any of the other pathetic "I'm Linux" commercials I've been seeing.

Seriously, I love linux as much as the next slashdotter, but those videos were an embarassment.

Re:oh noes.

[aztracker1]

That would so own... seriously.

Re:oh noes.

[indi0144]

Thats because you need an AD campaign not random people talking about random facts with random corporate image from random media at random targets.

For a successful AD ampaign you need:

Creative Team:
A team of people dedicated to the product and the corporation, design guy, copy guy, planning guy and a blue collar guy preventing too much pot smoking and facing the corporate overlords.

Message Personality:
a unified tone of communication: imagine what kind of person would be Linux and how he will sell itself (I know, would be weird, tron guy anyone?)

Corporate image
so that joe sixpack, Juan Perez and Jou Hoa Ling can distinguish Linux from the rest and remember all the Message just looking at a single piece of advertising.

You need to have a media strategy to select which media will go before and after, what media is looking your target Etc.

The target or the future user: what they want and what they think, their expectations and socio economic variables.

As far as I know theres certain bad rap (justified) about marketing people in the IT community thats why I see it so hard for Linux to have the media relevance it deserves but believe me, the random strategy do more harm than good. What you're are trying to create are memes not messages to sell the idea that it's Linux.

If Linux starts to earn market share theres only one option, to advertise. Before the competitors starts to be worried and just dump shitloads of money in PR waiting for the humble penguin to fall in the trap of the n00b. Someone should take responsibility about it and try too create a team of Advertising people "that happens to like linux" and put that shit together once and for all.

I can reaz your mindz and you askz "why should we pay this potsmokers for advertising when no one pays the developers?" Money? you don't need money for Advertising unless you are going for mass media, Guerrilla marketing anyone? I'd volunteer to it and I know theres plenty of other people that would do it. Once theres an strategy set anyone and their uncle can try to make the Ad there will be filters and debug as in the developer world, is not so different.

It's an idea that have been around my head since I first meet Linux and fucking hurts to be so far from the action : (

Re:oh noes.

[Arkofjoy]

It is easy really. Every time one of your friends who uses Windows get yet another Virus you tell them that your Linux system NEVER gets viruses and offer to burn them a disk of your favorite version. Or just hand them the disk. Not everybody takes me up on this and many are still losing Data to viruses but every time they do I suggest they change over to Linux and remind them again it NEVER get viruses. Eventually they get the message. Who needs advertising. You are the best possible advertising for Linux. They know you and trust you and have NEVER heard you complaining about you system being destroyed by some stuff you got from an Email your Mother sent you

Re:oh noes.

[somersault]

People stupid enough to get they Windows boxes repeatedly owned by viruses would still be stupid enough to let trojans onto their Linux boxes.. and good advertising for the masses wouldn't simply about "it doesn't get viruses" - that is important, but it's still incredibly geeky and uninteresting to most if it also means running a "second rate" OS.

Re:oh noes.

[Anonymous Coward]

its not so much the home user who is at risk here, although they would benefit from Linux as it has less viruses you're right the user would still get something. However, instead of 200 different virus/popup/trojans, they'd get maybe 1 or 2.

The biggest beneficiary would be businesses. For example, one of our customers (an emergency service) has gotten conficker on its network, and we've spent 2 weeks trying to get rid of it, including having a microsoft 'expert' along to help out. 1st April, guess how much overtime is going to be paid, just in case. We think a supplier gave it to us, but there's no way of knowing. Anyway, the total cost of this infection is huge, not just in overtime, but the daily tasks that will have to be done later and the disruption to the service. Note that we do look after the system and try to keep it isolated, but its just impossible to fully protect it with Windows unless you literally disconnect it from everything else - difficult to do when you need to send data to the paging service, the radio network etc.

Apparently the biggest infection is in the schools - conficker is all through there, and too difficult for the relatively less-skilled teachers to remove, and too costly for them to get someone in to clean them (only to find a kid pops his usb drive in and re-infects everything).

Re:oh noes.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck does any of that have to do with Active Directory??

Re:oh noes.

[indi0144]

And I agree with you, I do that myself, I hand live Cd's to children and youngsters whenever I can, they are more open to try it that grown up that just fear that if they break the PC it would explode. When I find some client with the antivirus 2009 I told them that Mac and Linux does not have such virus, people tend to think that virus target the PC's (the iron) not the OS.

When I'm in advertising mode I visit my clients with my Linux laptop to show them whats that Linux stuff in which the web page would be hosted, they don't tell me but their faces say it all "oh wow theres other windowz"

Mouth to mouth advertising is the best and cheaper form of advertising. But you still need coherence if you happen to start to gain market share. You certainly will promote your distro of choice, I will promote mine. What is needed is promoting Linux as an idea, the idea of the power to choose. Well you need some kind of standard distro on standard hardware to start over, if they happen to like it(and are inclined to thinker with PC's) they can choose another distro ahead on time, if they are comfortable they will stay with the stuff that just works.

Ubuntu it's a great piece of n00b Linux and a good starting point; if you ask me all we need it's a BIG corp that ships compatible hardware and bundled Linux on a world scale. I wait for the day to see the sticker of the penguin out of the box: "Runs Linux" plug and play baby : )

SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO is the obvious choice.

Re:SCO

[JohnBailey]

SCO is the obvious choice.

Yep.. I can just picture Daryl trying to get his head around GPL..

Re:SCO

[Sponge Bath]

Let me help:
Daryl puts hands up to sides of his head.
ahhh... AHHH... EARRRGH... *pop*

That was the family version. The Indiana Jones version involves flying skull shards and globs of pulpy brain goo.

Buying Red Hat?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

So Oracle and Citigroup are thinking of buying Red Hat, eh? Perhaps they envy the freedom that Red Hat possesses. Perhaps they wish to control Red Hat in a way that no others could. Did they hear a whisper from Microsoft?

I think that the worst possible thing is for Red Hat to be consumed by a larger company such as Citigroup or Oracle. Their statements and actions demonstrate little understanding or regard for the culture in Red Hat.

Their wish to buy Red Hat is akin to the wish to put a flowing river in a bucket. Once the water is in the bucket, it is no longer flowing.

To put it differently, to derive the benefits of Red Hat, they would either just buy the software they produce and use it, or buy their stock and sit on it. But as soon as they try to control it at their own whim, that which was free and living, will squirm away, somewhere else.

Imagine what will happen to all the customers, developers and channel resellers who trust Red Hat now. It will simply not be the same with a new master.

I hope Red Hat can maintain their indepence for the sake of everyone who depends on them.

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[eln]

Oracle already takes RedHat's work and rebrands it. Buying RH itself and paying for those developers out of its own pocket makes little sense when they already have what they need from RH without spending a dime. The only thing RH can do for Oracle at this point is reduce their profit margin.

I suppose they could buy it just to bury the brand, but that seems like an awfully big expense to bury a company that's not really doing a ton of damage to Oracle's business anyway.

A couple of years back, the "Oracle wants to buy RedHat" rumor turned out to be sort of true: Oracle wanted to take RH's software and sell it as its own, but it certainly didn't want to actually buy the company. Given Ellison's comments in the past about why he thinks buying open source companies is silly (because if he wanted what they had, he would just take it), I wouldn't expect Oracle to make a play for RH.

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[martin-boundary]

I think the idea here is that a large company would want to buy RH not for any technological reason, but rather so that they can take credit for RH's profits. The technological pros and cons don't enter into it, what's much more important to them is that the analysts are happy, so that their share price stays up while the economy tanks.

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other aspect is that CTOs only have so many golf slots per week. Especially in this economy! If you take out a competitor, you get that many more rounds to sell 'complete solutions'

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Worse: managing developers and getting them to play well together is tricky. When one team freewheels well, another has a micromanaging leader who is really _good_ at it, and another is using Agile programming, getting them all under the same corporate umbreall is awkward. It's compounded by merging in-house technologies: employment listings, accounting systems, webpages, Active Directory versus LDAP, CIFS versus NFS versus local storage and backup for file sharing, Perforce versus Bitkeeper versus CVS for source control, etc., all mount up surprisingly in lost productivity for doing a merge.

I've worked in a company that bought out a small company in a related field: it was an amiable purchase, the products were a good fit, and the developers became pretty thrilled with the fiscal benefit and their stock options. But the new location stank for them, they got split up to different groups, and small companies are far more flexible for new technologies.) So most of them drifted away over the next few years, and their former, exciting product leadership was lost entirely.

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So Oracle and Citigroup are thinking of buying Red Hat, eh?

No. The article summary is totally fubar.

Citigroup analysts think Oracle might want to buy Redhat. That's it.
Citigroup is a finance company, them acquiring Redhat would be like Bank of America buying Microsoft.

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Thanks for the clarification. I had the impression that Citigroup OR Oracle would by RH.

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[couchslug]

Potential buyers want to care for Red Hat the way SCO cared for Linux.

Re:Buying Red Hat?

[monoqlith]

'Their wish to buy Red Hat is akin to the wish to put a flowing river in a bucket.'

This sentence would be better expressed in Haiku form.

One Ring to Bind Them All???

[cybscryb]

It wouldn't surprise me to see IBM end up owning Sun, Red Hat and Microsoft in the end.

Re:One Ring to Bind Them All???

[indi0144]

what? IBM owning Microsoft Sun and RH? IMHO Not that easy. Maybe IBM owning SUN and RH and the new team p0wning Microsoft it's more than likely.

This thinkpad spin up the fans in joy.

Re:One Ring to Bind Them All???

[dodobh]

And then they finally replace the IP stack with a Token Ring stack?

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Sir_Lewk]

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha....

Remind me, which company is currently turning a profit, Red Hat, or Canonical?

You are clearly not very familar with Red Hat at all so I'll let you in on a little secret. Red Hat is not making their money on desktop installs.

Actually

[maz2331]

The problem with buying a company like Red Hat is very simple: you end up with nothing. It's a company basically of, by, and for open-source near-zealots.

If you buy it and try to control it, the talent leaves and you bought a client list.

How about IBM?

[nerdville]

I was wondering of there is a play now for IBM and Sun to take Red Hat under their wing as they move to the "Open Cloud"... That could set up IBM/Sun vs. Microsoft/Amazon/Yahoo?! Background info: http://cloudstoragestrategy.com/2009/03/sun-ibm-open-clouds-ahead.html

Intel, please

[Chris Snook]

When I was at Red Hat, I assumed the scenario would be that Oracle would make a hostile takeover bid, as they are wont to do, and then IBM would come to the rescue with a competing offer that wouldn't gut the soul of the company quite as badly. Now that IBM is in talks with Sun, that seems less likely, unless the IBM/Sun deal falls through, in which case it's a no-brainer for IBM.

Failing that, the next best candidate, in terms of the good of the community, would be Intel. I mean no disrespect to AMD in this regard, because it's not really about hardware, but rather Intel's role as a technology mutual fund that happens to have CPU, chipset, and networking hardware in its portfolio. Adding a Linux vendor would further establish them as a developer of core computing technologies, in a role as a partner rather than a competitor to Oracle and IBM. Intel has a long history of working well with the open source community, which has certainly played a role in their acquisition of some top Red Hat talent over the past few years.

With all due respect to the many dedicated Linux engineers at Oracle, I don't trust Larry Ellison as far as I can throw him. Nor do I trust the Red Hat shareholders, who are overwhelmingly financial institutions on the brink of bankruptcy, to take any sort of long term view when considering competing offers, which is why I would not be shocked to see them cash out to Oracle, even knowing full well how the company would be gutted, because they so desperately need the money right now just to stay solvent. I just hope that when Oracle makes the move, which seems all but certain if the IBM/Sun deal goes through, that there's someone else around with a genuine commitment to the community and deep enough pockets to make a cash offer, since a stock deal under terms typical for large acquisitions wouldn't give the institutional shareholders the liquidity they need.

Re:Intel, please

[colinrichardday]

And how would Microsoft react to such a deal? Can Microsoft side with AMD and not hurt itself as much as it would hurt Intel, if it so chose?

Re:Intel, please

[Chris Snook]

Why would Microsoft care? They certain don't want to get into the hardware business. Intel is already in the software business, which is why this might make sense for them.

Re:Intel, please

[colinrichardday]

So Intel's supporting a major Linux company would have no effect on Microsoft?

Re:Intel, please

[Chris Snook]

I'm sure it would have some effect, but it certainly wouldn't make them get into the CPU/GPU/chipset business by buying AMD. They're a software company, aside from the Zune and Xbox, which are made with other companies' components.

When Red Hat bought JBoss, Oracle retaliated with Unbreakable Linux, but that doesn't change the fact that Oracle servers are Red Hat's bread and butter, and that Oracle needs RHEL to keep Microsoft at bay. It's called coopetition. Sun and IBM both have their own architecture, OS, and database, yet they make a fortune selling x86 Linux servers that run Oracle apps.

Re:Intel, please

[colinrichardday]

I wasn't suggesting that Microsoft buy AMD.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[L7_]

The problem is that people like me install Ubuntu on thier home desktop machine. I understand apt and all of the debian specific configuration file locations.

When I go into work and have to work on the RHEL servers, I can mostly get yum and rpms to work for the server configuration that I want, but god damn if it isn't like pulling teeth.

Now that I have enough power, and I have to make a decision on which distro to get support from, do I go with something that I know (Debian/Ubuntu and Canonical?) or something that is similiar yet foreign (Redhat/RHEL)?

The last 3 servers that I've been in control of have been Ubuntu.

Re:Question:

[Jurily]

Java has been taken over by the corporate world. The way I see it, every time someone had a problem with it, they said "I know, I just add some XML, and name it with a 4 letter acronym or some cute coffee-inspired pun."

If you want quick and easy, try Qt. Even Eclipse plays nice with that.

Nonono. Citi is not interested in buying Red Hat.

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be made clear.

It was only a Citi analyst that raised the possibility of Red Hat being a takeover target.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Jurily]

Red Hat also managed to boost revenue by persuading existing customers to expand the size of their contracts.

Which may or may not come out right in the long term.

I have a lot of respect for Red Hat

[VanderJagt]

I've been impressed by Red Hat's ability to consistently make money and perform well. They were one of the few profitable companies during the big .com bubble burst at the turn of the century, and it's good to see them repeat this success story.

For that reason, I think that Red Hat just won't be very appealing to a buyer who wants to interfere. I think the two most likely interested buyers would be squatters who just want a secure investment and therefore won't interfere or truly enlightened people who know the real power of a principled open-source support company.

I think they're likely to stay independent for some time, though, so long as they can stay under the radar of the government of the United Socialists of America.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Jurily]

When I go into work and have to work on the RHEL servers, I can mostly get yum and rpms to work for the server configuration that I want, but god damn if it isn't like pulling teeth.

Since you're getting paid for it, I suggest you should not be satisfied with "mostly". It just sounds like you blame RH for not doing your job right.

Do you suggest every sysadmin should take their favorite distro to work? Well, I like Gentoo.

Re:Question:

[rackserverdeals]

Can any free Java IDE Just Work(tm) with making simple executable .jar files?

I know you're a troll but out of curiosity I just went into the dist directory of one of my projects and typed jarfile.jar at the command line and the application started.

I didn't do anything special to make that happen and since I always run it from within the IDE I never bothered to do anything special to set it up. I took a look at the manifest.mf in the archive and it automatically added the correct info.

You must have done something wrong.

The Matisse editor in Netbeans is powerful and full featured. I can tweek every little ass-hair of every little component. Wait - what's all that crap in my source editor? It dosen't look familiar, and to add insult to injury, Netbeans is telling me that I can't edit some code?

Some parts of the code are tied into the visual editor so it doesn't make sense to edit them by hand. Some of the methods, like for actions, may be confusing to people who aren't experienced with swing, but it all starts to make sense after a while.

There are a ton of great Netbeans examples on the Netbeans site.

It's a brilliant strategy to discourage inexperienced folks whose time matters(the operative phrase since we don't have 20 hours a day to roll dice trying to get things to work) from studying computer science.

A tool can't make you a programmer, it can only help you be a more effective programmer. If you don't know how to fix cars, the best tool set in the world won't teach you how to replace a timing belt.

I guess you could muddle through some easy stuff that "Just works" like the good old VB, but don't get me started on that.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

how so? the server market is quite profitable since support is generally needed more. you won't make much money unless you secure sales to oem deals (which canonical managed with dell). That being said, inroads for linux in desktop will be slow at best (face it, micrsoft may be old but it's like trying to go over an adult mammoth that is still alive).

In this market, buying a company that is profitable now and probably will stay one for a good amount of time is better then one that is STILL losing money though is pretty close to breaking even (which isn't something people wanna buy where profit can go either way).

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[nicolas.kassis]

Nothing wrong with that, I've seen places run well with Gentoo. But Ubuntu is no different then running a Debian shop and alot of company where or are debian shops. Red Hat is a great choice in many cases and learning it is a good thing. If only fo for the fact that the enterprise software industry standardizes on it. I'm an apt/dpkg fan but yum/rpm can handle itself fine. Now if someone would standardize /etc locations of config file, that be great.

And the winner is...

[MrWin2kMan]

Larry Ellison and Oracle are beginning to lust heavily over Red Hat...I fear most of the best parts of RH would get lost in the catacombs of Oracle and never see the light of day again... Sun seems to be busy playing coquette to IBM (although HP would be a better fit). Novell would be a logical choice and would (finally) promote some consolidation in the Linux realm. Apple already has an OS based on a (flamebait acknowledged) superior Unix derivative. I would instead look to Cisco or Dell. Cisco has no in-house OS (other than IOS of course) and with their recent entry into the server hardware market it would be a smart buy, although not necessarily for RH. Dell would be an ideal combination, as Michael Dell is already a Linux proponent, although of a slightly different flavor. Dell isn't as integrated as their main competitors and has no real software presence, however their close association with Redmond might be a giant monkey wrench. If Dell wanted to grow up and really play with the big boys (the ones who are left anyway), they would grow a pair and go bold. Who else has $4-6 Billion in cash lying around looking for more software presence...Adobe? Google?

Re:And the winner is...

[oprahwinfree]

It would make my week to see Dell aggressively promoting new products based on RH software.

I can't see Microsoft allowing that to happen without a fight.

Re:And the winner is...

[AndyCanfield]

Google is an interesting possibility. It would allow a merger of workstation and cloud that could be amazing. Imagine erasing the local/internet boundary. Imagine buying a new computer, plugging it in, and bingo, you're up and running with all your data and applications. "Let us be lovers, we'll marry our notebooks together." Imagine a Google Applications Platform for Windows which is technically a Linux simulator.

Re:Let them be bought...

[nicolas.kassis]

Good, KDE sucks.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[KermitJunior]

And you're clearly not very familiar with long term strategy. Microsoft isn't making any money on their desktop installs either. Ask a few questions... how long has Red Hat been working at this? Now, how long has Canonical been working at it? Which one has more Momentum? Canonical is moving extremely fast and it's more important to look at where they have come from up to now to see where they are going. They're getting ready to blow past Red Hat and leave them in the dust. Why? Because they will own the Linux Desktop market in many ways (not 100% or even 50%, but the majority of Linux installs) and that will lead to the business side. Just wait and see.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[chill]

IBM doesn't support Debian-based distros on their servers.

Every version of Red Hat is LTS, not just every other like with Ubuntu.

Red Hat owns and has tons of expertise in JBoss, which is a benefit in the enterprise.

Red Hat support IBM Power chips, Intel Itanium2 and IBM Mainframes, though Ubuntu supports Sparc. Those SunFires tempt me...

Last year I finished a gig at a telco that deployed over 9,000 IBM Blade Servers all running Red Hat.

It works both ways. I cut my teeth on Red Hat, so RPM is second nature to me while Debian's dpkg and apt took some fumbling. I have Ubuntu-EEE at home but run either CentOS or RHEL on servers.

Re:Let them be bought...

[shentino]

I agree.

The current bug party with screen garbage is absolutely UGLY, as well as being a security risk.

KDE's beta testing dropped the ball, because a bug this atrocious should not have made it past the testers.

Economic Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as a hostile takeover. If you offer enough money that the majority of shareholders sell to you, what's hostile about that?

If Red Hat wants to stay independent maybe they should buy back their stock from the market, that way no one can buy them.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[troll8901]

Very good comeback.

I'm trying to aim for RHCT, and I'm failing terribly. That I blame on my own ability to learn.

Good for you for using Gentoo! I heard how difficult it is.

Would be good new for Ubuntu if ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle was to buy RedHat, which makes a lot of sense to their overall business model, because Fedora would be the first to go. Linux on the desktop doesn't make any money, as the CEO of RedHat recently said. Any potential buyer wants the profitable support business. The desktop is a waste of resources as far as they are concerned. Remember people, public companies exist solely to make money for their shareholders NOT to support the OSS community at large.

Re:Let them be bought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: Is this a compulsion of yours, bringing KDE to every discussion? I remember you doing the same in the Windows 7 discussion...

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[shinzawai]

People like me install Fedora on their home desktop machine. I understand rpm/yum and all of the Red Hat specific configuration file locations. When I work on the Debian/Ubuntu servers, I can mostly get apt and dpks to work for the server configuration that I want, but science damn if it isn't like pulling teeth. Now that I have enough power, and I have to make a decision on which distro to get support from, do I go with something that I know (Centos and Red Hat) or something that is similiar yet foreign (Debian/Ubuntu)? The last 3 servers that I've been in control of have been ESX with CentOS VM's. Wow .... does that mean Debian and Canonical are dead-ends ?

Typical Slashdot misunderstanding

[OlivierB]

in TFA there is no mention of Citigroup looking to buy Redhat; just a mention that a Citigroup stock analyst upgraded his target share price to $17 and kept the recommendation to "hold".
Once again everybody on ./ has gone and commented on how Oracle culture would be compared to Citigroup's whereas that's not even the point..
Sheesh people, the linked article is probably under 250 words. Could you not have given it a read? Did it not strike you as something strange that a bank would want to buy a software vendor?

Re:Typical Slashdot misunderstanding

[Hognoxious]

the linked article is probably under 250 words. Could you not have given it a read?

New here?

Re:Typical Slashdot misunderstanding

[68kmac]

Sheesh people, the linked article is probably under 250 words. Could you not have given it a read?

Obviously, neither the submitter nor the editors read it, so why should we?

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[jernejk]

Generally, I also prefer Ubuntu over RHEL/OEL, but Oracle database and WLS are not supported on Ubuntu.
Also, database did work for us on Ubuntu, but WLS had some strange problems, so we decided to switch our Oracle servers to OEL, and that works really good.
I think Oracle buying Redhat would be a good thing. I think it was quite amazing how quickly they merged BEA into their Fusion Middleware. Dropping your own app server in favor of another in a few months is not a small thing to do. Jdeveloper 11g TPs was still using what was supposed to be OC4J 11g...
They also don't drop existing brands. They'd probably call it Oracle RedHat linux and drop their own unbreakable linux. From an enterprise point of view, probably a good thing.
What I don't know is how is Oracle going to respond to IBM/Sun merger. Java is THE platform Oracle put all their strategy in. If somehow Java is not as open as it is any more, Oracle looses big time. So... how about Oracle buying Sun?

FRAUD? Consider the sources.

[Futurepower(R)]

This Slashdot story was posted by a Slashdot editor who calls himself "Souls kill". The story was suggested to Slashdot by someone who calls himself "Head Dunce". A dunce is "a person regarded as stupid". (Please note, I'm not suggesting that the Slashdot editor "kills souls", he is suggesting that. I'm not calling the person who wrote the story a dunce, he is calling himself that.)

The Slashdot story links to an article in Forbes Magazine. Will Forbes and other "financial" publications continue to pretend to offer useful financial advice when they did NOTHING to stop the corruption of big U.S. banks taking on debt 20 to 60 times their assets?

The Forbes article was written by someone named "Ruthie".

The "takeover" talk appears to be completely fraud, in my opinion:

1) Citigroup is not thinking of buying Red Hat. Yes, the Slashdot story suggests that, but the stories to which Slashdot links don't suggest that.

2) Citigroup has been extraordinarily destructive; it helped cause the present job loss throughout the United States. The article implies that Citigroup has a lot of Red Hat stock and is trying to manipulate the price.

3) The Slashdot story links to a Reuters story that says, "Linux software maker Red Hat Inc (RHT.N) reported profit ahead of Street projections on Wednesday , helped by cost cuts and a stock buyback, sending shares up 8 percent." Someone is apparently manipulating the price of Red Hat stock, because "22 cents vs Street view 20 cents" is certainly not news that should cause people to value Red Hat stock so highly that the shares go up 8 per cent.

4) The Reuters story only says that some un-named people on "the Street" predicted something, and Red Hat did a tiny bit better. Remember that "the Street" is responsible for the present job loss throughout the United States. They are, in my opinion, vicious crooks, who stole from and are stealing from the taxpayers because corrupt politicians believe they are "too big to fail".

If you aren't a full time stock investor with plenty of inside information, you should not be buying stocks. Those with little experience just lost 40% of their money!

We deserve better leaders than "Souls kill", "Head Dunce", Forbes, Ruthie, Citigroup, "the Street", and politicians manipulated by those who don't know any better way to make money than by paying to corrupt their own government.

Re:FRAUD? Consider the sources.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"This Slashdot story was posted by a Slashdot editor who calls himself "Souls kill"."The story was suggested to Slashdot by someone who calls himself "Head Dunce". A dunce is "a person regarded as stupid". (Please note, I'm not suggesting that the Slashdot editor "kills souls", he is suggesting that. I'm not calling the person who wrote the story a dunce, he is calling himself that.)

Well I'm not suggesting anything because I have the balls to just come out and say it: You aren't too bright if you cannot figure out that Soulskill can be phonetically mapped to sole skill . If you cannot figure out that Head Dunce is a tongue in cheek reference to the idea that Slashdot is a kingdom of Dunces in which he is king, then that makes it all the more hilarious to read your absurd rant. That big lump in your mouth is your foot.

Re:FRAUD? Consider the sources.

[theillien]

"This Slashdot story was posted by a Slashdot editor who calls himself "Souls kill"."The story was suggested to Slashdot by someone who calls himself "Head Dunce". A dunce is "a person regarded as stupid". (Please note, I'm not suggesting that the Slashdot editor "kills souls", he is suggesting that. I'm not calling the person who wrote the story a dunce, he is calling himself that.)

Well I'm not suggesting anything because I have the balls to just come out and say it: You aren't too bright if you cannot figure out that Soulskill can be phonetically mapped to sole skill . If you cannot figure out that Head Dunce is a tongue in cheek reference to the idea that Slashdot is a kingdom of Dunces in which he is king, then that makes it all the more hilarious to read your absurd rant. That big lump in your mouth is your foot.

Indeed. And apparently some other idiots agreed with him. Someone needs to mod Parent down.

Re:FRAUD? Consider the sources.

[Registered Coward v2]

If you aren't a full time stock investor with plenty of inside information, you should not be buying stocks. Those with little experience just lost 40% of their money!

Yea, we're in a down market. But over time a broad index fund has provide greater returns than most common alternatives. Of course, if you think you can beat the market with your system then, yes, you should not be in the market.

Re:Question:

[trickyD1ck]

regarding executable jars, try the Fat Jar plugin for Eclipse (http://fjep.sourceforge.net/)

Who?

[benjamindees]

I can't imagine RedHat has any particular value to any existing software vendors. A hardware vendor might make sense, but it would have to be a huge one. Anyone outside of the IT industry would be insane to purchase RedHat.

Clearly it would be beneficial to get a hold of RedHat's patent portfolio.

Also it would make sense to acquire a competitor, though I'm not sure who that would be. Microsoft would encounter regulatory roadblocks, Sun is on the verge of being bought-out itself. IBM doesn't see RedHat as any kind of threat; and I don't think they make enough on Linux services to want to buy a Linux vendor solely as a hedge.

Oracle seems to be a natural choice. RedHat has been pushing it's database and application server stuff for a while as a cheaper alternative to Oracle. Like another poster said, it would be beneficial for Oracle to absorb RedHat to support it's database products and eliminate a competitor. But it's not as though Oracle would be in any type of position to capitalize on any of RedHat's other markets. And it's not as though RedHat is much of a threat to Oracle anyways, since their products are in completely different price-ranges.

It would be interesting to see a company like Cisco buy RedHat. They could marry a rack of servers with the Cisco logo with a pared-down, remote-terminal type RedHat desktop that would run on a company's existing desktop hardware, only with much higher security and easier management. No anti-virus needed. No more time-consuming desktop patch management. Higher performance, more flexibility, and the latest buzz-word, Linux! It would be an easy way to jump into the server, desktop, and cloud markets all at once. And it would be an easy sell in a down economy, to companies that are weary of upgrading to Vista. Merge the Windows server and Cisco network admins. Outsource to a hosted Exchange service if you really need that, otherwise run a basic cross-platform groupware service on your new Cisco servers. It could work.

I'll start worrying when they buy Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat is just a company. Let Oracle buy it if they want. Debian is another matter. When that goes, Linux is doomed.

That's worth bearing in mind.

Re:I'll start worrying when they buy Debian

[Alain Williams]

Debian can't be bought, it is not a company with shareholders. You would need to convince the Debian maintainers that they ought to be part of Oracle -- I know some of these guys, hell would freeze over first.

shoulder surfing

[jlebrech]

If i were Redhat I would be saying no to potential shoulder surfer owners looking to maximise profit without regard for the clientelle.

Re:Let them be bought...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the default DE relevant for this discussion?

Further comment: A note about "Ruthie".

[Futurepower(R)]

Every language has a way of expressing that something is small or cute, or cute and small, called the diminutive. In English, the diminutive is formed by adding -y or -ie. In Thai, it is formed by using a one-syllable name, like "Nok" for the name of a girl; those who want to be considered responsible adults use multi-syllable names. In Japanese the diminutive is formed by adding -ko, as in the name of a friend of mine, a grown woman, Noriko. In Portuguese, the diminutive is formed by adding -inha or -inho.

So the Forbes.com author Ruthie Ackerman is an adult who has chosen to continue using a childhood name, a name that suggests that she is small and cute. That tends in the direction of causing me to have less confidence in her judgment.

Re:Further comment: A note about "Ruthie".

[mopower70]

The parent Slashdot comment was posted by someone who calls themselves FuturePower (R), with the parenthesized 'R' suggesting a registered trademark.

So the comment author is a person who believes that a name chosen for a technology forum is a potential basis for self promotion and gain through civil lawsuits and has therefore allied themselves with the likes of the RIAA and MPIAA. That tends in the direction of causing me to have less confidence in her judgement.

Re:Further comment: A note about "Ruthie".

[Daengbo]

Well, in addition to your post's basic premise being a little over the top, you're completely wrong on your analysis of Thai: one syllable names show nothing. In fact, traditional Thais normally have relatively short names (e.g. Kao Klai, a K-1 fighter), yet they _still_ take nicknames. Thais generally use their nicknames, like "Nok," throughout their adult lives, even if they are movie stars or university professors. The use of the full given name is really rather rare unless it's used for identification purposes (i.e. in a news article).

Thais generally use repetition (lek lek), alliteration (sum sarm), or rhyming (reuay beuay) to create a diminutive, though these can also be used to create flowery language in an article, a song, or a poem.

Re:Further comment: A note about "Ruthie".

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Thais generally use repetition (lek lek), alliteration (sum sarm), or rhyming (reuay beuay) to create a diminutive, though these can also be used to create flowery language in an article, a song, or a poem."

Lightweights! When I started using computers back in the 60's, we composed our flowery languages using toggle switches with lamps for feedback ... in Binary Coded Decimal and Machine Code! Now get off my lawn !

Re:Further comment: A note about "Ruthie".

[khallow]

Your post was stupid. That tends in the direction of causing me to have less confidence in your judgment.

Re:Further comment: A note about "Ruthie".

[lennier]

"The parent Slashdot comment was posted by someone who calls themselves FuturePower (R), with the parenthesized 'R' suggesting a registered trademark. "

Or a sitting Republican congressperson.

Re:Further comment: A note about "Ruthie".

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

So the Forbes.com author Ruthie Ackerman is an adult who has chosen to continue using a childhood name, a name that suggests that she is small and cute. That tends in the direction of causing me to have less confidence in her judgment.

What an odd bias. Do you factor in her publisher?

What would RH employees think ?

[Alain Williams]

With a technology company its value is made up of:

• Intellectual Property - I, stuff that other people cannot use without a license - everything that RH is open source. Some management/internal s/ware might not have been published
• Intellectual Property - II, Patents - RH has a few for defensive purposes. I don't know how new owners could use them against other FLOSS users: if they wanted to
• Contracts & customer good will, if you piss off your customers this can evaporate quickly
• Good staff/employees. In a few months the good ones could leave.
• Bank account, buildings, computers, etc.

The most important of the above is the RH staff. If citigroup/... were to buy RH and do the ''wrong'' things the staff would simply decamp, create another company ('BlueBoot'), take a copy of all the source code (its all GPL remember) and the RH customers would follow the staff for their support.

Any clueful potential purchaser would realise the risk that what they bought could just evaporate.

Re:What would RH employees think ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most important of the above

is rather probably, the

Contracts & customer good will

Anyone could start a 'BlueBoot' now selling services around CentOS, but you need to build the 'critical mass' to sustain the company through marketing and name brand. You are fighting FUD.

Re:What would RH employees think ?

[Anonymous Coward]

About 'BlueBoot': It could happen but it would take a long time. I tend to think that customers would flock to CentOS until 'BlueBoot' showed it was (nearly) as good as Red Hat.

Hopefully nothing like that would ever need to happen.

Re:What would RH employees think ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot branding. Red Hat has a good brand name and that has a lot of marketing value.

Contradiction in terms

[Kynde]

A good buyer for RedHat? I can't see one, because anyone big enough to buy that, imho, is not suitable to control it.

Any company some involved with computers/sw will have vested interests in steering it towards their own goals and in the towards damnation. Any company totally unrelated to computers would be in it for the money and we know how that story usually ends.

A good owner for RedHat? I'd say Torvalds or Cox, but I don't see either one on the potential buyers list...

Re:Question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Java

There's your problem. Try a real language.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Ubuntu at home and admin Redhat & some Suse at work. I have no problems switching between the two. This is possibly because I'm not an idiot, and I know how to do my job correctly.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the parents point, totally. You are where the puck is. He is going where it's going to be. IOW, new users install ubuntu, not fedora. Ie, the redhat potential userbase is _shrinking_ while the ubuntu/debian one is _growing_.

Stand on your own

[unity100]

you did good so far, and beat expectations even in a global recession. that means you're doing it right.

there is no need to bring in additional executive board/shareholder meddling by getting bought.

keep what you are doing on your own.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[BlortHorc]

Obviously the whole redhat/debian/ubuntu thing is not simple. Personally, I have ubuntu on developers desktops, debian on servers except for the annoying centos servers we inherited from a merger.

There a few things about the default centos/redhat setup that shit me enormously, such as an idiotic umask that allows group writable perms by default. Can anyone spell unable to ssh to host due ownership permissions for 40 points? Twonk who decided that idea needs drowning and resuscitation repeatedly until it no longer works.

Same deal with the clear in .logout. If I care whether people see what I have been doing I will hit ctrl-L. I don't need some nanny twaping the clear screen key just because some turkey has logged out as root.

Red hat is synonymous with annoying defaults these days.

Larry's christmas shopping list

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it's on Larry's christmas shopping list. He doesn't stop until he gets what he wants.

The only upside I see is getting Oracle shares out of the deal. Why not retire?

Good luck uncle Larry and Red Hat. OTOH Red Hat really is a smart company, if they don't like Larry's offer they might survive, but ol' Uncle Larry likes to destroy the elmos that aren't on the shelf during christmas shopping season. LOL!

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[zrq]

People like me install Fedora on their home desktop machine. I understand rpm/yum and all of the Red Hat specific configuration file locations.

Both cases are common. The desktop distributions (Ubuntu/Fedora) are used as entry points for learning how the system tools work. Developers and system admins become familiar with a particular distribution on their own desktop machine, and use the corresponding server distribution (Ubuntu LTS/RedHat EL) when they come to install a new server.

Like you, I use Fedora on my desktop and RedHat EL on my servers because that is what I'm familiar with. However, I am beginning to think it might be time to change to Ubuntu. The recent versions of Fedora (9, 10, 11) seem to be aimed at the home user and laptop market, and are becoming less relevant for a development system. I used to keep at least one machine updated with the latest Fedora release, so that I could keep track of the new features and learn how to use them. The last few Fedora releases (9, 10 and 11-alpha) have not been usable as servers, so all my machines have stayed at Fedora 8.

I am about the last one in our project team who does still use Fedora/RedHat, almost everyone else uses Ubuntu. In which case they will prefer Ubuntu LTS rather than RedHat EL when they come to install a live server, because that is what they are familiar with. As a result I have started to migrate many of my configuration scripts to use apt-get on Ubuntu rather than yum on Fedora.

So yes, there are still some of us who install Fedora on our desktop machines, and use RedHat EL on our servers. But there may be fewer of us in the future.

People listen to this speculation

[kaiwai]

Come on guys, these are the same people who were smart asses thinking they could make massive returns with zero risk all because they thought they could model investments and economics around mathematical equations - ignoring the fact that economies are made up of people who are a mixture of rational and irrational motivations.

So please inform me, why should anyone listen to these boy wonders on this matter? I might as well ask my grandma on her views regarding the possibility of Oracle buying out Red Hat.

I see now

[BCW2]

This is how Citigroup is going to spend OUR bailout money.

Cue the lynch mob.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, that's why I said Canonical doesn't look attractive now. I think you're going to be surprised. Give it about 5 or 10 years and RedHat will either be dead or installing Ubuntu along with their normal offerings.

Ubuntu is not only a desktop OS, they have a quite good server too.

I will be sure to be here when you taste that foot (if you're even around). Let me guess, you're 20 or so? You might want to get some experience before spouting off. I know it seems like you're on top of the world and it may even seem like you know what humble is but trust me, you have no idea.

Where the darkside is

[transporter_ii]

What Red Hat ran into is not being profitable in a bad economy, but one of the dark sides of being a publicly traded company.

When Canonical does start to turn a profit, it doesn't have to worry about this issue because it is privately held.

Going public to me seems to be a double-edged sword. It is a smoke and mirror way to raise a lot of capital, but it also sets you up to have others come in and try and tell you what to do...and it could be someone that you don't really want telling you what to do (example: eBay buying shares in Craigslist).

Transporter_ii

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[shish]

When I work on the Debian/Ubuntu servers, I can mostly get apt and dpks to work for the server configuration that I want, but science damn if it isn't like pulling teeth

"apt-get install lighttpd", now you try :P

/me has spent several hours discovering that the centos netinstall makes you specify your own mirror as opposed to debian giving a list, and the official docs start with "to use netinstall, first download the complete installer CD and stick it on a webserver on your LAN". Then tried downloading the regular installer CD, to find that you need FOUR CDs for a minimal install with all options disabled, as opposed to debian's one. Then after giving up and downloading the DVDs, finally got it installed. Trying to install lighttpd... package does not exist, as opposed to debian packaging pretty much everything. Wanting to stab someone at this point, he downloads the lighttpd source code, notes that it uses scons as a build system. Tries to install scons... package does not exist. It requires four CDs for a minimal install... and doesn't include common packages. What. The. Fuck.

</evidence type="anecdotal">

Citigroup? WTF?

[PinchDuck]

It's a bank, it's a software company, what the hell else? Buy a chain of beauty colleges? What a lousy fit. Dumb.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[alexborges]

Its a tough certification: you hang in there though, its worth it all the way.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

The last few Fedora releases (9, 10 and 11-alpha) have not been usable as servers, so all my machines have stayed at Fedora 8.

In what way? I think Fedora still works great as a viable preview of the future: an integrated system containing quite new versions of everything. This may not sound like a good server, but ALL versions of Fedora have had this issue. Only in hindsight do Fedora systems seem reasonable for servers, e.g. RHEL/CentOS 5 look a lot like Fedora 6 did.

What I find pathetic here is people suggesting that a professional sysadmin cannot cope with the trivial differences between Linux distros, as if there is real lock-in. I miss the days when Unix admins could debate the merits of BSD or SysV worlds but they could also move between the dozens of Unix variants on a day-to-day basis.

Poison Pill

[hduff]

RedHat could defend itself against hostile takeover attempts by adopting some form of "Poison Pill". Such a device would render whatever makes Red Hat valuable have no value to a hostile bidder. An example would be what Peoplesoft did to thwart a takeover from Oracle. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill

Re:Poison Pill

[Anonymous Coward]

RedHat could defend itself against hostile takeover attempts by adopting some form of "Poison Pill". Such a device would render whatever makes Red Hat valuable have no value to a hostile bidder. An example would be what Peoplesoft did to thwart a takeover from Oracle. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill

Hmmm...BEA tried that too with Oracle. Both were eventually acquired.

Hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Better Oracle than Citigroup obviously. Nothing wrong with being bought as long as the new owner doesn't meddle with a good business plan.

Thanks for the information.

[Futurepower(R)]

Okay, rephrased: Thais who emphasize their one-syllable nicknames when they are adults are emphasizing, and intending to emphasize, their lack of responsibility.

Re:Thanks for the information.

[Daengbo]

Not at all.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[jamstar7]

I started out on RedHat back with 3.0.3, learned to build my own RPMs, etc etc, etc. I switched over my home machine to Ubuntu with Dapper, haven't looked back. I still grok RPM, but I also now grok apt & .DEB. Slight learning curve but once you have it down, fairly easy.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[LWATCDR]

Not really. Moving from distro to distro really isn't that that hard. Ubuntu is really nice and Ubuntu server is gaining a lot of traction.
Red Hat is still very popular. If you want a JOB now I suggest that you install and learn Centos. While your at it learn Ubuntu as well.
The more you learn the better. Goodness knows we don't want to be like the people that think Mac OSX sucks just because it isn't Windows. Or that where so sure that Vista would rock.

*cough* Vista *cough*

[Ghubi]

It seems that this economy has inspired a lot of businesses to move to Linux

It's the economy folks. Businesses turning to Linux has nothing to do with the quality of Microsoft products.

Economic ignorance

[Brandybuck]

There's a dark side to being a highly profitable company in a down economy, though

While being profitable does raise the incentives to buy Redhat, being profitable also lowers the incentives to sell Redhat. On the flip side, it may make sense to sell if the buyer is more profitable, but then the buyer doesn't have as much incentive to acquire.

It's not a dark side. Even if Redhat does sell, it's because their shareholders wanted to sell. It's only going to happen if shareholders on both sides perceive a benefit.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[zrq]

In what way?

In a word, NetworkManager. But that is an over simplification.

I agree that a distros like Fedora with new versions of everything you expect bugs, and you have to accept some problems in return for all the latest features. However, the recent changes involving NetworkManager have broken many things 'just worked' for a standard server install. What makes it a problem is that there isn't a simple way to work around all of the side effects, and some of the responses to the bug reports seem to treat problems with large scale server installations as a low priority.

NetworkManager is aimed primarily at laptops and mobile systems which regularly connect and disconnect from different networks - and when it all works, I look forward to installing it on my own laptop. But for a server or desktop system that is wired to a fixed network, it causes a lot of extra problems and offers no real benefit.

But - as I said, you expect some problems when a new component is added. What is missing is an option at the start of the install sequence that asks :

• Is this a laptop or mobile system ? (which installs all the bells and whistles, including Networkmanager, BlueTooth etc.)
• Is this a desktop or server system ? (which installs simple base system for you to extend)

It is worth noting that Ubuntu provide a separate download for a server install. The whole thing fits on a single 700M CD, and runs happily in a VM with 64M of memory.

I think Fedora still works great as a viable preview of the future.

I agree, and it has also been a good indicator of what to expect in future versions of RedHat EL.
Have you tried installing Fedora 10 without NetworkManager or BlueTooth ? On a laptop these make sense, but who in their right mind would want a room full of BlueTooth enabled servers ?

... people suggesting that a professional sysadmin cannot cope with the trivial differences between Linux distros ...

Yep - point taken, which is why I am learning how to make my scripts distro neutral. But, without a simple server install for Fedora, I think RedHat will be loosing out.

HP maybe ?

[dbcad7]

If you set aside the already mentioned IBM, Sun, and Oracle.. I suppose Hp could be considered.. You could throw in Dell too, but that would probably make people actually cry.

Re:Let them be bought...

[Anonymous Coward]

And how is this insightful? It's off topic, flamebait and retarded. Oh wait, this is slashdot, spot on then I guess.

I strongly object to Oracle buying a Linux distro

[tmp31416]

As a old time jack-of-all-trades/sometimes DBA, I have been seeing Oracle sitting on its fat a** for quite some time, content to gouge customers with, by now, over-priced & over-engineered software. The vast majority of my colleagues (full-time DBAs and such) have been stating for just as long that Oracle support is not worth the price you pay for licensing. Larry & co. are now taking their market share for granted, like Novell & WordPerfect used to (to give two easy examples).

From where I stand, Oracle is basically giving the market away to M$. I used to laugh at the very notion of this, but too many recent events I cannot talk about (the joys of working for the MIBs... (ok, the suits are not all black, but you get the idea)) have lead me to this conclusion. I am not happy about this, but I can't deny it any more. Oracle should revise their pricing structure and the way their products work: we are no longer in the 1980s, Larry! What was acceptable then is not any more!

And, to make matters worse, Oracle has turned into the new CA (Computer Associates): too many software that was acquired by them have simply disappeared out of sight. Like 99.999% of what CA has bought, that used to be good sellers and had good visibility, but that disappeared overnight when CA got their slimy tentacles on it.

Finally, to add insult to injury, Oracle, like Sun, still does not grok what FLOSS is.

No, Oracle should not buy any Linux distro or anything resembling a Free *nix. In the case of Red Hat, that would be the absolute worst thing that has happened to them. It would be just as bad as if M$ would have bought them out.

Some time ago, it would have been an intriguing concept. Not any more.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[shinzawai]

"yum install `package`", now you try. Sigh... The point I was highlighting was a Fedora/RH user has the same issues using Debian as a Debian user would using Fedora/RH. Just because you prefer a certain way and are used to it, does not make you better. I've used Fanbuntu over the years and set it up fine and then say to myself, "What's the big fucking deal?". It acts just like my Fedora desktop. Granted, I know what I'm doing. There is a large section of Fantbuntu users though who do not have a clue, and then put their 2c worth in everywhere you go. My favourite..... "rpm is so crap compared apt-get"....it makes me want to cry. Where I work, the support boys use Ubuntu as their Linux "distro of the week", and, I shit you not, when I asked them to grep some logs for information, they did not know what I was talking about. To answer your concerns, (and the following is something that needs fixing and I hope they sort it out by version 6 of RHEL), you only need CD1 to do a minimal install. If you needed more, you did it wrong. No one's fault there but your own. (Hint: use google if you cannot figure it out..or ask me). Also, add the rpmforge repo to get the stuff you want.... scons, lighttpd, etc. You prefer Debian.... I prefer Red Hat. I'm cool with that. I'm cool with the fact Ubuntu introduces new stuff that was in the previous vesion of Fedora. But the thing I'm most cool with is that Big Enterpise..no...small, medium, and big Enterprise use Red Hat primarily. (From my experience). That way, I get to have a great paying job using an OS I love. When Debian/Ubuntu gets mindshare in the real world, I know I can switch without a problem because, at the end of the day, it's all Linux with the config files in a different spot.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what this "Fantbuntu" shit you are talking about is but if you want to know why people harp on about apt-get being better than yum, it's actually quite simple. Apt-get is at least twice as fast as yum at downloading and installing programs. Period. End of fucking story. I run Debian but I have a Fedora install that I fuck around with just for kicks and to see what coming down the pike for other distros in the near future. I could never use Fedora as my main OS. It's quite simply excrutiatingly slow and I don't have time for that shit. Not to mention the fact that aptitude/apt-get does a hell of a lot more with packages than just install them and resolve dependancies. Maybe yum is comparable, maybe it isn't but it is damn sure slow.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[Leolo]

I could rewrite your comment, only switching all positions. All my servers have CentOS. My desktops are Fedora Core or Mandriva. I installed Ubuntu on my laptop for some reason... using apt or just getting anything done is like pulling teeth. Apt's TUI was designed by someone who hates people.

it keeps getting more boring

[heroine]

Redhat once paid people to write crazy programs like Enlightenment. Then they focused on a little less crazy ideas like web servers. Now they'll take the next step & become even more boring. Wonder if anyone is still there from the glory days of 1997?

Re:it keeps getting more boring

[alexborges]

I hear you...

But big bussiness is seldom fun. Let them grow, it is their destiny.

Give the issue a little thought.

[Futurepower(R)]

If you would give the issue a little thought, you would realize it is a very useful view of the world. Avoidance of responsibility is a huge issue. When people use the diminutive, they signal that they don't want responsibility.

That's a widely held perspective. Consider George W. Bush, for example. He called Russian President Vladimir Putin, "Putie-Poot". Putin smiled for the cameras, but the BBC called that an "act". The BBC writer said the nicknames were considered "a sign that parts of Dubya - his name for himself - never really grew up." "Putie" is the diminutive of Putin, and "Poot" is a childish word for defecate.

Re:Give the issue a little thought.

[khallow]

Ok, let me outline my argument for you. Suppose hypothetically, Ruthie is her name, not the diminutive of her name. Then how does calling her "Ruthie" signal that she doesn't want responsibility? Plus there's no obvious consensus that diminutive names signal desire to avoid responsibility.

That's a widely held perspective. Consider George W. Bush, for example. He called Russian President Vladimir Putin, "Putie-Poot". Putin smiled for the cameras, but the BBC called that an "act". The BBC writer said the nicknames were considered "a sign that parts of Dubya - his name for himself - never really grew up." "Putie" is the diminutive of Putin, and "Poot" is a childish word for defecate.

You must have a pile of Bush anecdotes, if you can pull one out so casually. I'll be glad when the shelf life on those things expire. Moving on, my take is that Bush has at times exhibited a remarkable recall for people: campaign contributors, staffers, fellow politicians, etc. I imagine that the childish names are how that works. And "Dubya" is his nickname in his family. It's not just something he calls himself. Moving on, Bush doesn't seem unusual compared to other US Presidents for dodging responsibility. There aren't many responsible presidents in the past hundred or so years, Maybe Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Ike Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter. Three of those had popular diminutive names.

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[shinzawai]

So apt has the ability to download stuff quicker than yum...wow, that is impressive. I'll concede that yum checking its database for stuff is not as quick as apt but its not that big a deal I've found on CentOS. It's not that much slower. If you have issues, then perhaps its a PEBKAC problem. I call it Fanbuntu due to posts such as yours. Check you later, dickhead !

Respect for your opinion, but different ideas

[Futurepower(R)]

Daengbo, I have great respect for your opinion. You have spent more time in Thailand than I. You have spent more time teaching Thais English than I.

But I respectfully have a different opinion. I was always focusing intensely on cultural differences, even differences between Thais. In my classes, we often talked about cultural differences between Chinese-Thais and ethnic Thais, for example.

You don't seem to have that focus. Perhaps you didn't notice that, in my opinion, a childish sense of irresponsibility cripples the Thai culture. That is a problem throughout the world, of course. However, Thais, particularly Thai women, signal that sense of irresponsibility when, at a particular time, they choose to use their short nicknames. That choice doesn't always mean much in terms of action, but it is an indication of what the person is feeling at the time.

Re:Respect for your opinion, but different ideas

[Daengbo]

I'm not trying to have an argument with you. Did you arrive at this theory through your own experiences?

In my years studying Thai, no one ever mentioned this concept, and my gal (a native Thai speaker of Chinese decent) doesn't get it, either. Her nickname is Goy, which she uses exclusively. I've never known a Thai (male or female) to use the given name in normal life. The exception is for identification purposes (e.g. news reports and rosters).

My guess is that we're bound to disagree on this point and should probably drop it. Are you teaching in Thailand? I've been in Korea for far too long and need to get back to the tropics. Now is not a good time to take my money out of Korea, though. Sigh. The won is shit.

Red Hat bought by Citigroup

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I mistaken, or did we -- the U.S. taxpayer -- just shell out some $100 Billion dollars plus to save this idiots? How the hell are they buying anything???
If Citibank/group buys anything you are involved/employed/invested in, RUN like the wind...

Has anyone actually dealt with Oracle Support

[jweinshe]

I've been an Oracle Apps DBA for 10+ years and a RHEL admin for about 5.

I have yet to have a single client move to Oracle Enterprise Linux and every client that has considered it decided against it for one reason - Oracle's Support sucks.

Sure, great, I'd get all my support in one place - (strike) India (/strike) Oracle. Unfortunately, that support is horrendous.

I had Oracle work one linux related issue for a client, as a top severity issue with Oracle. In short, Oracle took a week on it, missed fixing the critical issue, and didn't have an analyst available when they said they would (during a mission critical downtime to address the issue).

Sorry, no.

Re:Question:

[mhall119]

Just use the command-line jar program. You don't even need an IDE.

jar -cmf $manifestFile $jarName $sourceFiles

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[shish]

The point I was highlighting was a Fedora/RH user has the same issues using Debian as a Debian user would using Fedora/RH

The point I was highlighting is that they don't -- a RH user trying debian won't need to add third party repositories to get common packages; a RH user trying debian won't need to write down the URL of a possible mirror on a bit of paper when using netinstall; a RH user trying debian won't find that the official netinstall docs say "step 1: download the full installation CD"; ...

you only need CD1 to do a minimal install. If you needed more, you did it wrong. No one's fault there but your own.

Got to the "what categories of things do you want to install" screen, unchecked "gnome", unchecked "kde", unchecked "virtualisation server", unchecked "blah blah blah". If I'm expected to go into the screen which lists every single package individually and uncheck them there too, that's just crazyness :P

(I would hope that this isn't the case for the desktop-oriented fedora, but as mentioned I'd been asked for centos specifically)

Re:RedHat is a dead end

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

"yum install `package`", now you try. Sigh...

The point I was highlighting was a Fedora/RH user has the same issues using Debian as a Debian user would using Fedora/RH.

You prefer Debian.... I prefer Red Hat.

When Debian/Ubuntu gets mindshare in the real world, I know I can switch without a problem because, at the end of the day, it's all Linux with the config files in a different spot.

The problem with Fedora, as I recall, is that there's no officially sanctioned documentation on upgrading from Fedora version n to version n+1. Unless that changed? -Thufir

Re:Question:

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

Can any free Java IDE Just Work(tm) with making simple executable .jar files?

Did you spend one fucking second googling that? The problem, almost by definition, cannot be the JAR file as the JAR is designed to work with any JVM. So, why is your system not configured correctly? Ask a useful question.

Netbeans won't do it. It says it will generate a manifest with a main class but it dosen't.

By *default* when you create a "hello world" console app in NB it will create a JAR -- you're too dumb to even ask the right questions.

the manifest to point to the main class then Netbeans will magically ignore or overwrite it everytime. The internet forums tell me that it's my fault...

Yes, it's your fault. Did try a hello world console app first? then build from there? do you have more than one class with a "main"?

with ant scripts because I want to show my friends a hello world application without making my friends compile and run it themselves in their own IDE. Many of us have friends who don't know or care what an IDE is.

Oh, you're doing a hello world app. well, since there's just the one class I don't see how you can have the problems described.

The Matisse editor in Netbeans is powerful and full featured. I can tweek every little ass-hair of every little component. Wait - what's all that crap in my source editor? It dosen't look familiar, and to add insult to injury, Netbeans is telling me that I can't edit some code?

Did you try clicking on the widgets from matisse? That will allow you to edit the code completely. If there's a particular part of that which confuses you: use a mailing list. Idiot.