Red Hat Support Continues To Flourish

ruphus13 writes "As the pure-play Open Source companies continue to dwindle, Red Hat has thrived through the recession. Its support revenues have grown 20+%, and account for 75+% of its revenues. 'Instead of the traditional strategy of selling expensive proprietary software licenses, as practiced by the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, Red Hat gets the vast majority of its revenues from selling support contracts. In the third quarter of last year, support subscriptions accounted for $164 million of its $194 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year. All 25 of the company's largest support subscribers renewed subscriptions, even despite a higher price tag.'"

Comments

I don't buy it.

[BitZtream]

I know a lot of people who use Linux in production environments and I've not come across a single person who pays anyone for support.

Re:I don't buy it.

[mr_da3m0n]

You haven't seen a lot of big production environments then. They're more than common in larger buisnesses.

Re:I don't buy it.

[InlawBiker]

A large enterprise would almost never deploy something in production without support. For my small consulting gigs I have never bought support. I think you can see where this is going...

Re:I don't buy it.

[thetoadwarrior]

They're either small companies or they'll most likely be in deep shit when things do go wrong. A large company can't wait around for someone to search for solutions on the internet.

Re:I don't buy it.

[spun]

Then you don't know that many people who use Linux in a production environment with management's approval. Here at New Mexico's Child Youth and Family Development Department, we pay for support. We pay Novell for Suse Linux support (we're a Netware legacy shop), we pay Oracle for MySQL support, and we have 'as-needed' support contracts for other important open source software packages like Splunk & OpenNMS.

So, there you are. I pay for support. But I'm married, so I guess I'm not a 'single person who pays for support.'

Re:I don't buy it.

[frank_adrian314159]

But I'm married, so I guess I'm not a 'single person who pays for support.'

OK, now we know you're lying.

You're posting on Slashdot - you don't even know what a woman looks like.

Re:I don't buy it.

[h4rr4r]

What exactly do you think the support folks do?

Re:I don't buy it.

[antifoidulus]

They aren't missing a lot. They have outsourced the entire thing to India and on the rare occasion I did have a question the "support" I got was totally worthless. It was apparent that they didn't even understand the most basic of commands. I opened about 4 tickets and solved all of them on my own. After that I didn't even bother with it. Not worth a damn dime.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Large companies prefer to pay someone else (in advance) so that they can wait around for someone else to search for solutions on the Internet.

Re:I don't buy it.

[larry bagina]

since this is slashdot, it could be a gay marriage.

Re:I don't buy it.

[spun]

Ah, hate to break it to you but the Slashdot audience is getting older, so the joke is no longer, 'We're all single and can't get laid.' The joke is now, 'We're all married and can't get laid.' Please do keep up.

Re:I don't buy it.

[benjamindees]

Apparently he thinks they sit around waiting for things to go wrong, like the typical Microsoft admin.

Re:I don't buy it.

[InlawBiker]

That's why they have the concept of "support levels." In most cases if you have Basic support it means you get access to their private online knowledge base and a VoIP line to an outsourced guy behind a desk on the other side of the planet.

If you're an Enterprise then you have direct access to a bunch of very smart guys who come buy your team dinner when they're in town.

Re:I don't buy it.

[networkBoy]

What I think they do is get a kernel dev on the line if that's what it takes to resolve my issue (which is funny because my company has a couple kernel devs on the payroll).
Seriously, they (RHEL) make their living by making my engineering department's life easier. We're predominately a windows shop, a fortune 50 company, but we also use linux a lot... and most of it is RHEL.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Narpak]

Ah, hate to break it to you but the Slashdot audience is getting older, so the joke is no longer, 'We're all single and can't get laid.' The joke is now, 'We're all married and can't get laid.' Please do keep up.

Soon a growing portion will be "This page was bookmarked on my dad's computer; what does 'laid' mean?!"

Re:I don't buy it.

[h4rr4r]

But first they waste 3 days of your time with the guys googleing around. Their support was at a time great and is still not horrible, but it really approaching Oracle levels of painfulness.

Re:I don't buy it.

[houstonbofh]

So, there you are. I pay for support. But I'm married, so I guess I'm not a 'single person who pays for support.'

As opposed to a divorced person who pays support?

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never picked up a phone and called them.... Their web tickets are routed to india sure, but every time I give them a call I usually get someone in America or Australia.

Re:I don't buy it.

[benjamindees]

I think you can see where this is going...

Yes, we can see that you do things half-assed backwards.

Open Source software, unlike proprietary software, can be supported in-house better, more easily, and more cheaply than via outside support. Large "enterprises", at least those that take proper advantage of scale and hire competent engineers, have less of a need to pay for outside Linux support than your small "consulting gigs" do.

The vast majority of large "enterprises" that outsource Linux support only do so due to the structural flaws of an IT support system designed around inherent limitations of proprietary software.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The joke is now, 'We're all married and can't get laid.'

snif :,(

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you don't work for companies which need support for Oracle, DB2 or any other proprietary business-critical application that is unsupported on anything but RedHat, Oracle or Suse Linux (and no, CentOS is not supported).

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you obviously can't even read, so I'm not surprised that the engineers couldn't help you. http://www.redhat.com/support/policy/sla/contact/ The 'entire thing' has been outsourced to India? Huh.

Re:I don't buy it.

[digitalhermit]

I know a lot of people who use Linux in production environments and the majority of them buy support contracts from RedHat. There are a few Novell and Oracle shops, and some that apparently buy through IBM also.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a value proposition. For small-time projects where nothing complex is happening - like a LAMP server - a semi-skilled engineer is just as good as the basic phone support guy. Plus there's always Google.

Have you seen Basic support? Their SLA is 2 business days. They're saying "don't buy this support, your call will merely annoy us." Basic support is a waste of money. Yet it's all that small projects can afford.

For a large enterprise, where an hour of downtime could mean millions of dollars lost, then Platinum Support is a must-have. No questions asked, you buy the support.

Re:I don't buy it.

[thetoadwarrior]

A lot of companies don't want to pay for kernel devs. While getting in consultants from companies may appear to be expensive, you don't have to provide them with healthcare, pensions, etc and most importantly you can get rid of them pretty much the second you feel like it which is not the case with full-time employees.

I've been in a company that has had consultants from the publisher of the software they're using for years. To the point, imo, they could have just hired people full-time and when they do switch software those people would still be of some use but the company does not see it that way.

As proactive as you may be as an admin you don't know about every bug in the system, nor does the developer (otherwise it likely wouldn't be there) and not every company will pay for someone in-house to fix it.

Re:I don't buy it.

[PopeRatzo]

since this is slashdot, it could be a gay marriage.

He said he used Suse, not OSX.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Wizard Drongo]

Maybe you missed the whole not-getting-laid bit
Unless of course you're insinuating a whole lot of slashdotters have kids that look suspiciously similar to the postman.

Re:I don't buy it.

[wxjones]

Next: my Viagra prescription ran out, so I can't get laid.

Re:I don't buy it.

[hughperkins]

Haha, this is so true! I mean, not for me of course. Except for the being married bit. And errr... hmmm.... Hey! Look! A grue!

On a more serious note, feelings on: did we all become older as a block, and younger nerds hang out somewhere else? Or, it's more a case of the breadth of ages has broadened? If it's the former, where do younger nerds hang out these days? I mean, apart from on my lawn :-P

Re:I don't buy it.

[HouseOfMisterE]

Or, "I was a Windows admin in a previous life and now can't get laid."

Re:I don't buy it.

[networkBoy]

True, but honestly I think my company expenses their payroll as marketing (Look we pay for devs!) more than engineering...
Doesn't mean they aren't engineers, just that, well, I think they're PR show ponies too.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Infamous Tim]

I think you don't understand how large businesses operate. They minimize risk whenever possible, sometimes even at the expense of profits. Running servers without some kind of safety net (read as: someone outside the company to blame) is a huge risk. Even if they have talented admin(s) on their staff, employees get sick, quit, or just don't feel like fixing some things. This is how large business operates. It's amazing they make any profit at all.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked in 2 of the world's Fortune 10 over the last decade let me sum up. You see support in large companies because of the "nobody got fired for buying IBM syndrome". It's pretty common to see a support contract because if software isn't the company's primary business management wants to mitigate any risks in a critical asset that they feel, wrongly or rightly that their organization is not structured to understand or support. Especially something like an OS that doesn't related to their core business or provided a value differentiation in their core business. From their perspective this type of asset whether it's Linux/Windows/or MartianOS can only bring risk not value hence the sensible thing to do is to lower that risk and a support contract is one way to do that.

Re:I don't buy it.

[rdnetto]

Ah, hate to break it to you but the Slashdot audience is getting older

Perhaps in your case (4 digit UID), but there is more than one generation of us after all.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

We have 2 RHEL 5.4 servers (with premium support) and are getting ready to add up to 9 RHEL 5.4 Advanced servers for virtualization, with standard support ($1500 each/year). We would pay more for a Microsoft / VMWare solution, we've already priced it. Support is mandatory for us for certain systems -- our business partners and banks want to know we aren't cowboy-ing around with our stuff.

That said, we have a number of Fedora 8 systems and just added a Fedora 12 system in the past 2 weeks. Any of the Fedora systems could go belly-up (as this one did 2 weeks ago; 2 drives failed in a RAID-5 array after numerous power issues) and nothing critical would be lost. I think most companies have multiple levels of server importance. What's troublesome is to have critical processes rely on a server and you can't call anyone for support.

Re:I don't buy it.

[StuartHankins]

At least in my world, our banks and trading partners like to make sure we have outside support, in case one (or all) of us gets hit by a bus. That's only being responsible. Our best-supported (and most important) systems are RHEL systems. Then again, we are probably what you would consider a medium-to-large US company.

Unless your scope is kept very shallow and/or very focused, you will never be doing anything more than tweaking applications or simple debugging. The codebase for most apps is too large and if it's not your primary job / hobby then you won't have time to learn it, let alone keep up with its development.

It's wise for each company to know where they stand when making any IT expenditures, whether the goal is to have a large Help Desk for instance or outsource everything beyond a certain scope. I don't run cabling anymore, and although I could if needed, we pay contractors for that stuff. Just like I implement systems using MySQL, but I don't tweak its source or try to perform bugfixes myself (beyond Googling for answers to questions) because I have other things to do. I support other databases and systems, and I have other apps to code. My time is most valuable to my employer for these tasks, and I'm a lot more expensive than spending a few thousand a year per server for support.

Need an example? OK. We successfully implemented a fiber card in 2 of our blades (RHEL 5.4 with kernels from 5.1) and this week brought up a third blade (same model, same base OS) only this time using RHEL 5.4 with KVM for virtualization. The kernel is 5.4 and the HP drivers won't install. The issue appears that one of the RPM's (lpfc IIRC) won't install because 5.3 and higher is not supported. The support grid at HP says that 5.4 is supported. Now I need to implement the entire tested solution by the end of next week.

Do I want to play around with this? No. I have one of our network admins contact HP and work it out, and when they're finished, give me a written set of instructions which I will add to my documentation. That's how larger businesses handle this stuff.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The kernel is 5.4 and the HP drivers won't install. The issue appears that one of the RPM's (lpfc IIRC) won't install because 5.3 and higher is not supported. The support grid at HP says that 5.4 is supported. Now I need to implement the entire tested solution by the end of next week. Do I want to play around with this? No. I have one of our network admins contact HP and work it out, and when they're finished, give me a written set of instructions which I will add to my documentation. That's how larger businesses handle this stuff.

So, HP didn't provide adequate drivers for their hardware. How, exactly, did paying Red Hat for support help in this case?

My guess is that 90%+ of Red Hat support calls are for something that isn't really Red Hat technology, because 90%+ of RHEL isn't Red Hat technology. I'm sure they'll help when somebody can't configure Apache (for example), but outside of real kernel issues (drivers, virtualization, etc.), you're just as likely to get the answer from Google.

For your sort of problem (third-party hardware not directly supported by Red Hat packages), I can't see why anybody would expect Red Hat support to help.

Re:I don't buy it.

[StuartHankins]

You haven't got a Premium contract with Red hat or you'd know differently. First of all, Red Hat has a reciprocal support policy with HP; Red Hat has support matrices and if the HP equipment is in the matrix it's supported.

In this case the HP Fibre driver requires recompiling the kernel (or at least it did in the RHEL 5.1-compatible release). The Red Hat multipath driver used for KVM supposedly conflicts with the HP multipath driver... at least that's as far as my research got before handing it off to someone else.

We can conference Red Hat into the call as needed to get questions answered. It's like a 2-minute wait to get Red Hat on the phone. HP is another matter entirely; they often act like you're talking to a bunch of totally disorganized outsourced "techs" who are both unfamiliar with their products and our language (English).

Re:I don't buy it.

[drsmithy]

Open Source software, unlike proprietary software, can be supported in-house better, more easily, and more cheaply than via outside support. Large "enterprises", at least those that take proper advantage of scale and hire competent engineers, have less of a need to pay for outside Linux support than your small "consulting gigs" do.

This is pretty much completely backwards. Medium to big business is where you're going to find the highest proportion of commercial software. It's only the huge players like Google (for whom extensive in-depth in-house expertise and customisation is cost-effective) and the tiny players (where even hundreds of dollars matter) who are not going to be a good fit.

Big companies use software like Oracle. Oracle support will not even speak to you if you are running their software on an unsupported OS. In the context of the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars even a medium sized business will be paying for software like Oracle, and the millions to tens of millions they will be paying in salaries and related expenses, the few tens of - maybe a hundred - thousands it might cost for RHEL licenses is barely a rounding error.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Bert64]

Only they usually screw this up through incompetence or ignorance...

One of the most important factors of having a safety net is to make sure everything you depend on has multiple sources....

Linux - RedHat, Novell, Ubuntu - check
Servers - Dell, HP, Sun, IBM - check
Routers - Cisco, Juniper - check
Windows - Microsoft ??? - FAIL

And the same for most other proprietary software... no second source, no fallback if the single supplier has problems.

If RedHat go bust, i'm sure Novell, Oracle, Canonical or anyone else will be more than happy to support your current RH installations while you gradually migrate to their distro... And seeing as how their distro will be very similar, based on the same kernel and same basic libs that migration will be fairly painless.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No they have not outsourced the entire thing. I am an Australian working for Red Hat, Red Hat has 24/7 support with people working in the area where they are awake.

All of the support guys are at least RHCE qualified, so I'd like to assume that they understand the most basic of commands, if not more.

If you'd like, I can hook you up with someone who can take a look at what happened so we can make sure it doesn't happen again.

wmealing -a-t- guess the domain.

Re:I don't buy it.

[benjamindees]

Medium to big business is where you're going to find the highest proportion of commercial software.

I don't consider RedHat equivalent to "commercial" software, so that isn't really a consideration. In fact that's the reason I used the word "proprietary" instead of "commercial". I'm just talking about externally versus internally supported, open source software.

It's only the huge players like Google (for whom extensive in-depth in-house expertise and customisation is cost-effective) and the tiny players (where even hundreds of dollars matter) who are not going to be a good fit.

The exceptions prove the rule. There are plenty of medium to big businesses with in-house Linux support. But you're right, for most of them, the additional cost of outside support *in addition* is a minor consideration.

Big companies use software like Oracle. Oracle support will not even speak to you if you are running their software on an unsupported OS.

The vast majority of large "enterprises" that outsource Linux support only do so due to the structural flaws of an IT support system designed around inherent limitations of proprietary software.

Thanks for making my point.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Hognoxious]

One way to save money is to use paid versions of RHEL where you need them - production and possibly one other machine than can serve as reserve prod and/or QA - but use free clones (probably CentOS) where a bit of downtime wouldn't be a dsiaster (Dev, test, training).

Re:I don't buy it.

[Rob_Bryerton]

Hi! I'm Rob, nice to meet you. Now you've met somebody who pays RedHat for support!

Now, I don't personally pay for support, but my employer sure does. Although in the several years I've been administrating our Oracle ERP clusters, I have not once had to call RedHat for support, but I download updates from RedHat every couple months. Can't do that without a contract unless you want to compile it all by hand.

Think of it as an insurance policy: you hope to never have to use it, but it's there for everyone's protection.

Re:I don't buy it.

[spun]

I think the breadth of age has grown. When Slashdot was young, there weren't as many older nerds on the Internet.

Re:I don't buy it.

[spun]

You got modded 'informative,' lol.

Re:I don't buy it.

[dinomite]

I know plenty of people who pay for support from Red Hat, Novell, etc., but no one who uses that support.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Kjella]

If Microsoft really where to do under, the category would be "Desktop OS" and "Server OS", none of those have just Microsoft. And there's no "crisis" except on Wall Street until Microsoft starts losing money, which they are extremely far away from doing. All it means is that you're paying them far too much, they'll be pushing out new versions like EA as long as someone's willing to pay for it.

Re:I don't buy it.

[wxjones]

I didn't know Windows admins had genitals.

Re:I don't buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how that got modded 'informative'...

Re:I don't buy it.

[Bert64]

There are no other desktop or server os platforms which provide compatibility with microsoft's (largely by design)... The migration path would be extremely painful. Contrast that with a migration from RedHat to SuSE which would be relatively easy.

Migrating the OS would also in many cases require you to change applications, as a lot of proprietary applications are in the same boat. On the other hand, most applications which run on RedHat would also run on other Linux distributions.

Plenty of companies make money or appear to be making money, and yet due to various factors go under, or take their products in directions which are unfavourable to their customers.

The idea of guaranteeing multiple sources for anything you depend on is extremely basic, and yet MS seem to be granted an exception.

Re:I don't buy it.

[MrNemesis]

Hell yes. I've spent 3 years at my company, a windows shop, as "the Linux guy" - not that we used Linux, I came over to the company in an acquisition from a company that did use Linux. I've set up a couple of boxes, mostly Debian, for a few boring housekeeping tasks; team-specific wiki's (people *love* it compared to the fustercluck sharepoint that was previously used), SVN for version control of config files and firewall rules, caching DNS servers for bits of our DMZ. All fine and dandy, and meanwhile I learned the hell out of every windows problem I faced as well as becoming the de facto VMware guy.

Fast forward to now and we're migrating a load of old Oracle databases from AIX to RHEL; advanced in hardware now allow us to get the same performance from a cluster of x86 hardware and 24 SSD's as we do out of some POWER5's and 36U full of 15k fibre channel discs at a tenth of the hardware and support costs. 60% and rising of the rest of our wintel boxes are now happy running off a SAN on an ESX cluster.

RHEL hasn't made any significant inroads into the desktops of any company I know of, but it's cleaning up on the heavy lifting backend. Note we're not even a big company, 2000-ish people, and we've classically been quite Linux-hostile... mainly due to it being too cheap :)

I hate when names are pluralized to mean a group

[randoms]

I'm curious, what are the "MicrosoftS" and "OracleS" that the OP is referring to? AFAIK there is only one of each of those companies.

How to make a million in FLOSS:

[Anonymous Coward]

Upon closer inspection, Rodrigues determined that Red Hat generates the lion’s share of the “Other Income” from conservative fixed-income investments and some equity investments.

OK folks, this is how to make a million with FLOSS: first, get a million dollars. (-Stolen from Steve Martin).

From what I've been seeing with the FLOSS business model, to make a living (gotta pay for health and auto insurance, food, rent, etc..) you either have to be a coder for the FOSS companies: RedHat, MySQL, and whatever other one out there that actually pays programmers; or IBM. They on the other hand, make their money by selling contracts for services and in RedHat's case also from an investment portfolio.

So, if you're some guy all by his lonesome self that writes stuff to be released as a FOSS project, unless it becomes HUGELY popular with corporate clients that will pony up for support contracts that give you an income stream (and have a bunch of securities invested helps apparently), you basically have no chance of making a living.

Can someone point out an example showing me that I'm wrong?

Re:How to make a million in FLOSS:

[spun]

Can someone point out an example showing me that I'm wrong?

You aren't even wrong. To be wrong, you have to make sense. You see, if you are one guy writing closed source, unless it becomes HUGELY popular, you won't make any money. So, what exactly are you comparing open source to, that is somehow different? You try to imply that it's hard to make money with open source coding, but you fail to provide a convincing case that it is any different with closed source coding.

As we saw in a recent article, most open source coders work for companies that pay them. And the other ones aren't doing it for the money anyway. Think of open source coding as a demonstration of your skill, that will get your foot in the door of almost any company you want to work for. Or, a hobby. Not everything in life is about making money. Some people make money, yet still do things they enjoy without getting paid for those things.

Re:How to make a million in FLOSS:

[cyber-vandal]

Since when is proprietary software intrinsically profitable? If you want to make a living from that you need to convince someone to pay you money too.

Re:How to make a million in FLOSS:

[CannonballHead]

You see, if you are one guy writing closed source, unless it becomes HUGELY popular, you won't make any money.

I argue that that is simply not true.

I point you to Spidwerweb Software as proof. Jeff Vogel's games are not hugely popular. They have a fairly small following. They are pretty cheap, too, and they are shareware, technically. Nothing open or free, though, about them - aside from the demo's, and if you decide to pirate it/use a keygen. Which, by the way, definitely hurts his income... it's an interesting perspective on the whole "software piracy doesn't hurt anyone" thing. Anyway, he can make a living for himself without being hugely popular.

Re:How to make a million in FLOSS:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can someone point out an example showing me that I'm wrong?"

You won't get any examples. The standard groupthink on here, especially coming from student, recent grads and lecturers, none of which have had any exposure to the real world, is that your business model should go something such as:
1) come up with idea you think might work in the market
2) spend lots of time and effort developing idea
3) once your product looks like it might be competitive on the market, then some behemoth such as IBM will take notice and start offering support to large corporates
4) if you are really lucky then you might get offered a job! OMGZ a JOB!!!

4) is considered to be some really great reward. You see, many on here constantly whinge and whine about the man keeping them down, how the PHB's get all the $ while they work away, how the marketdroids (insert whatever derogatory term) get to go on alcohol fuelled lunches while nobody wants anything to do with them. Yet suggest something such as they should start their own business and you will be mocked "how can you possibly compete with the IBMs etc?". Well - if your business model is to give the IBMs your software for free and hope they offer you a job then no, you won't make much money from it. You will keep making your small developer salary still whinging about how the business types make all the $ with your idea. If these same people had bothered to put some thought into it rather than blindly going "omgz i want to offer teh open source!!!" then they might have made some decent $.

Re:How to make a million in FLOSS:

[evilviper]

Think of open source coding as a demonstration of your skill, that will get your foot in the door of almost any company you want to work for.

I'm not so sure about that. The creator and basically sole developer of MaraDNS has lamented how little his project has helped him finding work. In fact he's a somewhat regular /. reader, so he might chime-in about now.

Re:How to make a million in FLOSS:

[spun]

Really? Well that sucks. AFAIK, Mara is a very good, small footprint, secure DNS, and Sam writes good software.

Re:How to make a million in FLOSS:

[evilviper]

Though they don't make it as clear as they could, here are some selected quotes from Sam on the Maradns mailing list:

Bottom line: People, by and large, don't pay me for MaraDNS
development. I also haven't gotten enough goodwill and fame
developing MaraDNS to get my dream job in Silicon Valley (I did get an
interview with Google, but they never hired me). So, alas, fixing
Windows Server 2003 issues is a little beyond my budget right now. :(

I can also fix
the issue for the 1.2 branch of MaraDNS for $100 (assuming I can share
the fix with the world; if you want me to make changes to MaraDNS that
are private, please hire me with a living wage)

As an aside, I am looking for a job in the US:

http://samiam.org/resume/

(I apologize for putting this on the list, but in this economy it's
really tough to find a new job)

To be fair...

[brit74]

"Instead of the traditional strategy of selling expensive proprietary software licenses, as practiced by the Microsofts and Oracles of the world... Red Hat gets the vast majority of its revenues from selling support contracts."

To be fair, Red Hat is capitalizing on the work of Linux developers. They also benefit from the fact that operating systems are complex, tunable, and widely used in business (which has deep pockets). Easy-to-use software written for consumers (rather than companies who need highly-available systems) can't capitalize very well on the tech-support angle.

Re:To be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat is capitalizing on the work of Linux developers.

Yes, if only they game something back! This is why I use OpenBSD, because they know what is worth what.

Re:To be fair...

[pembo13]

> To be fair, Red Hat is capitalizing on the work of Linux developers

Yah, it's not like they pay a large number of Linux developers.

Re:To be fair...

[haruchai]

  I'm not sure what you mean by "capitalizing on the work of Linux developers" or if that's intended as a slight against RH.
If so, I should point out that a number of the top names in kernel development are or have been RH employees.

Re:To be fair...

[1729]

To be fair, Red Hat is capitalizing on the work of Linux developers.

To be even more fair, Red Hat employs many of the prominent Linux developers, and is currently the biggest corporate contributor to the kernel. In addition, they're heavily involved with GCC and gdb, not to mention MANY other GPL projects.

Re:To be fair...

[Lemming Mark]

To be even fairer, Red Hat do employ a large proportion of the kernel and userspace developers for the software they make support income from - they even have a record of open sourcing code that they get from company acquisitions. But they are very much benefiting from the fact that it's easier to build an OS by co-operating with other companies and individuals than to go toe-to-toe with MS (and Apple, not that they're direct RH competitors in any significant way) on your own.

Re:To be fair...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

To be fair, Red Hat is capitalizing on the work of Linux developers.

Others have noted their contributions, but really, even if they didn't? Support is supposed to be one of the approved ways to make money from open source software. Red Hat can make their own changes for their needs, but they can't lock anyone in because those changes must be made available if they distribute modified OSS software, at least with some licenses.

Re:To be fair...

[Narpak]

And one could add that the more people that use Linux distributions, and the more that buy support from people proficient in the development and maintenance of various systems and distributions; the better it is for Linux in general.

Re:To be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Red Hat do employ a large proportion

Please, please, please stop that fucking annoying practice of mixing a singular noun with a plural verb. I don't know which euro-backwards country started this but it's a plague that needs to be eradicated. In your sentence, "Red Hat" is a singular noun. It is *one* company. The verb that would go with "Red Hat" is "employs" (not the word "employ").

I don't know if people who write with this style on Slashdot are trying to sound cool by speaking/writing in some sort of British style or what. It's really fucking annoying and it's got to come to an end. If you want to sound cool by "writing British", go hang out on fmylife.com and make fun of people who say "gas" instead of "petrol".

I fully expect to attract the attention of mods who will mark this post down as a Troll. If you agree that the writing "style" I mentioned above is annoying and needs to come to an end, show your support by modding Insightful.

Re:To be fair...

[colinrichardday]

I don't know if people who write with this style on Slashdot are trying to sound cool by speaking/writing in some sort of British style or what.

And if the poster were British? The "were" is in the subjunctive mood.

Re:To be fair...

[siride]

I hope you were being sarcastic, because Red Hat gives a huge amount back.

Re:To be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy you quoted is British, that would explain the "British style"... idiot. That does indeed make you a Troll.

Re:To be fair...

[dbIII]

As an Australian I understand both British English and post-Reagan American so can translate the above sentence for you. It should read:

"Red Hat employs doubleplusgood mofos yawl"

Re:To be fair...

[scottv67]

>The guy you quoted is British, that would explain the "British style"... idiot. That does indeed make you a Troll.

Where in that person's post do you see that the person is British? Is it in his username, "Lemming Mark"? Is it his UID? What part of his post tells me his country of origin? I think you are the idiot.

I stand by my original comment posted above: Leave the "British-isms" like "torch", "bonnet", "boot" and "petrol" (and the annoying use of plural verbs with singular nouns) on your own side of the ocean. It's not cool, cute or hip. It's just annoying.

Re:To be fair...

[Mprx]

The first step to defeating corporate personhood is convincing people to think of corporations as plural entities. Despite being British I usually write in American English, but this is a notable exception.

Re:To be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Norwegian, my wife is Chinese, our kid is born in Australia, and we live in the middle east.

Who cares about the small differences in the global usage of the English language?

Singlish, Chinglish, Indiglish, or what ever make no difference.

I could not care less about English. I do care about practical global communication in what ever form possible. I use Norwegian to say hello to my mother and some forms of English for mostly everything else.

I don't know how long you have been hanging around on Slashdot. I have been here with my crappy English more or less since the beginning.

Re:To be fair...

[PybusJ]

"Red Hat" is a singular noun. It is *one* company.

Look at the meaning of the word company itself, surely an indication that you are thinking about a plurality rather than a singular. If you'd used corporation you'd be on firmer ground.

I do think its healthier to think of these commercial entities as the groups of people they are, rather than the singular legal entities the law recognises.

PS: I'm British and have every intention of continuing to use my natural language on slashdot. Annoying ACs is merely a happy side effect.

Re:To be fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Australian I understand both British English and post-Reagan American so can translate the above sentence for you.

As an Australian you can barely understand your own gutter slang, let alone other dialects of English.

Seriously, where is it the aussies get this sense of superiority to the yanks? I've been to both places, and it's like the oz-folks have never stopped eating lead paint chips. Take a yank, make him even more racist and less educated, and voila: typical Australian.

Re:To be fair...

[dylan_-]

Where in that person's post do you see that the person is British? Is it in his username, "Lemming Mark"? Is it his UID? What part of his post tells me his country of origin?

His home page.

I think you are the idiot.

...

I stand by my original comment posted above: Leave the "British-isms...on your own side of the ocean.

People do not need to travel to the US to post on slashdot. They use "the Internet".

Oracle no threat?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen come companies switch to Oracle Enterprise Linux purely because support is cheaper than RHEL, even if they're not using the Oracle DB.

OEL support seems to stink though, and we've all seen the horrid hacks Oracle does to make their database even install on Linux (RPM's you need to install and then remove!) and odd kernel parameter tweaks.

Gotta laugh at the OEL public YUM server (http://public-yum.oracle.com/) which is basically the RPM's on the DVD, not any updates or anything, who would want to route over the internet to get something off a DVD?!

Then of course there's the unscrupulous bastards who use CentOS in the enterprise and pay for one RHEL support contract.

Re:Oracle no threat?

[h4rr4r]

So long as they only want support on that one box where is the problem?

We only get support for production machines.

Re:Oracle no threat?

[archermadness]

We recently switched to OEL from RedHat, purely for the cost savings. Oracle even provides an 'up2date' package that switches a current RHEL box to OEL, and will give a discount based on current RHEL support licenses.

Considering that I've been at my current company for over 2 1/2 years, and haven't called Redhat or Oracle for Linux support, I'm not too worried about the quality of support.

In fact, like a lot of people, the only real reason we even pay for support is so that management feels good.

Re:I hate when names are pluralized to mean a grou

[binarylarry]

It means "and similar companies."

Re:I hate when names are pluralized to mean a grou

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[spun]

The summary: Redhat sells support rather than licenses
You: With Redhat, you buy support
Me: Duh.

So the fact that people who use the software keep buying support for it is not that impressive.

Um, duh? The article is not claiming, 'Ooh! Out of all the people who buy Redhat, look how many people buy support!' It is saying, 'Look how many people buy Redhat in the first place.' Redhat has continued to profit during the economic downturn, which is impressive. Come on, man, any hobbyist will use CentOS, or create their own update server, and/or download the patches and updates from another source. Any corporation or government will buy support. But they won't necessarily buy Redhat, in fact, most of them end up buying Windows, right? But enough buy Redhat to ensure Redhat's profitability. Which is the point of the story...

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[mr_da3m0n]

The summary made it sound like it was something extremely unique, special, and peculiar. It's not. I was bringing the point that their business model doesn't make them necessarily different than someone just selling licenses, as support is not optional, something that isn't mentioned at all in the summary.

Thank you for assuming I'm an illiterate idiot, though.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[h4rr4r]

You can install RHEL then build the updates from the srpms or use centos repositories for updates.

Which means you can use it without paying!

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Third Position]

Any corporation or government will buy support. But they won't necessarily buy Redhat, in fact, most of them end up buying Windows, right? But enough buy Redhat to ensure Redhat's profitability. Which is the point of the story...

Well, not necessarily. I work at a shop with over 1700 Unix/Linux servers. Yes, we also have Windows servers, but for applications that are running massive Oracle databases, Unix/Linux servers are still the only way to go. It's true Red Hat isn't the only Linux distro, but in terms of data center servers it's become pretty much the standard with Suse a distant second. There just aren't that many Linux distros that are enterprise friendly, Red Hat pretty much has a monopoly on the enterprise Linux market. So while Red Hat isn't a proprietary OS, it might as well be. Given that we've been replacing our Sun and HP Unix servers with Red Hat Linux hand over fist, Red Hat is making a pretty piece of change off of us, and I understand this is largely true in most shops. Our hardware is primarily HP and IBM, who are making up their lost sales in Unix servers to us by selling us Intel based servers for Linux (and Windows, too). That pretty much leaves Sun out in the cold - we're not buying their proprietary servers much anymore, and they never gained a foothold in the commodity hardware market.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Parent up! Great grandparent is not a troll. Summary is very poorly written and fails to capture what is interesting about RedHat.

Selling required support with free software is really not that different than selling expensive software that comes with support.

The fact that expensive software is so well supported is why people pay money for it!

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[jedidiah]

> The fact that expensive software is so well supported is why people pay money for it! ...and that support COSTS EXTRA MONEY.

Want Solaris or AIX or Windows or Oracle support?

That's EXTRA above and beyond whatever you paid for your software or server.

OTOH, I can just install Debian on a server if I am so inclined. The only thing that "forces" someone to buy something like Redhat is if they want to run commercial software like Oracle on it. Otherwise, they can use ANY LINUX that management is comfortable with.

Yeah... Redhat is thriving in a recession SELLING something that ANYONE can get for FREE.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[PopeRatzo]

' It is saying, 'Look how many people buy Redhat in the first place.'

Alone, that's not such an important statement. After all, look how many people buy Windows. Neither of us would suggest that the fact that so many people buy Windows is evidence of its excellence over all others. It's interesting that the article chooses to use percentages rather than numbers of users.

I think the point that the GP misses is that lots of people are choosing Redhat over other distros because they have support. They're not buying support because they have Redhat.

The point being, and I'm sure you agree, is that Redhat's model, which was a little bit controversial at one time, has proven to be reasonably successful. A significant number of the "pointy haired bosses" started out as greasy-haired Linux geeks, after all, and I'm guess that more than a few of them have decided to go with Redhat's winning formula, which according to TFA has proven to work out well for them.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[PopeRatzo]

The fact that expensive software is so well supported is why people pay money for it!

I think that's demonstrably false.

Most people use "expensive software" because that's what came on their computers. Plus, that's what their job/school/family uses. Most people who use "expensive software" are probably not fully aware of the alternatives and/or have chosen not to take the time to learn.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Kymermosst]

Umm, Solaris is free. So, of course support is above and beyond what you pay for it.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[vcgodinich]

name an alternative to photoshop.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[ozmanjusri]

For most people, Pixia, Gimp, Photoscape, VCW VicMan's Photo Editor, Paint Shop Pro, Ultimate Paint, Photobrush or Photoimpact would be better choices.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite or Canvas Professional are probably better suites for casual corporate users too.

I'm sure there ARE a very few tasks where Photoshop is ideal, but realistically, only serious professional design-oriented people actually need Photoshop.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[ClosedSource]

"The point being, and I'm sure you agree, is that Redhat's model, which was a little bit controversial at one time, has proven to be reasonably successful."

Redistribute somebody else's work (which happens to be the world's most famous open source product) and sell it to customers who want a one-click update procedure.

Yes, I know Red Hat contributes to Linux, but that's a lot easier and less risky than developing an OS on your own.

You couldn't start a company like Red Hat today because you're not going to find another product like Linux and today's developers aren't going to be as naive and idealistic as those who created Linux.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[hairyfeet]

Question: as I am not a Linux guy I don't know so maybe someone here can answer: which is more expensive, just buying a Windows 7 Pro license, or getting RHEL for free and paying support for 5 years? Honestly I don't have a clue, all I know is I can usually pick up a Windows pro OEM for usually around $130-150. So which is more expensive?

Personally I wish RHEL all the luck in the world, because my admin buddies swear by it. They say it is rock solid and the tools are top notch, I was just wondering which one works out to be cheaper. Does MSFT make more $$$ per unit by going upfront, or does RH by going long term?

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

Question: as I am not a Linux guy I don't know so maybe someone here can answer: which is more expensive, just buying a Windows 7 Pro license, or getting RHEL for free and paying support for 5 years? Honestly I don't have a clue, all I know is I can usually pick up a Windows pro OEM for usually around $130-150. So which is more expensive?

I'm not sure of the prices, but they're not comparable services. Microsoft does not give you support for 5 years for that $150. Buying a Windows license gives you 90 days of support, after that you need to buy a separate support contract from Microsoft or pay per call.

That's not to say everyone needs to go out and buy support, you might be perfectly capable of handling issues on your own. However, if you don't need support you're not buying Red Hat's either. You'd be getting CentOS for free.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[dropadrop]

From years of maintaining fairly large environments I have calculated the amount of manual work maintaining Windows servers to be around 5-10x higher then Linux / Solaris. So I don't think it's just a question of how much the license / support fee's add up to, but rather how much everything (including personal to keep things running) add up to.

Please note I have not really touched Windows servers for 3-4 years so I don't know if things have improved significantly.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[sourcerror]

Umm, Solaris is free. So, of course support is above and beyond what you pay for it.

Ahem, you mean OpenSolaris. From the license agreement:

B. Terms of the License -- the Entitlement
In order to use the Solaris 10 software for perpetual commercial use, you must obtain the Entitlement Document. The Entitlement Document is delivered to you either with a new Sun machine, from Sun Service as part of your service agreement, or via email when you register your machines through the Sun Download Center. For this reason, ensure that you have the correct email address in your Sun Download Center account before trying to register your Solaris 10 machines. If you do not receive the Entitlement Document, you are only allowed to use the software for 90 days of evaluation usage.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Bert64]

The "entitlement document" is free anyway, just sign up via the sun download center and register how many machines will be running solaris.

And note that this only covers "perpetual commercial use"... Non commercial use, and temporary commercial use (ie testing/eval) does not even require this.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Bert64]

Yeah... Redhat is thriving in a recession SELLING something that ANYONE can get for FREE.

That's not really RedHat's business model, it's more Microsoft's business model...

RedHat sell support services (as the article states), which you certainly can't get for free. Software is trivially copied, but a trained engineer's time isn't.

Software and services are entirely different beasts, software can be reduced to zero cost quite easily whereas services still require someone to physically provide them, even if you employ people in an asian call centre to provide that support you still have to pay them, train them, and provide equipment for them to use and somewhere to use it.

Long term as the market matures, economies of scale and competition will kick in resulting in both software and services being pushed downwards in price.
I'm sure you've seen how the same has happened to hardware, but again unlike software hardware can't be forced down to zero cost.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Had is aiming at the server market, not desktop.
And your Windows OEM comes without support from Microsoft.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[F.Ultra]

Because Photoshop is the only expensive software in the world?

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[jimicus]

How is this flamebait?

The number of people who actually need anything near as sophisticated as Photoshop is minute. If it weren't, Adobe wouldn't charge as much as they do (largely because there'd be a lot more competition at that end of the market) and Photoshop Elements wouldn't need to exist.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[jimicus]

You're comparing apples and oranges. RHEL is more likely to be used on a server, whereas Windows 7 pro will be on a workstation.

Where most Linux distributions clear up on the server is client access licenses. If you compare Windows licensing with a typical commercial Linux, the two will cost a very similar amount - but Linux distributions don't tend to charge for client access.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[cenc]

I think they are comparing Apples, Oranges, and FRIGEN basket balls.

Red hat is targeting the big corporate server market. Low end commodity web and mail servers, even if they want to go the Red Hat route, will likly pick something like CentOS and or Scientific Linux (Red Hat clone for Universities maintained by the likes of Fermilab and CERN).

Windows is really in competition with Desktop linux land (ubunto, mandriva, fedora) and low end servers. Just check the list of fastest super computers in the World for the number that are running windows server.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[HuguesT]

OK, RH is a company, so what ? Their product is 99.9% open-source except for their trademark and logos (witness CentOS), they make a very good, stable distro. People trust them with good reason, they contribute a lot of software (esp. the Kernel), they are the poster child of Linux success. If not for RH (and SuSE, Novell, etc), most datacenters would not be running Solaris or HPUX, but Windows Servers, and Microsoft would be a whole lot more obnoxious now that it ever has been.

No entity is ever perfect, but RH are the good guys in this story I think.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not really RedHat's business model, it's more Microsoft's business model...

RedHat sell support services (as the article states), which you certainly can't get for free. Software is trivially copied, but a trained engineer's time isn't.

Look, don't go injecting logic and facts into the thread. It's obvious that the douche bag to whom you're replying doesn't get it.

As per other threads along these lines, I like how companies are supposed to keep a kernel engineer on staff "just in case".

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[jmcvetta]

Most people use "expensive software" because that's what came on their computers.

I would assumethe vast majority of Red Hat's paid users are running it on servers, not desktops. Unless you're buying from Sun (and thus getting Solaris), typically servers either come with no OS, or come with the OS the customer specifically requested at order time.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[spun]

Okay, point taken. I wasn't assuming you were an illiterate idiot, I was assuming you were captain obvious going for the quick first post. But you do have a point.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[hairyfeet]

I thought RH had a desktop, did they quit making it? Like I said I haven't been keeping up with the RH side of the fence in quite awhile, if a customer wants Linux on a server I usually prefer Debian based, something like Xandros Server (works great mixed with AD servers) and I have been testing Ubuntu server, which seems quite nice although I haven't tried deploying it yet.

But I remember back in the day RH had both server and desktop, did they give up the desktop? As I remember their desktop was actually quite well built, its a shame if they chucked it.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Simetrical]

Question: as I am not a Linux guy I don't know so maybe someone here can answer: which is more expensive, just buying a Windows 7 Pro license, or getting RHEL for free and paying support for 5 years? Honestly I don't have a clue, all I know is I can usually pick up a Windows pro OEM for usually around $130-150. So which is more expensive?

A direct comparison isn't so straightforward. It depends which versions of Windows/RHEL you pick. For Red Hat, the differentiation is in the support: you can pay $80 per desktop per year with the cheapest level of support, up to well over a thousand dollars per server per year if you go for the most expensive support. But in all cases, you get more or less the full features of the OS. Microsoft differentiates a lot on what software you get: cheap editions have fewer features.

So for a given set of computers, you could easily end up paying more for either Windows or RHEL, as far as I can tell. It depends. You also realistically have to take into account how much it will cost to administer either one, and what your options might be for the future. You're much less locked in with RHEL than with Windows. It's not a simple comparison.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[hairyfeet]

So in other words windows is much cheaper on the desktop (at $80 a year it would be only two years before the RH cost more) and on the server it depends on how high a level of support you need. I would assume for the desktops the price of a Windows admin would be cheaper compared to a Linux admin thus helping to tilt the cost for Windows further, while on servers the fact that Linux admins can admin more servers per admin than Windows typically would most likely tilt the price in favor of RH.

Thanks that was what I wanted to know,and is how I usually set up decent sized businesses, with Linux on the server and Windows on the desktop.

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[Tacticus.v1]

Not really as the windows copy doesn't come with support (OEM copies have no support from Microsoft the support is meant to come from the manufacturer)

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[hairyfeet]

By "support" in this case I was referring to updates, which RH charges for. I doubt most admins would ever call support for either company unless something has gone horribly wrong, and I'm sure both RH and MSFT have pay per incident support as well as RH $80 a year barebones support.

But I have had customers with retail XP call MSFT "support" and from what I was told unless your last name is Dell the support you get for non enterprise mega customers is basically some guy reading off the KB database, which why bother when Google can do the same?

Sorry if I caused you some confusion, but I was talking about simply updates, which would put Windows and RH closer to even. After all only a fool would use ANY OS without updates. Just because Linux doesn't have a bullseye painted on it like Windows does doesn't mean one should neglect applying security patches. Don't you agree?

Re:Way to restate the summary, Cpt. Obvious!

[bingoUV]

If not for RH (and SuSE, Novell, etc), most datacenters would not be running Solaris or HPUX, but Windows Servers

Why do you say this? I feel if you want to switch away from linux, only logical alternatives are HPUX and Solaris. I have found Windows Servers to seriously lack performance scalability, especially in I/O. Most "large" servers run some form of unix. In my experience, Windows Server is mostly popular with small/mid size servers, or servers that have other reasons to go with MS.

Support at the basic level...

[adosch]

I've been a RedHat fan-boy since RedHat 4.x days and at my place of employment we have 100+ Redhat subscription/support licenses. However, even their support at the most basic level (~$350/year) isn't really "great"... the support rivals Microsoft anymore. If you have a problem, it's either someone else's or if you are already at the current patch level for package-xyz or kernel-abc, you usually get the shrugged shoulder response unless you throw up a real stink.

I think RedHat really shines because of the variety of enterprise hardware support they have; places like IBM, Dell, HP, etc. all really work out-of-the-box with Redhat installations (pending some pretty new hardware that you have to use the suppliment CD stuff for), so it's not like it was back in the day when SGI and even Sun (since they broke into the x86 market) where you need your in-house hardware to jive with your in-house operating system. There's going to be the opposer's that will argue the stability factor that SGI and SUN have/had in regards to their hardware because it was tailored for it and not made to be as bloat as the Linux kernel has gotten in areas to support the mass hardware platforms. Again, Redhat IMHO should be thanking the enterprise hardware vendors for their posted OS support for RedHat.

Not that impressive

[Andtalath]

While I'm glad and all that they are so called flourishing in the recession, they are getting 194 million in revenue.

That's a pittance in corporate america.

Even if it wasn't gross income, it wouldn't be that impressive.

Also, people seeking a cheaper option in a recession?
Have we ever heard that before?

Re:Not that impressive

[cliath]

$194 million for the third quarter of 2009, $650+ mil for the year.

Re:Not that impressive

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That's a pittance in corporate america.

Remember Bob Young's famous quote that his goal for RedHat was not to grow to the size of Microsoft, rather for Microsoft to shrink to the size of RedHat.

Re:Not that impressive

[gbjbaanb]

and Microsoft reported $10.9 billion in the 3rd quarter!

However, that just goes to show that quality != quantity.

Re:Not that impressive

[rahvin112]

At $609million in a year with MS at 10.9 Billion they are producing 1/20th the revenue of MS without selling a single product (where MS has hundreds) while Redhat is less than 10 years old and MS is close to 40 years old.

I'd say what RedHat is doing is pretty darn impressive. 1/20 the revenue of the largest software company in the world in 1/4 the time while only selling support and their product is available for free. Impressive doesn't even begin to describe how successful they are at this point.

Re:Not that impressive

[kjart]

The 10.9 billion is 3rd quarter revenue, not for a whole year, so the comparison would be 195 million to 10.9 billion

Re:Not that impressive

[dbIII]

On the positive side there isn't enough fat there for a useless playboy CEO like Sol Trujillo to turn up and destroy the thing.

Re:Not that impressive

[westlake]

Remember Bob Young's famous quote that his goal for RedHat was not to grow to the size of Microsoft, rather for Microsoft to shrink to the size of RedHat.

Did Young suggest how long it would take for this to happen?

Re:Not that impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

10.9 wsa for the quarter. They are in fact producing 1/80th the revenue. Net income (which is what actually matters) is 78M vs 14B. Now we're 1/185th. It's getting worse and worse...

Re:Not that impressive

[Andtalath]

Without a doubt an admirable goal.
However, not exactly close.

Re:Not that impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft generated $14 billion in revenue from their operating division in 2009. With the release of windows 7 Microsoft's revenue from Windows should increase to 20 billion in 2010. Also, Microsoft showed a profit of 10 billion in 2009 from the Windows division vs RedHat's profit of 60 million. So in terms of net profit Microsoft's Windows division is 166 times bigger than Red Hat Linux.

To be expected, really.

[pushing-robot]

It's not surprising that a cheaper product will prosper during a recession; the McDonalds and Wal-Marts of the world are getting boosts from the general attitude of cost-cutting. The real proof of Red Hat's success will be if companies continue to choose it over Windows during the next economic boom.

Still, it's good news. Companies that switch now are less likely to go back to Windows in the future.

Re:To be expected, really.

[Anonymous Coward]

Their competition won't be windows so much as oracle. Oracle will soon own solaris and mysql. Rumor I've heard is they'll be pushing 3 distros: Linux + Mysql, Linux + Oracle (express or full), and Solaris + Oracle to blanket the LAMP and DB market. Obviously, there will still be plenty of lamp stacks backed by free distros but RHAT will have have to do something to differentiate.

Re:To be expected, really.

[guruevi]

You're practically answering your own question. The next economic boom will be about leveraging those newfangled 'open source' technologies in order to gain unprecedented profits (because after all, that's what defines an economic boom). In the downturn after that we will both have a very good open source ecosystem and on the other hand a lot of people blaming open source because they couldn't get their profit out of it.

The only problems are going to be patents which, if not eliminated by or during the next economic boom will cause the next economic downturn. Of course then maybe patents will be overturned OR all patents will slowly start to expire causing the next boom (an open-source-like environment without having encumbering patents)

Re:To be expected, really.

[Kjella]

Funny, I was always under the impression that Linux can be had cheap but not Red Hat. From what I hear the service is great and all that, but it's hardly the MacDonalds of the server world. That's more the web hosting companies that throw up cheap Linux/OpenBSD boxes in bulk.

Re:To be expected, really.

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Funny, I was always under the impression that Linux can be had cheap but not Red Hat. From what I hear the service is great and all that, but it's hardly the MacDonalds of the server world.

You should probably have a look at CentOS, who recompile the Red Hat sources to make a similar (but not commercially supported) distribution. CentOS is free as in no cost.

Both RHEL and CentOS are free/open source software. If you decide not to renew your RHEL license after the first year, you don't have to uninstall the software or have the heavies from the BSA coming round -- instead you have the sources and may decide to continue supporting it yourself or buy in support from another company.

Rich.

Re:To be expected, really.

[Doobian Coedifier]

RHAT will have have to do something to differentiate.

They do, they have much better support

Re:To be expected, really.

[WuphonsReach]

I wouldn't classify RHEL v5 as "cheap". The cheap shops go with CentOS and pay nothing. The annual cost for RHEL is far from nothing (although less expensive than Windows - especially once you start factoring in the costs for all of the server apps that you put on top of RHEL).

The real value of RHEL is that they will help you out with things that are not specific to their distro. Unlike, say Microsoft, where any problems with a 3rd party application are pretty much yours and yours alone. RH is small enough to still be hungry for business and the real value of RHEL is in the ecosystem of the applications that run on top of RHEL.

Re:Not Optional

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, annoying. CentOS is an alternative though, but It does take balls. Redhat probably dont care, centos is redhat in a different guise, but at least it's not a huge competitor (ie suse). Given commercial pressures, production servers should be RHEL(X) to satisfy the top brass, not CentOS. Easy upgrade path ahoy... RedHat can't lose!

Re:Not Optional

[Lemming Mark]

Parent is not a troll! He has a fair point. It is true that the software RHEL is made up of is free (like freedom and beer) and you can use all of that for free, in CentOS. So you are paying "just" for the support in that sense. But try getting hold of a copy of RHEL without paying someone - it's not like (AFAIK!) you can download it and optionally buy support later.

That said, I had heard (uhm, possibly from a RH employee...) that RH were reasonably sensible about support issues. The particular example I'd brought up, probably on a Xen project mailing list, was that if they only support 4 VMs then they might not support you if you'd been running more than 4 RHEL VMs on your server. But I was told, at the time, that actually the worst they'd do would be to ask you to have only 4 VMs running whilst they help you fix it - fairly reasonable really. So in that sense your contract with them really is just constraints on the support, not on how you use the stuff.

Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

RHEL has not had a new major release in 3 years. There is no public release date for their next major release.

RedHat relies on support contract because they don't have a major new product to sell.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[h4rr4r]

If the old one works fine why would you need a new one?

In the grownup server world we really don't need flashy new guis or other such silliness.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the release every 6 months 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4. However, these release are designed to maintain compatibility.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Flashy GUIs are not the only thing that developers work on. Among other things they also add functionality, improve interoperability, increase speed and stability, address bugs and mitigate/eliminate security issues.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet some companies *cough*Oracle*cough* have applications that STILL aren't certified on anything higher than RHEL 4. Hell, they have at least one app that doesn't even work at all due an outdated check they do regarding a java vulnerability.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't a bad thing. In some cases, especially server iron that is production, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'd rather see RHEL be conservative on what is brought to the table, than be bitten in the derriere by some subtle bug while staging an update [1].

Support contracts are more honest in a way, and benefit both RedHat and the customer base. Come a BSA audit because Linux and apps running on it are GPL based, there are no issues with having to audit and make sure you have the exact figures for the number of users and machines. Licensing is not an issue (although making sure a machine has access to a repository or RedHat's stuff may be something.) RedHat benefits by a constant income stream. The fact that a business that is based on RedHat and OSS apps (which is rather hard, because a lot of business specific stuff requires some niche app) means that licensing audits are not an issue, and the BSA guys can be sent packing out of your business with a notice of criminal trespass. This beats closed source where one is legally bound by the EULA [2] to invite them in your office pull a mass software audit on every networked PC, and compare it with printed invoices in a file cabinet.

[1]: Running yum update on a production server without testing the updates on a staging machine is absolute career suicide.

[2]: Read some EULAs. Some applications stipulate that volume license customers can be "visited" at any time to ensure compliance.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[evilviper]

RHEL has not had a new major release in 3 years.

Who actually WANTS a "major" release? If RH can keep everything compatible, they should, and continue to have each release being only a minor update from the last. 5.5, here I come!

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey mister 'tonto', what you don't understand about "Red Hat doesn't sell license, it sells subscriptions".
It's not really difficult to understand, if you buy a subscription and tomorrow Red Hat releases RHEL 6 you can go right away to RHN, download an install it instead of the current RHEL 5 you have. You don't like it, you go back to RHEL 5 or RHEL 4 or whatever currently supported version.

And by the way Red Hat sells *subscriptions*. That's not just support. It's also updates, notifications, RHN service, and more.

for a technical crowd it looks most people here (as usual) don't know what they are talking about.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm working for a company selling financial software. One of the platform supported by our software is Redhat AS. Most of our customers just starting to migrate from AS4 to AS5.

In fact, if RH released AS6 right now, it would take a year for us to qualify our software on it, and it will be years before our customers would event think about moving to AS6.

Re:Because they haven't released an OS in 3 years

[F.Ultra]

And you think that the intermediate RH releases (5.x) does exactly what?

By the numbers

[westlake]

Red Hat gets the vast majority of its revenues from selling support contracts. In the third quarter of last year, support subscriptions accounted for $164 million of its $194 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year.

What are the numbers for services from Microsoft and Oracle?

Re:Not Optional

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, you can't use it all for free. You don't get RHN, you don't get ZFS, you don't get RedHat trademarks, and you don't get built-in compatibility with VMWare and various commercial installers. You *can* run more than 4 VM's, supported, with the "server" licenses, not the desktop licenses.

You can use CentOS for many purposes quite effectively, and switch to RHEL when needed. I've done that, and used CentOS for testing setups on non-standard hardware. That's difficult to do with Windows, you need the registered licenses.

Having Redhat your way

[haruchai]

If you If you're running a large number of RHEL boxes / virtual environments, you could split them between fully-supported RHEL and ones of
the RHEL-clones like Centos or Scientific ( from CERN - Linux brought to you by particle physicists! That should be their tagline ).

That way you have fully supported boxes for critical stuff and save some support bucks with some unsupported clone boxes / VMs.
I don't see a lot of risk here - at least not any more than environments where the Dev boxes are smaller and cheaper than the Prod
boxes even though both might be running the same fully-supported OS.

Solaris x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that we've been replacing our Sun and HP Unix servers with Red Hat Linux hand over fist, Red Hat is making a pretty piece of change off of us, and I understand this is largely true in most shops.

Given that Solaris runs on x86 (OEM agreements with everyone), and a support contract is generally cheaper for Solaris than for RH, any reason why you're switching.

My credentials are: using Linux since '93, FreeBSD since '98, Solaris since '01. Personally I prefer Solaris 10 right now over just about everything else on servers (though FreeBSD's Ports / pkg_add is still awesome). Any reason why you're ditching Solaris for RHEL / CentOS? Personally I don't see any advantages to it. Am I missing something?

Re:Solaris x86?

[shinzawai]

FreeBSD ports are awesome. I just portupgraded postfix and it broke sasl and therefore broke SMTP authentication.......super awesome. Give me binary updates any day.

Re:Solaris x86?

[Third Position]

Well, the choice is a management decision, of course. The selection of x86 over proprietary was obviously one of cost. I can only speculate on the reasons RH was selected over Solaris x86.

First, Linux established itself on x86 before Sun got serious about pushing Solaris on that platform.

Second, the x86 vendors, IBM and HP, are probably a lot more inclined to push a vendor neutral platform like RH than an OS from a competitor that also competes in other areas. In fact our RH support comes from IBM rather than RH directly.

Third, Sun's financial position has been fairly precarious for the last decade or so, and no one wanted to get stuck with an obsolete platform if Sun had gone under. It remains to be seen if Oracle will do anything to make Solaris x86 more competitive.

Re:Solaris x86?

[David Gerard]

Usual reason for Linux over Solaris is open source software that barely compiles on Linux, let alone anything else. But someone's developed something that uses libcrufthaxx0r.

Re:Solaris x86?

[jedidiah]

No. The real reason for Linux over Solaris on x86 is that some of us still remember when Sun treated it like an ugly redheaded stepchild and the 3rd party vendors did the same.

Even now, Solaris x86 is still inferior in this respect.

Free Software is actually in a much better position on Solaris x86 and always has been.

It's like you just landed from Bizzaro World.

Re:Solaris x86?

[David Gerard]

Having worked as a Solaris-with-a-bit-of-Linux admin for the past decade, I will happily accept the description of Solaris-land as Bizarro World.

My last job had a mix of Solaris 10 and CentOS. Mostly running on Sun x86 kit, which is now quite price-competitive with Dell. (We had Dells running Solaris 10 as well, as and when it made sense.)

Current job is Sun on mostly SPARC. Lots of fat Niagara web servers. HOLY SHIT THOSE THINGS ARE POWERFUL. Hopefully taking delivery of new 32-thread Niagara build server shortly to replace single-core V210. We'd actually rather Solaris on x86 than SPARC, but of course there's Just This One Bit of Proprietary Stuff we keep it for. And we're basically a Java shop anyway.

I do get to run Ubuntu on my work machine, though.

Re:Solaris x86?

[jedidiah]

Solaris SPARC was always well supported by both Sun and 3rd parties.

It's intel that was in the doghouse. This led to the obvious situation that
you were better off running your own stuff or GNU on Solaris Intel. Although
GNU tools and other free software were also very handy on Solaris SPARC.

Free Software, despite any tendency to code to Linux quirks, is still FAR more
likely to be egaltarian when it comes to secondary platforms.

Re:Solaris x86?

[StuartHankins]

Given Sun's position right now, it's an excellent time to be reevaluating your relationship with Solaris.

Re:Solaris x86?

[Bert64]

You forgot to recompile anything that depends on what you just upgraded, rookie mistake.

Binary packages are a huge pain when you try to upgrade something on an otherwise stable system, and the only binary packages of the new app you want also require you to upgrade a whole stack of libs... Source lets me compile a new app onto an old system, and from a distro standpoint its a lot easier to maintain a port/ebuild than it is to rebuild packages for every distro release on every architecture.

Re:Solaris x86?

[F.Ultra]

You forgot to recompile anything that depends on what you just upgraded, rookie mistake.

Binary packages are a huge pain when you try to upgrade something on an otherwise stable system, and the only binary packages of the new app you want also require you to upgrade a whole stack of libs...

Agreed, but how often does that happen? Havent happened yet to me on Ubuntu och Debian.

Re:Solaris x86?

[Bert64]

All the time if you try to install something not supported on the current version..

I tried to install nagios 3.x on ubuntu 8.04 (lts), i ended up having to roll my own packages because the only binary packages available required a newer version of ubuntu.

Had it happen a few years ago with debian stable and tetex 3.0 too

A slight pre-emption.

[MrCrassic]

Linux, which is at the core of Red Hat’s software strategy, has never been a huge success on the desktop, and especially not on the business desktop. Red Hat officials have shrewdly maintained that desktop Linux is not a core focus for the company, but that virtualization and the facilitation of desktop and cloud operating systems applications are.

As I know this will become a polarizing statement on this thread, let me try (try being the key word) to neutralize this quote.

Red Hat is not implying here that desktop Linux is a failure (like it's subpoint headline apparently does). They are stating two important truths: (a) that Linux on the desktop has not taken off as much as some pundits have been forecasting for a while, and (b) that this goal is not part of their overall focus and won't be for some time.

I don't agree entirely with this viewpoint, since Ubuntu and netbook-provided distributions have contributed to its significant increase in consumer presence. Regardless, Linux on the server is where it's at, and where Red Hat has had huge control over for quite some time. Thus, it's no surprise that they are flourishing at the moment, despite the current economic situation.

Re:A slight pre-emption.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the real question is

is 2010 the year of the Linux desktop?

Re:A slight pre-emption.

[Burz]

The netbook mini-revolution was kicked off with a non-Ubuntu distro.

Ubuntu have done very little overall for "Linux desktop" market share, which is about the same as it was 8 years ago.

Re:Not Optional

[Dr. Evil]

I'm quite sure that Redhat's "support" model is designed to frustrate and confuse.

Before Redhat switched to this model, we could throw up servers right-left and center. Virtualization around the corner, we could sprout servers like mad. Pay-per-incident was reasonable, and RHEL certification desirable.

Big corps standardized on Redhat as a target distro. It was the big American Software Company which looked like it was going to stay around for a long time. People bought in bigtime in development dollars and in the datacenter.

Then the model changed.

Customer: "redhat.com, oh, why can't I download it?"
Redhat: "Buy a support contract and we'll let you"
Customer "What's to stop me from copying it? most of it is GPL, BSD, LGPL or compatible licenses"
Redhat: "I don't know, why don't you tell me? Although there are MYSTERIOUS trademarked items on the disk, and we don't have to say what exactly..."
Customer: "That's BS. I should be able to copy it"
Redhat: "Nope. Trademark"
Customer: "So if I have hundreds of servers, I have to pay for hundreds of support contracts"
Redhat: "Yep"
Customer: "Why?"
Redhat: "We don't really have to tell you, but remember that when you install something, you're duplicating it"
Customer: "I've been a FOSS contributor and proponent since 1995!, WTF am I supposed to tell my boss?!!"
Redhat: "$800/year/server"
Customer: "But... "
Redhat: "oh $350 if you don't want to be able to phone us for help"
Customer: "Ugh, WTF... I guess you've got us by the balls. We can't port to Debian now, bait and switch."
Redhat: "But we're VALUABLE"
Customer: "meh. I guess a quad-core license from MS is wicked expensive too"
Redhat: "Quad? sorry, that's not $350"
Customer: "Fuck me?"
Redhat: "Certinly, $1500/server"
Customer: "FUCK?"
Redhat: "Yep."
Customer: "My boss is going to f-ing fire me for this, WTF?! you guys have totally betrayed FOSS and turned it into a nightmare of licensing approvals no better, no... WORSE than the MS world"
Redhat: "We feel that you should support the FOSS community, we do great development work"
Customer: "I'm a FOSS DEVELOPER! YOU'RE SELLING ME MY OWN CODE!"

The talk wasn't so colorful, but that was the gist of it. Redhat made me and other FOSS proponents look like idiots. I'm not a Redhat fan, I just use it at work.

This little stunt took a LOT of steam out of the mainstream adoption of Linux. I'd really like to see Debian pick up, but Redhat already seems to have had the branding and developer lock-in, and the big name seems to make bosses feel comfortable. They can smugly tell me "see, software isn't free?" and feel much more comfortable signing cheques for $1500/year.

... sadly, explaining CentOS to them is like telling them that I sourced Oracle from TPB.

Grr. The most annoying part is that like I said, Redhat does good work outside their distro... I wish I could hate them. Doing FOSS advocacy and development and being charged licensing fees is like being a philanthropist being robbed by Robin Hood. Robin's a real jerk. We were ALREADY paying and contributing!

Re:Not Optional

[PopeRatzo]

Customer: "I'm a FOSS DEVELOPER! YOU'RE SELLING ME MY OWN CODE!"

I doubt that most RH users are FOSS developers.

And if the bosses are so smug and too stupid to understand CentOS, they probably wouldn't notice if you went ahead and ported to it.

Re:Not Optional

[ScytheBlade1]

I'm quite sure that Redhat's "support" model is designed to frustrate and confuse.

You pay per server per year. That's not exactly confusing. Frustrating only in the sense that... you have to pay for it.

Customer: "I'm a FOSS DEVELOPER! YOU'RE SELLING ME MY OWN CODE!"

http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Server/en/os/SRPMS/
No they're not. They're selling you binary packages and the ability to call them up at 2:30 AM to get your issues fixed. If you want your code, it is right there for you to download without issue.

They can smugly tell me "see, software isn't free?" and feel much more comfortable signing cheques for $1500/year.

The software is free. If they don't understand what they're purchasing, that's their problem, and only yours if you decide to make it your problem.

Re:Not Optional

[Lemming Mark]

No, you can't use it all for free. You don't get RHN

Well, you can use the software for free, right? But not the RHN servers, so you are paying for that service along with the support contract? I never really understood what RHN was for when I used RH9 and I've never used a real RHEL box, so it's still a bit mysterious to me. But I'd be surprised if you couldn't get the RHN client software for free, even if you don't get access to the servers at the other end.

, you don't get ZFS,

Do you mean XFS? ZFS is the Solaris FS. AFAIK you can use XFS under CentOS, at least if you enable the extras repo: http://www.pantz.org/software/xfsfilesystem/centos5xfskernelmodule.html You can also use XFS with most other Linux distros, using the same free software.

you don't get RedHat trademarks,

Not really part of the software though ... it shouldn't make a functional difference to what you can do? The trademarks seem to be the main stick that prevents people simply putting RHEL up for free download.

and you don't get built-in compatibility with VMWare and various commercial installers.

If you want / need that couldn't you use CentOS, which is binary compatible with RHEL?

You *can* run more than 4 VM's, supported, with the "server" licenses, not the desktop licenses.

You can use CentOS for many purposes quite effectively, and switch to RHEL when needed. I've done that, and used CentOS for testing setups on non-standard hardware. That's difficult to do with Windows, you need the registered licenses.

The point the RH guy was making to me was that even if you have an unsupported configuration they'll just make you shut down your surplus VMs, rather than just saying "Sorry, not our problem" or crippling the software to limit how many VMs you can start. I think that's an improvement over a number of enterprise suppliers out there! *cough* MS *cough*

On the topic of switching between RHEL and CentOS, I did once read that (for the perverse) it is possible to use yum to crossgrade from one to the other. I wouldn't want to try it, put it like that ;-)

I don't know about you

[Anonymous Coward]

But I bought an RHEL subscription from my primary dev workstation when CentOS's future and general management ability was in question last year

Re:Not Optional

[Kjella]

You have a clue, you can use CentOS or any other distribution you want. Your company can't tell the difference between CentOS and something off TPB, and they're paying 1500$/year for it. And you blame Red Hat? Sorry but I'd be doing the same thing and ask if your company would need some extended warranty or monster cables with that. As usual, ignorance costs money.

Our Guy Was Hit By The Crosstown Bus

[westlake]

They can smugly tell me "see, software isn't free?" and feel much more comfortable signing cheques for $1500/year.
... sadly, explaining CentOS to them is like telling them that I sourced Oracle from TPB.

You may not always be there.

But the Red Hat support team is a phone call away.

Your boss doesn't like being wholly dependent on his resident geek.

The support contract and the bog standard enterprise distribution are his insurance policy. His recovery plan.

Re:Our Guy Was Hit By The Crosstown Bus

[Bert64]

Interesting thought...
RedHat might not always be there, the recent economic troubles should have taught us that ANY company can go bust... Relying on a single supplier is extremely dangerous.
That said, RedHat are easily replaceable if they go under, there are plenty of other companies who will take up the slack.

The biggest problem is MS, if they go bust there is noone else who can support their software because noone else has the source code (or at least, don't have the rights to modify and distribute it). Relying on MS is just as dangerous as your single resident geek.

At least with Linux, there are already multiple companies supporting it and anyone can pick up the source and continue development if they see a market for doing so.

Re:Our Guy Was Hit By The Crosstown Bus

[jimicus]

You may not always be there.

But the Red Hat support team is a phone call away.

Your boss doesn't like being wholly dependent on his resident geek.

The support contract and the bog standard enterprise distribution are his insurance policy. His recovery plan.

I personally guarantee you that by the time the average server OS has had all the necessary tweaks set up to bed it down into a company's systems, along with accounting for little things like "can't use this patch because it clashes with this other app we need, so instead we workaround using this, that other server is so critical to the business that we haven't dared patch it in five years (and I don't care how anal you'd like to be, every business with a significant IT department has at least one server like this)" there is nobody on the planet who can support significant issues over the phone.

It's perhaps less of an issue now than it was 5 or 10 years ago, but it still exists. It's the reason that paid consultants can make a good living on short-term contracts at short notice and potentially being out of work for three to six months of the year.

Re:Our Guy Was Hit By The Crosstown Bus

[WuphonsReach]

Configuration Management

Or for the terminally lazy and understaffed departments - throw the whole system (excluding log files, temporary files, and user data files) into a version control system. I heartily recommend FSVS which uses SVN as the back-end database. Now you have a full history of what changed, when it changed, with the ability to browse the repository using 3rd party tools to see how it changed.

I recommend a daily cron job to commit any changes that the admin forgot to check-in.

Usual work flow is:

# cd /etc/somefolder
# (vi|emacs) somefile
# fsvs ci -m "FSM: changed XYZ to support a new ABC and to fix issue 123" somefile

Now when stuff inevitably breaks, you have the ability to quickly see what changed. Not to mention the number of times where it's helped me remember why something changed, or as a quick way to reference "how did I do that before?" type configs.

At work, I call it my "hit by a bus insurance plan". Anyone who can't browse a version control system, look at the comments, do diffs on the configuration files... is probably over-paid.

No Smoking! Strawman in area!

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP was talking ONLY about the FLOSS business model. He didn't compare the FLOSS business model with the closed source one or even mention closed source for that matter.

Nice straw man, though.

Re:No Smoking! Strawman in area!

[spun]

So with the FLOSS business model, you only make money if it's successful. As opposed to closed source. Sheesh.

FLOSS business model, simplified

[zogger]

You don't get it on how to make loot with this FLOSS business model stuff. I'm not even a dev and I get it. I will try and 'splain this.

Here is the example I have used before: Remember hard wired telephones? Once a year way back then you get a free book from the phone company called a telephone directory. Inside the directory are different colored pages, white is residential, blue is government, and yellow is commercial business. Notice they have the full alphabet covered in that "yellow pages" section, businesses A-Z, autos to ..whatever, zoologists. This is 2010, ALL those businesses ALL use computers/software to make money somehow.

That's how you make money with FLOSS, use it in one of those "other" A-Z businesses. Use it tweak it customize it, then go forth boldly with computer and code in hand and build and sell your widget and service.

Stand alone software as a business directly makes some people some money, for some people, in some areas, even a few large places, but the rest of the business done on the planet simply dwarfs that, just stomps it flat. There is no comparison.

example, the article: redhat makes x-dollars supplying clients. Those clients are in OTHER business that makes 1000x. Which looks to be where to head to make the rent and food budget?

They make so much money, they can afford to pay for software and service and still make a lot of other loot, tons more than what redhat makes. I bet most of their big clients are giants and make billions, compared to what redhat makes, which is low millions.

Home depot makes money selling tools. The people who buy those tools and materials makes thousands of times more money than home depot building houses and commercial buildings and being plumbers and electricians and landscapers etc.

Not everyone will work at home depot, but a whole lot of people can work someplace else and just use home depot just as an easy way to stay up with the tools and materials they need to go make some REAL money.

Now, cooperating on code in general terms, all the floss dudes all over, lets all those guys who are in other businesses stay focused on their real business, and "make money". By sharing code, they all get spiffier tools, for free or real cheap. They then use those tools to go to work doing something useful and make money.

Like who BitZtream? Enough anecdotal crap ok??

[Anonymous Coward]

You were rated +2 informative, for what? Anecdotal crap?? Please, give us a break. I'd like to know who. Probably some fly by nite industries dimestore operation that's broke as a joke like you are.

I love Redhat

[kokoko1]

I Love RH for all there contribution to Open Source community. I am typing this text from one of there project called "Fedora". ;)

I have to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 2009 was a glorious year to be a Red Hat stockholder.

Re:I have to say...

[kaaona]

Ahem... Perhaps a glorious year to *become* a Red Hat stockholder. 2008 and 2001, on the other hand, were horrible.

What I can't figure out is why it dropped a buck and a half today, unless one of the corporate bigwigs dumped a ton of it.

Not Good

[foo fighter]

Doesn't this create a perverse incentive to create software that is complicated and requires lots of expensive support?

Re:Not Good

[benjamindees]

Last I checked, RedHat's support is long term (yearly) and mostly unlimited. So, no, it isn't a huge problem.

Re:Not Good

[Rob_Bryerton]

Oracle seems to think so!

Re:Not Optional

[Antique Geekmeister]

For RHN, you don't get the service and the upstream package management and system integration tools. You get access to updates whenever CentOS gets around to them, which is actually quite fast. I have no issue with a RedHat tech being helpful for you, and helping you steer around their licensing. It's just the claim that you automatically get all RHEL software. Things like VMWare cooperation and XFS (you were right, that's what I meant) are reliant on tools that are not in the RHEL published SRPM's.

And switching between RHEL and CentOS is a bit trickier than you may realize. There are some conflicting packages, such as the "redhat-release" versus "centos-release", and various oddities that RHEL did to yum. Ideally, you also need to replace every single RPM with the RHEL version, even if the "release" number is identical or slightly older from the RHEL version. That takes a local repository of all the RedHat packages, or of CentOS, and keeping track of which ones have been successfully replaced. It's bothersome, especially if you've been using tools from the centosplus repository such as kernels (which enable NTFS, RHEL does not).

Witness "the POWER of... 'ITT Training'" lol (NOT)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856394

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856658

Hairyfeet, look. Just face it. You had your ass absolutely handed to you for your trolling your betters, is all. You say you want to teach PC tech stuff in your profile, but you sure got "schooled" above in both urls above. So much for "ITT training" because apparently it's not worth squat, seeing as you got rather easily "blown away", rotflmao!

Re:Not Optional

[Anonymous Coward]

you do realise that if Red Hat hasn't done this, they'd still be a small time company and would probably have gone under a few times by now.

So I think the return on investment for most ppl, considering RH develop most of the software in most Linux distros hasn't been that bad.

You don't appear to be much of an anything guy

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for the "POWER of... 'ITT Training'" (that was totally funnier than hell, lol). I mean, I took a look at the other replies here and your performance was horrendous. Give up hope of your "high aspirations" of teaching anything about computing hairyfeet. Seriously. You obviously lack the intelligence to do anything other than perhaps sweep floors at most.

Suggestion hairyfeet: Try "bottom of the barrel U"

[Anonymous Coward]

LMAO! Because "the POWER of... 'ITT Training'" just didn't cut it too well in the 2 urls noted here for you, did it? ROTFLMAO!

Prof. Hairyfeet: Trolling and losing a specialty

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, we'd like to introduce you to "Professor Hairyfeet" graduate of "Bottom of the barrell university", where they teach you to troll others as well as how to lose very, very badly on technical topics. So, when "the POWER of... 'ITT Training'" fails you, as it has the professor above? Well, there is always, "bottom-of-the-barrell U", where ALL of the proudest losers graduated from (including getting their fake sheepskin from a gumball machine, lol).

You have officially had your ass handed to you

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject above. Is that like "the mark of distinction" for trolls who go thru "the POWER of... 'ITT Training'" or what? ROTFLMAO, well, there is always "bottom of the barrell U" where you can get your fake sheepskin from a gumball machine (cheap tuition too, only costs a nickel - I know, I know: You need financial aid in that case, but who's fault is it if you are 'broke as a joke', hairyfeet?)

Your admin pals go 2 "Bottom o the Barrell U" too?

[Anonymous Coward]

LMAO @ "the POWER of... 'ITT Training'"

Are you, or aren't you a "Linux guy"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Question: as I am not a Linux guy I don't know so maybe someone here can answer:" - by hairyfeet (841228) on Saturday January 23, @12:54AM (#30867346)

I noted the bolded part in your quote above. Then, I looked to see if you ARE INDEED, a product of "the POWER... of 'ITT Training'" (LMAO) as was stated here by others. Indeed, "it's TWOO", lol, you are! However, don't you state this in your profile too -> http://slashdot.org/~hairyfeet

"Graduated ITT with my associates,currently studying for my Linux + cert and planning to get my bachelors in security and then hopefully find a nice teaching job where I can promote open source alternatives to Windows."

Based on your peformance here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856394 AND here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1519698&cid=30856658 I'd strongly recommend another semester or two @ "Bottom-of-the-Barrell U" there, because you can't even troll others properly (based on your lame performances there, lol) and you cannot make up your mind IF you are "a LINUX GUY" or not.

useless numbers make for a useless article.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how TFA doesn't really show absolute numbers or put the percentages into context, especially when showing the comparison with Novell, Oracle and Microsoft (n% of what, exactly? Apparently trying to avoif drawing attention to the fact that a 1% again for MS or Oracle is roughly the equivalent, in absolute terms of a 100% if not more, increase for Red Hat) and why the focus on revenues without putting that into the context of what their profits are?

Red Hat has shown increased revenues, good on them, but there's really no need to try to blow it up to be something more gargantuine than it is, and doing so comes off as desperate. Is commercial Linux really in such a sad, sorry state that this is necessary?

CentOS also does paid support

[flyingfsck]

I tell the powers that be that one can get support from various places, for example, Red Hat, CentOS, Mandriva, Novel or Oracle, for what is essentially the exact same system. Low cost or free support is similar to Microsoft support and comes in the form of regular updates and web site self-help troubleshooting forums. If you need phone support or on-site support, then it costs more. Then I add that since he already hired me with 25 years UNIX experience, the free support is good enough, so we can use CentOS. If I get run over by a bus, then he may have to change to paid support until he hired another old guy. I never had a problem following the above explanation.

Still a poor business model

[McBeer]

I'm still not entirely convinced that the free code + support business model works as well as the traditional licensing version. Here's some financial data from the last year.

Microsoft
employees 93,000
revenue 58.4 billion = 627 956.989 per employee
net income 14.5 billion = 155 913.978 per employee

apple
employees 35,000
revenue 32.5 = 922 857.143 per employee
net income 4.9 = 140,000 per employee

oracle
employees 73,000
revenue 23.2 billion = 317 808.219 per employee
net income 5.6 billion = 76 712.3288 per employee

red hat
employees 2,800
revenue 0.65 billion = 232 142.857 per employee
net income 0.078 billion = 27 857.1429 per employee

Even when I divide by employee's to account for the size differences, the closed source shops are making way more money then Red Hat

Re:Still a poor business model

[RedK]

One flaw about your argument is that Apple makes money on hardware, not software licensing. Look at their financial reports, software accounts for barely 10% of their business.

Re:Still a poor business model

[Rob_Bryerton]

Yet everyone there still receives a paycheck, and a quality product is produced....

Am I missing something?

Someone answer this please

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is BitZtream so fucking stupid?

there can be only one

[viralMeme]

"I'm still not entirely convinced that the free code + support business model works as well as the traditional licensing version .."

That's three companies out of how many that are making real money out of 'traditional licensing'. How many venture capitalists would be foolish to get into the Microsoft, Apple or Oracle market right now. As for 'traditional licensing', that was never the case. Software was originally given away with the hardware. I see the future of this business and the way for anyone else to make real money is a return to making money off of selling the hardware. If the OEMs only realized this, it is they who really control the market, not some software licenser ...

Re:Not Optional

[Bert64]

You don't have to use RedHat... All your FOSS code is still available, as is lots of code RedHat wrote and released under open licenses and you are free to download that source and compile it on another distro.

RedHat is offered as a choice, and large corporations take that choice because they prefer to buy from another large company. They made the choice to spend rather than save, they could have got the exact same software for free with no support or from other sources with varying support terms. Better that they gave their money to RH than MS.

I see RH as more of a robin hood figure, highly beneficial to the OSS community... They provide legitimacy to those corporates who think that software needs to be paid for and should come with complicated licensing terms, and invest a lot of money in OSS development. Those of us who aren't blinkered by the aforementioned corporate mentality get to benefit from all of their development work for free.

And no, your not paying, the company you work for is paying... Seeing as you're a developer i'd assume you are technically competent enough that you wouldn't need any of RH's services on your own.

Use Future conversion for Red Hat.

[cenc]

There are lot of posts I see here about how the closed source model makes more money than Red Hats biz modal. I think people are missing the point (the one that Wall Street will ultimately care about). The point always has been, and always will be, future revenue growth.

I believe it is the small companies that in the last 5 years or so have started with CentOS or even other Linux distros, that will be the measure of the success of Red Hat in the years to come.

How many Small to Medium size businesses out there will be future clients of Red Hat?

By contrast, how many small to medium size biz are starting out with windows servers sitting in the corner of their office?

That is where the revenue growth for Red Hat is coming in the next say 5, 10, 20 years.

For example, I run two CentOS servers plus an all linux shop of desktops. Right now I handle all my support myself, but as we grow and I have better things to do with my time, I can very much see buying support in the future from Red Hat. In fact, I have discussed it with my partner (that has limited computer knowledge), in the event I get hit by bus or whatever as an option to keep things going.

Defense

[gatkinso]

Redhat is one of the few (maybe only but I doubt that) Linux distributions accredited to be deployed on classified DOD networks.

Opinions aside, this alone is a huge revenue stream.

Re:Not Optional

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a clue, you can use CentOS or any other distribution you want.

If you have a clue you will never use CentOS, especially after this little stunt.

If you need a freebie, it's called Debian Stable, folks.

Thank you!

[Burz]

Sys admins and especially application developers generally do not like frequent major releases for their OS.

The only company to successfully pull off a rapid release cycle is Apple with OS X, and even then they had a roadmap for eventually stabilizing the platform at 10.4 and slowing down the releases after 10.5. So they had about 5 rapid releases on a 12-month cycle.

Compare that to Ubuntu, which has had many more releases than that in a shorter period of time, and with no roadmap pointing to a stabilization of the platform (in fact, with little concept of a platform at all).

Re:Not Optional

[Dr. Evil]

"The software is free. If they don't understand what they're purchasing, that's their problem, and only yours if you decide to make it your problem."

I and people like me fought corporate policies to allow Linux as a target platform and in the datacenter. Management saw the value and supported it. They standardized on Redhat.

Linux support is community based. We have members of Redhat in our LUG which I freely share information with. Should I start charging them? Should our LUG charge a Redhat-employee membership fee? $350/year to join our mailing list. 2-day response time. $1500 for IRC, $13k/year to have access to developers who are members of the LUG?

Where do you think the Redhat employees get their information?

Obligatory xkcd

[jonaskoelker]

http://xkcd.com/670/

I guess you're saying "Be the smart engineer"?

big companies had to standardize Linux early

[peter303]

Our company standardized on Red Hat because it was out there in year 2000. We dont change OS'es lightly because it costs several hundred thousand dollars to test and release under a new OS, even if everything compiles right away. All the customers have to switch to the new version software and hardware platform too. Plus we a legally obliged to back support 3-5 years per standard contract in our industry (energy). Adding and subtracting a platform are major decisions then. At any given time we support approximately three platforms.

Red Hat / Fedora is among the best

[apexwm]

I've used Red Hat Linux since 1997. It's never let me down. Today, I continue using Fedora which is still very well done. It is however cutting edge so it is released every 6 months, so it does have quirks. However that's where Red Hat Enterprise steps in. It's rock solid and has been for years. Red Hat is leading the way with enterprise Linux. It's no wonder that many are making the move from Windows. There are a huge list of reasons why, but I think the bad economy has really pushed companies and individuals to start looking at less expensive alternatives like Linux. How can we forget that just a few years ago, Microsoft actively published reports stating the cost benefit of using Windows. Now that people have a reason to cut costs, the real everyday truth comes out. Microsoft will say anything to make the sale, just like a salesman at your front door. I think more and more are waking up and realizing this. http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux