SAP invests in Red Hat

not just big in germany by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 03:03 · Score: 0

Err... SAP has already ported to Linux.

--Corey

Re: not just big in germany by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:58 · Score: 0

You'll get far with English in Germany... Germans used to be lousy at speaking English, and you'll see that among older people, but the youth generally have no problems with English, and I'd believe a company like SAP wouldn't mind hiring people without fluent German as long as they speak English.
Re: not just big in germany by RealUlli · 1999-03-30 04:12 · Score: 1

SAP already did port some of their suite to Linux. Currently they're looking for good Linux hackers to hire... If you're interested, go to their website and look through the jobs offers.

--
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
Re: not just big in germany by Q*bert · 1999-03-30 05:44 · Score: 1

YES!
Wait a minute . . . France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malasia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand . . . there are no jobs in the U.S.! Doh and double doh! I like living here to much to give it up, at least for a country whose language I don't speak fluently (i.e. I would consider Mexico. Oye Miguel, ?Hay trabajo en la UNAM pa' los aficionados gringos del Linux? ;).
The East Asian connection is interesting. I wonder why they have so many bases there. Is it a matter of providing on-site support?
--- My sig's still screwed up. Slashdot keeps stripping the HTML tags. It's a sigfault (their fault, not mine).
---

Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Re: not just big in germany by Q*bert · 1999-03-30 05:47 · Score: 1

Oh damn. I just looked again, and all the developers' jobs are in Germany. Triple doh! Anyway, I'm sure they'll find ample talent. Linux is pretty damn big in Germany.
Doh, doh, doh!
Signituration fault: core dumped.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Re: not just big in germany by dand · 1999-03-30 10:41 · Score: 1

All signs, documentation and even the meals are labelled in both german and english.

What SAP Runs on... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 03:24 · Score: 0

I've seen more PeopleSoft and Oracle installs than SAP ones, but the ones I have seen are usually running AIX or some other corporate unix.

This is probably just SAP covering the bases. The ERP market is in an upheaval right now and SAP is ensuring that they'll have a hand in whatever the next big thing is. Is this 'selling out'? maybe, but I don't think so...

If you want to annoy a person that works with SAP, refer to it as 'sap'(as in the stuff from a tree) instead of 'Ess Ay Pee'...

Tastic

Vendors and Distributions by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:00 · Score: 0

IBM have done deals with several vendors not just
Red Hat. Siemens are bundling SuSE. The Japanese
vendors bundle PHT. VA are a SUSE shop.

No the people you should feel sorry for are the
BSD users. None of these vendors are doing
"without an OS". By praising them and ignoring
this issue we raise the spectre of a Linux tax on
BSD. Thats bad. Neither community wants it to
occur.

Questions by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:01 · Score: 0

1. Can I buy into RedHat? OK, RH isn't a publicly traded company, so you have to be a 'sophisticated investor'.

2. How much of RedHat is left? Intel, IBM, SAP, CA(?) and others have invested so the majority of shares must be owned by other companies by now. It would be interesting to see what the percentage of shares that have already been sold is.

3. related to question 1: OK as an individual I can't make any difference, but what if Slashdotters band together and pool our money to buy a chunk of RedHat? Is this doable? Can we start our own VC company? This could provide two benefits:
a) We try to counterbalance the big corporations in the ownership of RH.
b) maybe we can make a bit of money.

You are right, to a point. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:11 · Score: 0

It is true that when a company gets outside investors, either public or private, they do have a say in how a company is run. It's their money, after all. An IPO is the worst: It is totally selling a company's soul to the devil (Wall Street). At least RH hasn't done that (yet).

For the millionth time, let's state a few facts:
1. Red Hat is in business to make money.

2. Other companies invest in Red Hat to make some of that money.

3. There are other distributions, both commercial and non-commercial of Linux.

4. Red Hat does not own Linux. It cannot take over the system like Microsoft did with the system that they bought/ripped off/commandeered. One company cannot control the kernel. I don't think that even Linus Torvalds can control it himself any more, as far as distribution is concerned. Too many other people are involved now.

5. RH could, however, create their own versions of the GNU or Xfree86 tools and make them proprietary if they wanted to, although I can't see it happening. It would be a total waste of effort.

They may indeed add "value-added" proprietary software one day. But they can't control the system! No one individual or corporation can. That's what so great about Linux!

SAP and Redhat by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:25 · Score: 0

So SUSE is slower than RedHat on your Machine? Have you been smoking crack lately? I mean Linux is Linux. RedHat and SuSE are made from the same software archives that the have downloaded probably from the same ftp site! The only thing I can think of is that they have different kernel tweaks or a different number of services enabled by default. This is not a problem! It is fixable in 20 minutes at most! I hate when someone starts comparing speeds of Linux distributions. They are all the same!
The only big difference should be libc5 vs glibc2 but I don't think that this wouls slow machine down to extent that you can notice it!

This Could Be Bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:37 · Score: 0

All this focus on RedHat could be very bad in the long run.

RedHat has also bagged an exclusive agreement with www.metrowerks.com for codewarrior -- back in October of last year, it was going to be "Codewarrior for Linux". Now it's "Codewarrior for RedHat Linux".

RedHat is becoming the new MickeySoft. If this goes much further, I'm dumping their stuff and going to Debian. At least Debian openly supports the FSF/Hurd effort. Whatever you loser scriptkiddie anti-GNU types think of RMS, without RMS we'd be using Linux 0.01 about now.

I recall when RedHat bowed to pressure to open up their rpm stuff; they have a history of self-service. They even apologized over the rpm debacle. Well, it looks like RedHat is going back to their roots.

RedHat, prove me wrong. Acknowedge and pay respect (in words and cash) to you roots of GNU/FSF/XFree.

SAP big in Germany? the SuSe connection? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:47 · Score: 0

Huh? SAP is the second Largest Software company in the world, right behind IBM; They have been doing this for a nuber of years and its nothing new; ITs the Leader in Business software (ERP style) and just about everyone uses it; They have guys that program in Germany and when they are done some people in the US pick and and whenthey are done Asia picks up. that goes on 365 days a year all the time; Look the majority of you guys need to realize that there are other things out there besides linux and gnome or whatever; This software and other ERP packages are what will bring linux to prime time; This will gain it reputable acceptance. The suits love it, engineer's hate it, and investors love it; Cuz when a company can streamline every process of a manufacturing facility they see the most important factor. Mo' Money. SuSe? Who? They are very small in the scheme of things. Right now for linux to gain wider acceptance, we need SAP AND Redhat. weather we like it or not. - Derek

Das ist Gut! Alles gegen Mikrosoft! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:57 · Score: 0

Everybody against Microsoft! This is cool.

David Hasselhoff should do a Red Hat commercial by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 04:59 · Score: 0

This would help Red Hat sell in Germany.

Mark

SuSE 6.0 is faster on my SMP box by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:12 · Score: 0

SuSE is quicker on my box, and slackware and debian faster still. Redhat is slow and buggy as hell...note all the updates right after any release. I run redhat 5.2 on my alpha still though, despite all the bugs...on intel hardware otoh I want a real os

The investments are concentrating only on RedHat.. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:17 · Score: 0

* scolding the investors is a bit like me telling you that you spend your money on Toast instead of on Bagles
* if you want a server from Dell with Debian, get the thing with RH, copy the drivers, install Debian; I don't see any serious problems
* I differ from your belief that "big companies" could "remain ignorant"; they hire smart techies and teach them some business skills and then make them take justified decisions. Result: "right tool for the right job"
* a corporation will not "become ignorant about the possibility of building a system from scratch"; these are the people who design cars and bring them to market on time; you are right though, that they might not choose to do this -- but is this money (which your retirement fund invests in) really best spent building a custom Linux distro?
* exactly *which* unpleasant long-term consequences? Living has unpleasant long-term consequences: you die. You'll have to be a bit more specific
* if RedHat make money off consulting and their staff only knows the RedHat distro, they will watch other distros and try to deliver something closer to what the customers are asking for -- I don't think they'll forget that "they have one of several distributions"

I hope your concerns are somewhat alleviated now.

What does SAP mean? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:35 · Score: 0

... We actually call it "Such A Pain" internally

Michel

SAP already involved in SuSE and, AWAIK, Debian by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:36 · Score: 0

Yeah, and with RedHat 5.9//6.0, we get... glibc 2.1!
yeah! i donno how its compatiblity goes however...
must distros have at least runtime support for the popular c libs.

--SalsaDoom

Good for redhat, but sap..uhh..sucks by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:44 · Score: 0

I ahve problems with SuSE .. like the proprierty shit that comes with it
its really to bad they don't GPL there software like RedHat.

I gives me the impression SuSE doesn't really support idea of free software.

What does SAP mean? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 06:01 · Score: 0

SAP doesn't deliver raw database products. They use database software in the backend, sure, but the software SAP deliver is for corporate procedures, such as bookkeeping, bill payment, factoring, paying salaries etc.

Questions by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 06:07 · Score: 0

As for "2", your logic is flawed. Nobody knows how much they've invested - it could have been just a token investment, to show support. Remember that RedHat management have continuously stressed that "the money is nice, but not important" for each and every investment.

As for point 3, sue it's "doable", but you have absolutely no guarantee that RedHat would be interested. I doubt they'd be, expect maybe for a small token, say 1 percent or something, just to be able to send out a press release about the "Linux community investing in RedHat".

As for 3a, no you can't counterbalance the ownership, unless the present owners want you too. RedHat isn't publicly traded.

So when does behavior become a "plot"? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 06:23 · Score: 0

There is no need to equate Redhat with Microsoft. They have some requirements put on them by all GPL'd software which makes them difficult to become a monopoly.

Right now, the US government is suggesting auctioning of the Windows code as a remedy to Microsoft's monopoly. In the case of Redhat, it is already true. Somebody else could base their work from that of Redhat Linux and inprove on it.

This is true but not an isolated case. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 07:11 · Score: 0

Whenever I hear Windows, I hear:

Everybody hates it.
It never runs more than 20min in a row.
It is very ill-suited for anything serious.
It costs quite a bit of money.

So why is everybody still using it? You see, there seems to be a pattern here. GM is still the largest car manufacturer in the world, although most people would agree that there are a number of better cars out there. It's all in the propaganda, man.

Red Hat shouldn't take SAP's dirty money by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 07:17 · Score: 0

Just to illustrate SAP's revolutionary software, here's SAP's definition of OLE compliance, as taught to us when our company was foolish enough to spend over THREE MILLION DOLLARS!

After retrieving a crappy looking set of query results in a form that is shockingly crude (I kid you not), you then go through countless dialogs and menus and save these results in "Microsoft Excel Format" (with no common dialog, but a text box, where YOU have to manually enter the path!).

After that, you OPEN Microsoft Excel MANUALLY, then do FILE|OPEN, then find the file that you saved your SAP results on and open it up in Excel. After finding that the formatting is terrible, you go into Excel's formatting procedures to tidy it up. VOILA! OLE in action!

SAP blows in functionality and it majorly blows in Interface design! Do companies actually think before they buy?

Granted, money is money - but just when a great OS like Linux is starting to take off, Red Hat should take no part in SAP's crusade to rip off companies worldwide!

it's simple economics by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 08:00 · Score: 0

SAP isn't "afraid" of Microsoft, and neither are IBM or any of a number of other companies that invest in, or support, Linux.

It's rather a simple question of economics: if the customer or the system integrator has to spend several hundred dollars on Windows NT, that's money that could either be generating additional profit, or that could be passed on to the customer and make the bid more competitive.

Whenever companies make such enormous profits as Microsoft does, the market is clearly inefficient. And in the case of operating systems, the economically rational thing to do for large software companies is to chip into a shared, low-cost (or free) operating system. Linux has simply been a convenient vehicle for this.

This Could Be Bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 08:01 · Score: 0

> 1) What is proprietary to redhat that will keep
> codewarrior from running on any other dist. of
> linux since everything they do is 100% open
> source??

Good question. Since I don't work for Metrowerks or RedHat, you might want to ask them why the "RedHat" name is platered across the product.

And while you're at it ask them why a product calling itself a "GNU Edition" costs $99, and is going to ship exclusively with RedHat products.

Apparently, I am in the minority (a minority of one?!) when I say I want to see more credit given to the other major contributors that made the Linux phenonenon happen.

> 2) Use whatever distribution you like, but
> without RMS, we'd still be at 2.2.5 as Linus
> would've simply used BSD-style tools. Contrary
> to popular myth...other tools DID exist before
> RMS wrote GPL'd ports.

Please be honest! I was using GNU tools on Sun boxen in the early 90's, when Sun was still BSDish. The GNU tools were considered the best, recommended as the tool of choice, used throughout the University by thousands of CS students.

> 3) You obviously have no idea what you're
> talking about and you're only serving up more
> FUD that has no place here. RedHat is not the
> enemy.

I know I am saying it *could* be a problem. I have no fear, but perhaps some doubt and uncertainty. I have not called them the enemy. I do post anonymously, since I fear attacks from vehement people like yourself. Although I have not personally been attacked for my posts on Slashdot, a close friend's machine was attacked for hours after angering the mob here.

I know that a lot of large corporations are announcing support for "Redhat Linux" (I'm sure you hate the term "Gnu/Linux" -- that would be bad, eh? But perhaps "Redhat Linux" is perfectly acceptable?? Hypocrites!) and I will no longer blindly feel joy when I see these major announcements in support of RedHat.

In that sense, I am discussing a concern and I feel I have have worded it well. I have surpassed the requirements for posting here.

Judging from your blind support of RedHat and rejection of the GNU contributions, I would like to thank you for making it clear that RedHat is no longer the distribution for me. And perhaps Slashdot is no longer a place for the posting of opinions, but has simply degraded to a menial proof of the political phrase "The Masses are Asses" -- that direct democracy can never work. RedHat, and it's supporters, have apparently become GNU/FSF detractors and I will not longer tolerate that.

SAP invests in Red Hat by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 08:11 · Score: 0

In today's news:

Microsoft invests in Red Hat.

RPM comment out of line. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 08:47 · Score: 0

I can't find support for my statement about RPM anywhere in the news archives. So, I will say that it must have been something else -- even a nasty rumor I have passed on?

As I recall, I was in a Linux group meeting about three years ago where the Slackware clan was claiming victory in that RedHat "...changed it's mind and released the source...and apologized..." This was source or specifications to some type of utility; a installer, a loader, I don't remember. I thought it was RPM. Apparently I am wrong. Maybe it was only a rumor? I can't prove it was said so I guess it must be.

So, in closing, I can't support that which I vaguely remember, and RedHat appears to be the exclusive distributor of the "$99 GNU Edition of Metrowerks Codewarrior", a shrinking minority of people on Slashdot acknowlege RMS' contributions to Linux, so I am definately in the minority around here in my views.

Well, everything that goes around comes around. Perhaps the Slashdotters of the future will eagerly lap up "MickySoft Linux". Whatever -- I'm outta here.

SAP and Redhat by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 09:11 · Score: 0

"The simple fact is the best OS will win. I am beginning to see that Redhat is the one, and why."

Why is Suse Linux and RedHat Linux a different OS ? They're both Linux distributions... - if they ran at a different speed on your machine, then consider setting it up in a proper way.

sap = big everywhere by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 09:15 · Score: 0

"SAP is new to linux so it is going with the market leader."

Do you really think SAP is clueless as to what's going on in the Linux biz ? Do you think they just invest in some market leader w/o knowing what or who it is ? SAP is big, and they didn't get that big by not knowing what they're doing.

SAP by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 09:54 · Score: 0

That is exacly what is happening in the SAP world. View it as just some 3gl-ish language that
comes with database access libraries and some ERP templates. All the big work is
done in-house or by those solution providers, or whatever the latest marketing name is
for a computer company. That works takes just as much time if you'd have
the above mentioned components for e.g. C or perhaps C++.

Nothing new.

Why keep bashing Redhat? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 10:32 · Score: 0

Why keep bashing Redhat? The main objective is to see more people use Linux. Remember what has killed Unix?! ....indifference about who's better and who should be the standard?!

Redhat has done a lot of good things for Linux the past months, or not?! . Finally big companies are supporting our GREAT OS!!.
Who cares about all the distros and pre-compiled goodies? It's just personal preference! As long the Linux community sticks together we have the best chance of succeeding.

Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc...... It's still Linux after all!!!!

This Could Be Bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 10:40 · Score: 0

> First, Linux is linux is linux. Regardless of
> the distribution. If you don't understand that,
> then stop reading and reboot into Windows right
> now.

What are you talking about? There's GNU, Suse, RedHat, Mandrake, etc. Most have utilities that do not run on the others. Many have filesystem layouts that differ. Maybe something like the LSB could help -- oops, RedHat isn't sure they want to support that.

> RedHat's name plastered on the product is NOT
> RedHat's fault...you should blame Metrowerks.

Do you speak officially for RedHat or Metrowerks? If so, please identify which organization you speak for.

I'm not "blaming" anyone, only noting something publicly posted on a website -- something that explicitly mentions "Redhat Linux" over all other distributions. It's not neccessarily "Evil" or "someones fault" -- but if all Linuces are the same, maybe it shouldn't say "RedHAt", and have the "GNU Edition" -- which cost $99 -- ship free with RedHat products.

> But no, your kind assumes that you should
> label RedHat as "evil" since they make a profit
> from Linux.

I have never called RedHat evil, but I am concerned that they are having a lot of success without giving a lot of credit where credit is due. I suspect FSF/Gnu/RMS and others are being given short shrift when they made, and continue to make, real and substantial contributions to Linux.

> Nevermind they've not done anything
> anti-competitive and they give away source to
> the code they pay people to write, you
> apparently don't like them for being successful.

You're support of RedHat is strong and unmavering. Mine is not. I've been happy for their success for the last several months, seeing all the big companies support them. But now, when I see more and more "RedHat Linux" announcements, I am not as happy as I was. In fact, I am saddened.
This is the real truth -- whatever you read into my post, whatever words you put into my mouth, I am saddened that Gnu/Fsf is being left behind while RedHat surges forward. Is this how you define "Success"? Winner takes all? Perhaps "your kind" prefers the WWF over team sports?

> Fine. Don't use their distribution.

This one time I will allow you to dictate my behavior. I am increasingly impressed with Debian, particularly with their "Social Contract" and support of The GNU/Hurd project. Go Debian! Of course, if they get too big and people like you start jumping on their bandwagon, I might jump ship to Monkey or something.

> However, you're not being attacked by me.
> You prove that, while you have concerns, you
> don't see the big picture. It is impossible for
> a 100% open source company that gives everything
> it does back to the community to be another
> Microsoft. It cannot happen. If other companies
> associate Linux with RedHat, so be it, but it's
> not RedHat's fault nor should they be blamed.
> Your lack of comprehension amazes me, but your
> assinine opinion does not.

No, those words could never be construed as "an attack". I admit that "my assinine" opinion is in the minority but I don't think I'm alone -- even if I am, I don't really care. You see, I really have no need to run with the mob.

As far as "Fault" -- you keep saying I'm trying to "blame" someone. I'm not blaming anyone for anything; I'm just saying that these constant "RedHat" announcements seem unfair, and whether or not anyone else agrees, I'm about ready to jump ship on RedHat.

I agree with you that people can pick and use their own distro, but it seems like you think I should just shut up and go away. Well, I'm ready to. You've helped a lot. I'll probably bail after a couple more useless iterations and then it will be over.

> You're entitled to your opinions, but spreading
> general FUD (RedHat is gonna be another
> Microsoft! RedHat is evil for making any money!)
> is wrong, pointless, and not very smart.

Annoucement after announcement "RedHat, RedHat, RedHat". This at least resembles "Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft" in it's repetitiveness and syllabic structure. So, I am concerned. I never said it was wrong for them to make money. But how many people, who helped them up, are being left in the wake?

> Don't get mad at the community for pointing out
> that you're opinion is based in misconception
> and ignorance.

I'm not mad, just noticing a trend that has been incresing in strength -- the opinion that GNU/FSF is somehow "wrong" and "RedHat Everywhere" is "good". I don't like this trend. It could be bad.

> The End.

Last Post!!

RPM comment out of line. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 10:42 · Score: 0

oh yeah -- you're not attacking me. I looked, I can't find it. Fuck you, Brian.

This Could Be Bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 10:59 · Score: 0

> I just couldn't let this go...

Is this your ass taking to your head, Brian?

> No, I say Linux. If anyone else says GNU/Linux,
> Debian Linux, Slackware Linux, or I couldn't > care less. I realize something you don't; > */Linux==LINUX.

Untrue. It's a fact; some progs will not run on anything but RedHat.

> You say "RedHat, and it's supporters, have > apparently become GNU/FSF detractors and I will > not longer tolerate that." Where is your
> proof??? They GPL EVERYTHING THEY DO. Good
> grief, Charlie Brown, you've got nothing to
> base this on!! Show me something they've written
> that they haven't GPL'd and I'll eat my (Red) > hat.

Why do you shift the topic? All I am saying is that RedHat gets the glory while others get the shaft. Where is the humility? (look it up if the word is gnu to you)

>> I do post anonymously, since I fear attacks >> from vehement people like yourself.

> Attacks == People with a clue pointing out that
> I'm unable to substantiate my opinions with
> fact. I don't blame you; I wouldn't want my
> name on what you've posted either.

no, attacks are hours of machine crashes that my friend experienced after pissing off a Slashhole like you. he left slashdot behind as useless, i increasingly agree with that assessment.

although i admit the details of a meeting that took place three years ago are fuzzy, there was something there. the slackware folks were fired up. i can't remember the details, but it would be useless to show evidence to someone like you, anyway.

i am open enough to question statements on the metrowerks page, and have been harassed and called names by you.

like many others here, you denigrate fsf/gnu, and you constantly twist my words. you say i am trying to place blame, that i think it's wrong for redhat to be successful, etc. -- but none of those statements are made by me.

so who made them? you. someone who revels in the models of strength, dominance, authority and profit at any cost. perhaps you are the one who needs to go "boot into windows".

> Ok, now I'm done.

doubtful. people like you are never done.

Red Hat not at fault, but SuSE is bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 11:48 · Score: 0

Oracle is free to do whatever they want.
Red Hat can not force Oracle to do anything.

SAP and Siemens follow Oracle. Red Hat had
absolutly nothing to do with this.

You can take your conspiracy theory and shove
it where the Sun won't shine. Red Hat makes
an honest business while releasing everything
under the GPL or LGPL.

Your precious SuSE has a very poor track record
for free software. Only Debian is better than
Red Hat (no surprise there). SuSE doesn't GPL
or LGPL all their software, and they ignored
the evil in the original QPL even. The only
other distribution about as bad as SuSE is
Caldera. (well, RMS says SuSE is even worse!)

Why Redhat whips SuSE by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 12:03 · Score: 0

Red Hat hires good hackers, like Alan Cox.
Alan Cox is the #2 kernel hacker. He finds
and fixes many of the security holes. Red Hat
pays him to do that, rather than hiding the
problems like SuSE does.

Red Hat is cutting-edge. They get some heat for
it because they hit the bugs first, but the
risk they take is good for all of us. Red Hat
paves the way with things like glibc, while
stupid SuSE just recently managed to convert.

SuSE is indeed slower. Remember the file server
benchmarks posted here? SuSE was the worst
Linux distribution. Only NT was worse than SuSE.
Red Hat and Caldera both kicked ass.

The above was just quality. Red Hat also supports
free software more than SuSE does. They GPL and
LGPL everything they write. That includes the
installer, the config tools, and other special
distribution features.

Press Conference (RH is the MS of OpenSource®) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 12:11 · Score: 0

Yes you are partly correct. The R/3 port was done as soon as the first commercial database for linux was available in the free time of two SAP employees. Actually it did not take them much effort because the SAP code compiled quit cleanly on Linux even then. In this time it was the ADABAS D database from Software AG, Germany which was the base for the very first R/3 system on Linux.

Well the point is simply that Oracle told the suits from SAP that Oracle will currently only support Redhat due to incompatiblilies with other linux distributions. SAP therefor currently only supports Oracle based R/3 solutions for Linux. Support in this context means "Support contract". These contracts are signed by suits NOT programmers. It is about liability and such.

On the other hand SAP ist not much interested in diversity anyway and B.Y. managed to convince that Linux==Redhat. He even claimed that all other distributions are simple rip-offs of the RH ftp version

On the other hand simply look at Compaq versus RH in order to look how Microsoftlike behaviour is obvious. (Didn't ask M$ for millions of dollars for a PowerPC NT port? didnt M$ threaden their customers in case they also deal with competitors)

Red Hat not at fault, but SuSE is bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 12:21 · Score: 0

Well, Oracle is definetely free to do whatever they want. I am complaining because RH tricked them with libc incompatibilities. RH currently tries to tie every commercial apps to RH linux due to incompatibilities.

BTW: The source code for EXACTLY the same glibc version which is needed for oracle db is NOT available from RH!

Even hardware vendors start to see the problem. (see: Compaq) What do you think why SuSE now started to develop an ALPHA port of SuSE-6.1?

Without Linus by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 12:27 · Score: 0

Do you think we'd be running the HURD?
If so, you don't know your history.

Linux developers turned crappy GNU software
into wonderful GNU software. The C library
is the best example. Yes, even glibc was
mostly developed on Linux for Linux.

The HURD was always vaporware. Now that the FSF
can steal the Linux TCP/IP stack, hardware
drivers, and filesystem code... yeah, they might
actually complete the project.

If Linus hadn't written a GPL kernel when he did,
we would all be running *BSD now. Linux had just
one year to develop alone. Had the *BSD code
been unleashed with only the HURD to compete
against, the HURD would have been toast.

anti-GNU but pro-GPL by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 12:43 · Score: 0

The GPL is great. (the LGPL is better) Richard Stallman, creater of my favorite license, is a total ass. He is very rude and arrogant.

I don't have to love someone just because he wrote something I use

I write free software. I used to use the GPL for all of it, but now I just use the LGPL. I'm not a kiddie, but I do like scripts. I write scripts, in sh (for simple junk) and perl (for serious stuff). Of course, C is usually better.

I write Linux software. It might work with GNU TURD, but I don't care. You can take your *LSD and smoke it too. You don't give me credit by calling the system GNU/Linux, even if you "adopt" my software as honorary GNU software. In fact, I'd be pissed if you said my software was GNU software.

LSB by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 12:47 · Score: 0

Ummm... If you bothered to check the LSB web site you'd see that there are 'Members' which include Caldera, SuSE, Metro Link, etc. and that there are 'Additional Participants' which are Debian and Red Hat. Now why isn't the the biggest Linux distro on the planet a 'Member' instead of an 'Additional Participant'? Vested interests? Maybe. Check your facts please. Clevo (Stampede blows the doors off Red Hat anyway - and yes I run both)

No, you can get the source. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 13:04 · Score: 0

You write:

The source code for EXACTLY the same glibc version which is needed for oracle db is NOT available from RH!

Check the glibc license. If Red Hat gives you glibc binaries, then they must also give you the source code (they do) or they must offer to provide the source code for the next 3 years.

This is really basic GPL/LGPL stuff. You should read the license sometime.

No, you can�t get the source. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 13:16 · Score: 0

Well it is simply a matter of fact that the
SRPMS do not give you the very same rpm :-(
The point is that the glibc needed for oracle db server never got officially released. RH currently
provides an incompatible but bugfixed/improoved
glibc SRPM. No competitor currently is able to
integrate the exactly same version of the glibc needed to run oracle due to lack of
source. Just look at the people who tried
oracle with Debian, SuSE or P.H.

As said before RH provided Oracle with an unreleased version of an early glibc port.

Yes! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 14:20 · Score: 0

You are very much correct. Currently RH is not interested in a successful LSB at all. After all this would take away all their benefits like oracle only running with RH and also slow down their development cycle. A key feature of RH is that they are always on the leading edge (a.out/elf, libc5/glibc-2 ...) even if it prooves to be immature (RH-5.0, GNOME-1.0) But doing so keeps them in the press and ahead of their competitors.

Basically you can easily conclude that from evil B.Y. statements yourself.

Future conflicts over software licensing? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 14:33 · Score: 0

Regarding the saying that infrastructure should be free but applications should be proprietary. I'm more incline to agree with it.

Making money off open source software by selling service is working for some but I still don't see it working for most free software programmers. I'll like to see the day when the model prove that programmers can support themselves by writing free software. Then I'll agree that application should be free also.

However the definition of application here is somewhat too general.

This Could Be Bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 14:52 · Score: 0

> You said there is software that runs only on
> RedHat and nowhere else. I'm still waiting to
> find out what this mystery program is.

Just as you do not have time to investigate these things, neither do I. I will say that differing distros can break installs for various executables. Everyone knows this. Any developer's list has innumerable examples. This statement was made to support the opinion that not all Linuces are the same -- you keep saying they are.

> That doesn't mean a program won't run on some
> other dist. of Linux ... one just has to *gasp*
> be knowledgable enough to install it. Keep
> trying.

Perhaps RedHat will take your advice and recommend that "If, after extracting your tarball, your software breaks, please look at Brian-P's Linux Filesystem Mini-Howto before contacting Technical Support". Now there's an idea whose time has come.

>> Do you speak officially for RedHat or
>> Metrowerks?

> And your point would be....??

let's see here...earlier you said:

> "RedHat's name plastered on the product is NOT
> RedHat's fault...you should blame Metrowerks.

...which seems to imply Redhat==good, metrowerks==bad. I have no such information; so you are speaking for one of the companies, right? How else could you say this? I only noticed it -- you are the one passing judgement.

> [Redhat Codewarrior] A business decision. What's
> wrong with that? Why don't we ever hear people
> complaining about Caldera? They pack tons of
> proprietary crap in their dist. Oh, because
> they're never in the news.

I've never said no one has the right to do any of this. But I did say it could be bad in the long run. It implies that the software only runs under RedHat.

> What would you have them do? What would be
> appropriate in your opinion?

Maybe they should call it "Codewarrior for Linux"?

> What does fairness have to do with anything?

Fairness is what keeps big mean people from walking into your house with guns, blowing your family away, taking everything you own, and proceeding to your neighbor's house. The GNU/Linux issue is less immediate.

> I simply want people like you to "give credit
> where credit is due". RedHat has kept the GNOME
> project alive and contributed to it in spades.
> RedHat appealed to Adaptec to release actual
> low-level support rather than reverse
> engineering.
> RedHat hasn't done anything bad yet
> and your original post implied as much. After
> much beratement, you've filtered out the
> extraneous and seem to be saying, "RedHat
> getting all this attention seems Microsoft'ish
> and may not credit all those involved."
> Fair enough. If that's all you're
> saying. I still don't compeletely agree, but at
> least it's a start.
> However, you shouldn't get your clit
> in a knot because I asked you to ante up on your
> other claims.

The only claim I can't "ante up" on is the RPM claim. That was a mistake. I honestly don't remember the circumstances, other than the Slack people were all exited over RedHat releasing some source or specifications that RedHat had steadfastly refused to give up.

I obviously wish I had the quotes or contacts to back up the statement. But however much people kick my butt over the unsubstantiated statement, I know there was something there. An arrogance? Oh well. The Slacks were pretty happy about it.

Other than the "unsupported claim", I said the Metrowerks/RedHat combo, as shown on www.metrowerks.com, strongly differs from the announcement of last November. RedHat and Metrowerks can do whatever they want -- but the site states it's the "Gnu Edition" for RedHat. Linux is Linux is Linux? Why not support them all?

As far as "Credit for Linux", I have two fully boxed sets of RedHat linux on my shelf as I write. That's cash, not credit. Paid full price for them. Enjoyed them till now. I have bought copies for friends, and have links to RedHat on my website. I guess I have to goose-step too, eh? I don't think so.

> Oh for God's sake, you can't read
> Slashdot/ZDnet/Wired without RMS reminding you
> about this...believe me, no one is being left at
> the wayside.

What concerns me is the mindless attacks against RMS and the FSF. If my clit gets in a knot everytime someone I respect is getting slammed, well, it's my clit to tie, isn't it?

> You read what I write as some agressive punk
> blindly following some RedHat jihad. I've used
> most all of the dist's at least once. I'm not
> even defending RedHat. You were errant in your
> early criticisms and I merely called you on it.

yes, perhaps I was making statements like these...

(A)
"RedHat's name plastered on the product is NOT
RedHat's fault...you should blame Metrowerks."

(B)
"you're opinion is based in misconception and
ignorance."

(C)
"Your lack of comprehension amazes me, but your
assinine opinion does not."

(D)
"You obviously have no idea what you're talking about"

> PS I'm not a "slasshole" and I would never DoS
> you or anyone else and am not really thrilled
> about being labeled as such. If I disagree with
> you, I'll do so with the written word. No
> offense, but your opinion doesn't mean enough
> to me to do something like that.

uh huh.

This Could Be Bad by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 15:27 · Score: 0

> Name one. Programs may require that you install
> the RPM package, but no such program exists to
> my knowledge that will ONLY run under RedHat's
> distribution of Linux. Put up or shut up,
> asshole. I'm waiting.

oh, the suspense...oh well. as much as i'd like to
oblige you, i have run nothing but redhat for a couple years. it seems to me there are a number of posts in the newsgroups and such about libraries breaking, etc. but i'm not sure i want to answer you on a black and white issue like "put up or shut up, asshole. i'm waiting."

because the real issue from the beginning of this has been : why, if all applications run equally well under all distributions of linux, would so many companies invest solely in RedHat? Or announce products that are blazenly labeled "for RedHat Linux"? the answer is what i've been saying all along -- RedHat is getting too big and powerful. I'd like to see more support for other distros.

> What does "humility" have to do with anything
> and who cares? Why do you bash RedHat for the
> oversight of others?

well, some greek philosophers (and a great many people since then -- oh shit, you're going to ask me to name one) have considered humility to be a pretty noble personality trait among people, but hey, not everyone has to beleive all that. especially when there is money to be made.

> jerks like me have the audacity to tell people
> like you to put your money where your mouth is
> and *surprise* you can't.

i was putting my money where jerks like you said i should put it (RedHat) and now look what's happened! maybe you could be redhat's "Ed Muth"?

> The only person screwing up your sentiments is
> you. I've used *nothing but Linux* for four
> years, moron, I do NOT denigrate GNU. Do you
> even read what I wrote or do you just spout off
> martyr rheotoric endlessly??

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do read it. Then I spout off my martyr rhetoric. And as far as you "not denigrating gnu" here's one, just for you:

"...without RMS, we'd still be at 2.2.5 as Linus would've simply used BSD-style tools. Contrary to popular myth...other tools DID exist before RMS wrote GPL'd ports"

it's a stretch to call this denigration, but it's a rewrite of history circa 1992, as i mentioned in an earlier post.

> How bout you STOP responding to me unless you
> can provide one iota of proof to your pointless
> rants?

You have stated that filesystem differences can stop an executable from running between distros. Like it or not, that implies that a product can be designed such that it will run only on redhat. Furthermore, library versions (obviously) will easily break executables between versions. you know it's trivial to make a RedHat-only binary!

You have also made claims that Metrowerks is worthy of some type of blame, and not RedHat. Yet when you read their site, it clearly states there is an agreement with RedHat. I like RedHat and Metrowerks, but why such a RedHat focus everywhere? It concerns me, that's all there is to it.

How can they be pontless rants, without an iota of proof, when you agree that executables can break (therefore not all linuces are equal) and that, to some extent, you state that Metrowerks is doing something wrong?

Why keep bashing Redhat? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 15:54 · Score: 0

> Oh well, nothing new really. The best way you
> can have fun with these idiots is to ask them to
> back up what they're talking about. As they
> stare slackjawed at the terminal because they
> *can't*, they formulate insults because that's
> all they *can* say at that point.

ah yes...the great Brian-B has enlightened all of us on the proper way of dealing with "rehetoric spewing martyrs" -- the ones who can do nothing but "formulate insults" :

let's take a look at some of Brian's brilliant commentary regarding my opinion that RedHat has grown too strong at the expense of lesser organizations:

> You obviously have no idea what you're talking
> about.

> Your lack of comprehension amazes me, but your
> assinine opinion does not.

> you're opinion is based in misconception and
> ignorance.

> you're a wuss...

> ...complete and utter horseshit.

> Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your
> way out. If only the rest of the clueless would
> follow suit.

> Moron.

> you're not being attacked by me.

...and let's finish off with some heartfelt luvin' from a just plain great guy:

> PS I'm not a "slasshole" and I would never DoS
> you or anyone else and am not really thrilled
> about being labeled as such. If I disagree with
> you, I'll do so with the written word. No
> offense, but your opinion doesn't mean enough to
> me to do something like that.

oh yeah.

WTF is SAP by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 16:06 · Score: 0

i think by combining all that stuff, it makes it easier to do things like integrate business logic into the various processes.

a simple example would be "okay, before a check for greater than $1000 gets cut, it has to be approved by X specific people or their proxies; *but*, for client Z, if it taks more than 3 business days, a fax needs to be sent to X & Y..." and so on.

a lot of the logic used in business is like this, and fairly standard. i think SAP helps with frameworks/wizards to set up more complicated versions of this idea, as well as have a kitchen sink approach that ties all this common stuff together.

Future conflicts over software licensing? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 16:30 · Score: 0

(I have read the other replies mildly and quickly so I will try to make this short, and please ignore any spelling errors!)

I believe that 'JoeBuck' is a little confused.

There are too many variables, but as I like to put it, there is source code and there are "binaries" (compiled code). As far as the "Open Source" world is concerned the "Code" lives on, the binaries change per platform/processor/etc. (a.k.a. dies).

The "code" is ether under a license or not (public domain). Public domain is NOT GPL, and believe it or not Public Domain has and will continue to damn good programmers that release code without licensing it -- Example, code release no license/public domain and somebody else get's it and claims ownership...

The GPL is one of several generic licenses that protects certain rights of the code (and "free" to distribute and to make modifications and etc...). In my opinion GPL is a blue print for those wanting to "release" code but to control it to a minor extent. A license can restrict redistribution, or modifications or require that any modifications be released into the public under the same license (and so on, must read the license)...

The "fine-line" is where the JoeBuck mentioned "proprietary" code. It is a hard line to draw I must/will admit to. But that is what the license is for.

Code that is derived from, or a modification of is often confusing without good licenses. NCSA's httpd license versus Apache's httpd license for example.

The license is used to help define (or refine) words like "free", "proprietary", etc. Basically, ALL complete rights. (legal stuff probably should hire a lawyer eh?)

That reminds me, have you ever stopped and completely read a license from Microsoft? It might scare you!

Releated to NCSA httpd versus Apache's httpd, why does Microsoft Internet Explorer still have (it's buried a bit) credits towards NCSA web brower? Because of the license. Microsoft would rather have (if they haven't already) completely re-write the code from scratch and drop the advertisement, but I think it is still there even in the current IE 5.0.

The fact is that some code is licensed so that the source will always be "free", whereas some licenses allow modifications but don't require "free" distributions (if any). Some licenses restrict modification or reverse engineering of binary only distribution.

I like the Cygnus company! I believe they are a very decent company that is trying (darn those guys ;) to make a decent earning for developing development tools (say that fast three times). They charge for Cygnus debugging and development tools, but you are not required to use them.

Back to the "fine-line"; think of it this way. I would expect that anybody who develops a product or source code using (requardless of price) a development kit / source libraries (Qt, GTK, MS's MFC, etc.) should be able (and does) to own the exclusive rights to that code and can distribute the source or binary under and license if and how they see fit.

A resonable large percentage of those who use "free" tools (or OS's) like the GNU C compiler (or Linux) release the code under a license that is similar to the GPL and garentee as a minimum "free" distribution (less media cost, etc.).

Don't get upset that some folks actually use the "free" tools for profit.

Even if RedHat does (and they currently do, don't forget Metro-X) add "Value" to the already free (and must remain "free", see the license for details) portion of the OS/Linux, people will either buy it or not. If it cost one million dollars to get that "value" added feature and it was licensed to restrict illegal copies / distribution, but there was ABSOLUTELY no other equal to it anywhere, the one million dollars would be worth it to those that need that feature.

Value for some may not be a program at all, like support or books. Do you (in general, not JoeBuck) have a probably paying for this? If so, then develop "it" yourself and if it is good enought that you feel that you should be monetarily rewarded...

The main push behind GPL, GNU, etc. is to keep the OS (Linux in this case) and a set of "Standard" development tools free. The "Standard" just keeps on being expanded and a resonable amount of people (me included) want everything to eventually be low or no cost (sorry won't happen).

You must agree that once something is written on one Unix(tm) platform, since that platform and compilers are usually very similar (if not already running "free" compilers/OS's), then "porting" the code to other platforms is much easier than Windows (ignore for a moment the CygWin32 GNU C compiler and imagine MS Visual C... Blaa!).

Sorry for being lengthy, but profit (earning one that is) is resonable in my book -- and as long as the profit is "nominal" (or less) that's even better!

--Doug (yes I'm lazy and didn't create an account, but my opinion is still free)

P.S.> Uh the magic word is "License". Don't shoot me down too much now! ;)

SAP invests in Red Hat by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 17:01 · Score: 0

Microsoft invests in heroin dealer!

hehehehehehehehe lets run a windows NT based heroin server. wouldnt that be cool?

Big Everywhere by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 18:02 · Score: 0

I have some info from 1996 about platforms
SAP runs on:

OS:
Linux
AIX
Digital UNIX
HP-UX
Reliant
UNIX (Sinix)
Solaris
Windows NT
OS/400
OS/390

Database:
DB2
Informix
Oracle
MS SQL Server
DB2 for OS/400
DB2 for OS/390

Some Customers:
AEG, AGFA, Airbus, BASF, BMW, Bosh, The Coca-Cola Company, Daimler-Benz, Eastman KODAK, Exxon, Lego, Nissan, Microsoft, IBM, Volkswagen, Statoil, Texaco and many many more

By the way, SAP = Smile And Pay

SAP by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 18:36 · Score: 0

Sap is quite big all over the world, same as oracle, often used by big organisations where performance is paramount, i wouldnt read anything into SAP going to Red HAT with an eye to germany.#

Thing

SuSE going public anyway ... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 18:59 · Score: 0

AFAIK SuSE plans to go publicthis year, so they are probably not accepting equity stakes before that.
When they go public, a lot of people/big companies will buy stakes anyway, so the current situation doesn't really matter.

This is good for Linux by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 19:03 · Score: 0

Glad to know this, hopes your company choose Linux eventually. Is there any site where success story can be posted?

LSB by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 19:29 · Score: 0

If this mean anything, I'm quite content if RH is on the same rank as Debian.

As for RH always on the leading edge and doing so keeps them in the press and ahead of their competitors. This is reasonable considering they want to make money and put in hard work. Isn't (fair) competition encouraged by having several distro?

MS SQL Server and SAP R/3 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 22:22 · Score: 0

Just my current knowledge of SAP and MS

1) AFAIK an SAP installation has at least 7000 tables in its DB (usually even more than 10000).
(IMHO this shows very bad relational DB design)

2)SQL Server 6 (later 6.5) had to be "fixed" in order to support SAP, because
- SQL-Server wouldn't support the huge dimensions needed by typical SAP implementations
- The 6 version had so many bugs, even concerning relational queries with foreign keys (not to mention the faulty view handling), that often the physical DB gets trashed on certain queries.
This means that either SAP doesn't make much use of relational functionality and they probably are actually caching (or copying) the DB on their middle tier (which is true AFAIK). The other possibility is M$ fixing their bugs in SQL Server (very unlikely, because just too much).

So in my opinion SQL-Server 6.x sux.
R/3 seems to be still from the age before relational DBMS.

MS SQL Server and SAP R/3 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 23:01 · Score: 0

You have a point there, but they surely don't have any real OO stuff (this would render it totally incompatible to R/2). But their design might still have some OO features, I don't know but I doubt it.
On the other hand an OODBMS isn't capable to support the transaction load of SAP (though, an ORDBMS might do). They have already enough trouble using relational traffic, e.g. they have to divide their ID table (which handles the sequential IDs for business transactions).

I agree to the pleasing part ;) A DB is a convenient way of a quite secure backup of business data...

WTF is SAP by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-31 06:02 · Score: 0

SAP is the company name, their software is called R3 (or R2 on a mainframe). They attempt to write software for any possible business process of any possible company. They are great if you are a giant international conglomerate. They are overkill otherwise.

Press Conference (RH is the MS of OpenSource®) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-31 08:39 · Score: 0

Oracle does currently ONLY sign support contracts for RH based oracle installations due to stability problems (incompatibilities) according to their press conference.

What's so good about commercial Unix? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-07 02:47 · Score: 0

My background is Arix, Sequent, HP-9000s and now OS390 on CMOS. 1 Tandem Himalaya, many little HP9000s and 5 Powderhorn tape silos on site. We run a 1000MIPS floor doing 130K jobs every 24 hours processing ATM transactions and teller machines. Last year's uptime was an ISO9002 documented 99.82%
Linux, although improving, will not handle a heavy, real-time transactional processing load. For redundancy, reliability, mirroring and fault tolerance in 8 logical partitions, nothing will beat big iron mainframe systems. But I can dream, can't I?

Tired of microsoft by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 03:19 · Score: 1

well actuallly I have worked with SAP, the rumor on the street was that their alliance with MS was turning sour for the following reasons:
1- SAP clients do not want NT to run their SAP app
2- The technical relationship was strained
3- Mainly do to the fact that NT is crap anyways

What does SAP mean? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:08 · Score: 1

In German: Systeme Andwendungen und Produkte. Which I think translates to "Systems, Applications and Products".

Michel
(SAP admin...)

So what of it? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 05:23 · Score: 1

Do you know any other distribution that steadfastly GPLs all of their work (where do you think the RPM format does come from), has an entire Lab working on improving Linux for good and so on?

Forget it. Caldera keeps much of its system closed. SuSE does not care much about open source and does not even open-source major system components of theirs like YaST.

RedHat is the only commercial distribution that has a heavy track record of actively catering for free software under Linux.

The only other distribution that would deserve supporting would be Debian, but there is nobody in particular that might accept money for services with regard to Debian.

SuSE has had a bit of involvement in XFree86 development (mainly hiring one person for several months) which is to be applauded, but hardly compares to 6 people working on an entirely free desktop project.

RedHat has serious commitment to free software, and it by now has serious support both by users and moneygivers. For this reason, it makes good business sense to throw even more money at it if one is interested in being guaranteed that Linux will be thriving in a few years. And those people throwing money at RedHat are planning to be investing much more money in the Linux market in development. It makes sense for them to have one fat provider. As long as RedHat keeps its serious dedication to free software, I am not worried.

WTF is SAP by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 07:23 · Score: 1

I looked at the SAP web site, and they obviously have a product of thier own. I'll be damned if I can tell what the hell it does.

Looks like a massive database of useless corprate information... Employee profiles, PO database, junk, and more junk. How is pilling all this junk together suppose to be a good thing? It's hard to even navigate the website to find them claim what the usefull features are...how could I believe thier software would be usefull?

I am happy Red Hat has another investor.... But SAP seems to be a mess... What is suppose to be so great about them, and what is this product of thiers anyhow?

Press Conference (RH is the MS of OpenSource®) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 07:54 · Score: 1

On thursday, 18th there was a press conference at the CeBit '99 in Hannover, Germany beeing helt jointly by Siemens Computer Systems, SAP and SuSE. During the presse conference Siemens and SAP praised the stability and reliability of SuSE Linux for the enterprise.
Siemens wanted (according to the papers given to the journalists) announce SAP R/3 system based on Siemens Primergy Servers and SuSE Linux. SuSE Linux was according to these handouts considered to be the Linux distribution of choice for Siemens. (The main reason was quality of distribution, market share of SuSE in Europe, support of a modern GUI (KDE), language support and more trained personell in Europe)

Siemens already did gain several PAYING customers who wanted a Linux based SAP R/3 solution.

So what was the deal? Well simultaneously was a press conference of Oracle (CeBit is extremly big, about ten times bigger than Comdex, so there are many simultaneous press conferences). Oracle presented its new products running on Linux. Oracle made a strong commitment to Linux while telling the press the following: Oracle is ONLY going to give support for RedHat Linux until further notice.

This news made it to the Siemens/SAP/SuSE press conference (a journalist came over to hall 1 and told the audience about the news). This same journalist questioned SAP about their policy. The SAP spokeman said that SAP wants to sell R/3 on Oracle database servers for Linux and SAP will always support the distribution which Oracle is choosing. On the other hand SAP sees Linux running on multiple hardware platforms to be the save haven for Unix because it is a major pain for SAP to support these many Unix platforms. (NT will not really make it in the high end market.) SAP is not much interested in supporting several flavours of Linux.

The Siemens representative immediately said that Siemens primarily concern is to serve their customers and of course they will only provide vendor certified products (Oracle and SAP will certify their product for running on RedHat Linux).

There was no doubt that the SuSE CEO looked like a pissed poodle

Siemens saved the conference by giving away very nice little Penguin toys.

So what happend from a technical point of view? Well when oracle decided to port their db to Linux they ask the market leader to supply them with the operating system and support. This distribution was of course RedHat (You know how these guys know how to hype vapour?!). Now RedHat played Microsoft tactics. Redhat gave Oracle a special never officially relased version of glibc-2.0.7 derivate which got hacked by RH. Of course Oracle NEVER ran stably on any other glibc based Linux distributions. The oracle engineers told the suits that Oracle db currently only runs reliable on RedHat Linux and that supporting the other distributions is a major pain and probably not worth the effort.

After B. Young from RH heard about this coup he immediately arranged for a flight to Germany. He than met with SAP at the CeBit and arranged the investment deal.....

So why should Oracle and SAP ever think about supporting anything else than Redhat after they invested money in Redhat and what seems to even more important (at least for SAP) they are NOT interested in diversity.

SAP already involved in SuSE and, AWAIK, Debian by Anonymous Coward · 1999-03-30 03:16 · Score: 2

This is just the second step. The main SAP integrators, as least here in Europe, have decided to support SAP mainly on SuSE and, AFAIK, Debian. To be more wide-spreading about Linux distros it is obvious SAP now also supports RedHat.

Um... by davie · 1999-03-30 03:24 · Score: 1

The port was mentioned a few weeks ago, the investment announcement came out either yesterday or today, so it's news (good news).

--
slashdot broke my sig

Big Everywhere by davie · 1999-03-30 03:29 · Score: 1

Uh, all of them? Seriously, their platforms list is at http://www.sap.com/products/techno/t csm_pl.htm.

--
slashdot broke my sig

Maybe SAP is afraid of MS by davie · 1999-03-30 03:49 · Score: 1

You may be on to something there. I recall having read something about Microsoft adding more support for ERP apps a few weeks ago. I found this on the MS site. Looks like they may be "innovating" themselves into the ERP market one step at a time.

--
slashdot broke my sig

SAP already involved in SuSE and, AWAIK, Debian by davie · 1999-03-30 03:57 · Score: 1

The biggest difference between distributions (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is the system library version. Some distributions are still based on libc5, while others (Red Hat, for one) have moved to glibc2. There are other differences that effect the way servers are started, etc. but they aren't that tough to work around, at least from what I've seen so far.

--
slashdot broke my sig

Future conflicts over software licensing? by davie · 1999-03-30 04:13 · Score: 1

Let's wait and see. I think Red Hat are smart enough to know that one of the primary characteristics that made Linux, hence Red Hat, successful was "openness." I'm sure their investors are smart enough not to discount the value of goodwill on the part of the developer/user communities, so they're probably in sync with Red Hat's biz plan. If they blow it and go wildly non-standard, they'll tank and developers will move on to Debian or some other more ideologically pure distribution.

A lot of the Bad Outcomes(TM) from the corporate investments folks are worried about probably won't happen, but we won't know for another year or two. At any rate, Red Hat don't own the code and the investors knew this from the outset, so I'm inclined to believe that this will all work out pretty well over the long haul.

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slashdot broke my sig

note to self: think, then post. by mosch · 1999-03-30 08:50 · Score: 1

You're quite correct... had I taken a moment to proofread my submission I would've realized that I had forgotten the word probably in the sentence which was supposed to read 'More important, in my estimation, than even Oracle, Sybase, etc... though it probably would've been impossible without them.

What I meant to imply was that without other "enterprise" products coming to market it would seem unlikely for SAP to port their suite.

Thank you for clarifying that quite nicely!

I doubt the implied SUSE conspiracy, SAP is huge. by mosch · 1999-03-30 03:07 · Score: 3

SAP, though many of you have not heard of it, is most likely the world's leading ERP software dealer. Many companies have hundred-million dollar contracts regarding SAP, this is an important milestone. More important, in my estimation, than even Oracle, Sybase, etc... though it would've been impossible without them.

Something interesting to note at the moment is the mirroring of the current debates about linux on the desktop with debates about linux as a server about 3 years ago. The arguments are the same, the logic is the same. While I believe it's only a matter of time until Linux lights a fire on the desktop, I believe that our previous focuses, the ones about improving the system, debugging it, and attempting to make the most configurable, robust and stable system will take us even further.

Thank you, SAP, for making an honest evaluation and coming to the obvious (to most slashdotters anyway) conclusions regarding Linux's viability as an enterprise class operating system.

Mission Critical application! by sar · 1999-03-30 04:47 · Score: 1

Wow.. it says they believe its ready for mission critical application. If you read the WindowsNT eula, it states NOT TO USE IN MISSION CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT. Therefore I guess Linux has even one more up on M$, considering it CAN be used in mission critical, while NT cant. Sorta goes along w/ M$'s statement in the eula about "If data is lost because of this application, Microsoft is not responsible." and M$'s statements about who to sue if Linux breaks.

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SAP largest? by Trepidity · 1999-03-30 07:09 · Score: 1

IIRC, I read somewhere that SAP is the largest software company in the world, in terms of revenues. They're the reason that Oracle advertises in their ads that they're the second largest software company.

And, no, the largest is not Microsoft. Microsoft has a lot of desktops, but one or two big-company installations of SAP's software bring them more revenue than all of Microsoft's sales of NT, 98, and IIS combined.

--
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

SAP is big in Germany?? by gavinhall · 1999-03-30 03:56 · Score: 1

Posted by LOTHAR, of the Hill People:

So is David Hasslehoff.

So much Noise...
and yet,
Some Noise is better than others

Big Everywhere by Don+Negro · 1999-03-30 03:04 · Score: 0

SAP is the third largest software company in the world, their ERP runs a LOT of huge companies.

This could mean big-time corporate integration for Linux.

Does anybody know what SAP runs on currently?

--

Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall

Um... by mholve · 1999-03-30 03:03 · Score: 1

SAP is big period. It only comes from Germany...

Besides, wasn't this mentioned/announced a week or two ago?

What does SAP mean? by zonker · 1999-03-30 03:11 · Score: 1

Somewhat off topic, I know, but what does it mean? I'm not really big on databases, so I don't keep track of the names of companies and db lingo... Thanks.

--

Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

So when does behavior become a "plot"? by Drel · 1999-03-30 03:53 · Score: 1

Blackhawk wrote:
If Red Hat and its people are "good and true" members of the community, their behavior will show them to be such, and we'll rightly respect them. If they aren't, a watchful eye now will serve us better than a thousand voices raised in protest later.

RedHat has shown themselves to be "good and true". All of their software development is released as open source, they have paid developers working on GNOME and KDE, and they're continuing to evangelize Linux to the suits, while making huge inroads into making an easy to use for Joe Q. Public distro. They did not, for example, take the easy way out in the desktop game, and "embrace and extend" CDE.

Will people please stop with this raving paranoia and actually wait until there's something to be paranoid about? :-)

SAP already involved in SuSE and, AWAIK, Debian by Drel · 1999-03-30 04:08 · Score: 1

The Linux distributions aren't really one OS; the lowest common denominator is the Linux kernel. All distributions use a mix of the Linux kernel, GNU utilities, (frequently) in-house developed software, and (sometimes) commercial third-party software.

In binary compatibility terms, all x86 Linux distributions can run the same binaries (well, *cough*, we'll leave out little things like a.out, ELF, libc5 and libc6, to keep this simple). However, most have very different filesystem layouts, ways of starting software at boot, etc.

This doesn't even cover the fact that all major distributions use a different packaging scheme (RPM, pkg, deb).

So, the short answer is that there are enough differences between Linux distributions to make ports between distributions, if only to deal with filesystem & package differences, necessary.

Not all is lost, though ;-) These are things that some people are working to standardize in order to offer more base compatibility between distributions.

LSB by mha · 1999-03-30 21:01 · Score: 1

The problem is that no longer 'Linux' is the brand name but 'RedHat' is.

It's bad for competition between distributions. It doesn't matter how good or bad other distributions really are and how much effort the others spend (or don't spend), _the name_ is not RedHat and therefore they will have less and less (ifthis trend continues) chances to compete successfully with RedHat. Who's going to use SAP on another distro than Redhat now? I know of a big company that used another distribution on their systems where they wanted to test SAP R/3 on Linux, since that distribution was the only one to support there hardware (special patch that's only in very recent kernels and therefore on very few boot disks, of course _after_ installation it's always easy) AND (much more important to them than which-distribution-is-the-best gossip) they had direct contact to the makers of the distribution who also supported them very well, but they where forced to use RedHat now although they didn't want to.

The discussion wether it makes sense to support just one distribution instead of doing what Oracle did (saying which kernel+libc version is upported) is senseless, because it doesn't even take place, no chance, because the (more and more successfully developed due to brilliant RedHat marketing) RedHat brand name already decides the issue for them, no technological arguments or competition between distributions necessary.

--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/

Red Hat not at fault, but SuSE is bad by mha · 1999-03-30 23:47 · Score: 1

Ahhh, another typical AC posting... strange that exactly THIS one appears on slashdot again and again... (special mark: the claim about what RMS has said, which is anything but true because he didn't say did, it's not even close) there must be a _very_ lonely and aggressive child somewhere out there using the anonymity of the Internet to hurt others. An answer based on facts and reason seems senseless, unfortunately. Poor track record of SuSE, haha. Look at the kernel sources (but the SuSE people rarely use their SuSE-email address) and lots of other programs out there, and _especially_ look at XFree86, where SuSE has a leading role in development.
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/

Press Conference (RH is the MS of OpenSource®) by mha · 1999-03-30 23:59 · Score: 1

I dohn't understand that part about the special glibc.... Oracle is alive and well on my SuSE based server (I also use RedHat, no preference).
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/

Oracle on Linux FUD by mha · 1999-03-31 00:08 · Score: 1

From the Oracle press release (18 March 99), section "Oracle Support for Linux":

Oracle has formed strategic relationships with major Linux vendors-including Caldera Systems Inc., Pacific HiTech, Penguin Computing, Red Hat Software, S.u.S.E. Linux, and VA Research Linux Systems.
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/

depends on priority by Stu+Charlton · 1999-03-30 06:59 · Score: 1

they bundle proprietary shit because it's good proprietary shit....

it's a good distro overall, and superior to redhat in some aspects, imho. BUT if you dont like the mix of free/proprietary, dont use it

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-Stu

Good for redhat, but sap..uhh..sucks by Stu+Charlton · 1999-03-30 04:26 · Score: 2

I'm glad Redhat's getting all the investment dough, but SuSE really does deserve some too. I just installed 6.0... sweet distro.

And another thing...SAP is big *today*, but I really gotta wonder about the future... I mean, sure it's nice to integrate your line-of-business systems, but A) SAP is clunky and annoying (ask any engineer working on it), B) It doesn't give the business SQUAT for analytical power, C) many businesses are buying it because their current enterprise systems aren't Y2K enabled, and need something to hold the fort.

The *real* stuff is with those OLAP engines & data warehouses... I'd love to see OLAP engines or multidimensional DB's on linux.... even some of the query tools like Cognos' ... (if we want Linux to be on the corporate desktop).

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-Stu

What's so good about commercial Unix? by alexsh · 1999-03-30 06:26 · Score: 1

As someone whose Unix education began with Linux, and ended there, can anyone explain me what are these features that make commecrcial Unices so much better than Linux? The only things I can think of now are journaled FS, ACLs, and high-end SMP scalability, all of which Linux doesn't (yet) have. But what is this "dev elopment environment" you're talking about? And what else do I miss?

SAP already involved in SuSE and, AWAIK, Debian by Jeff+Licquia · 1999-03-30 03:58 · Score: 1

This is mostly true. The main problem right now is the glibc/libc5 issue; glibc binaries won't run on libc5 systems, and libc5 binaries are generally flaky on glibc systems. That's becoming mostly a moot point; Red Hat, Debian, and SuSE are glibc, with Caldera and Slackware rushing madly to get there.

However, most of the commercial vendors only commit to support one distro. So, if the vendor supports Red Hat and you install on Debian, you're on your own. It'll most likely work like a charm, but don't expect SAP (or whoever) to support you.

I think it was Oracle that broke with the pack by supporting a baseline: 2.0.36 kernel and glibc 2.0.7. This allowed the user to pick their favorite distro - even Debian - and get support. This is the best way, IMHO.

The investments are concentrating only on RedHat.. by pberry · 1999-03-30 04:39 · Score: 1

RedHat is certainly the most visible dist out there from a suit perspective. Since this is all so new, expect them to change after they figure out what dists really are ;-)

Hopefully we will also see companies take Oracles lead and have a baseline kernel/C lib instead of a dist name for support (as mentioned in a previous post).

Give these people time... they don't change their way of business very fast. They aren't used to 'OS' patches coming every 2 weeks ;-)

--
-- Are you an EFF member yet?

Test Suite Needed by Josh · 1999-03-30 05:18 · Score: 1

Hopefully the LSB or something like it will refer to a publicly available test suite for Linux distributions. Commercial application developers would ideally support distributions that are in compliance with the test suite and help add to the suite when they see a problem.

MS SQL Server and SAP R/3 by tjansen · 1999-03-30 22:39 · Score: 1

This means that either SAP doesn't make much use of relational functionality and they probably are actually caching (or copying) the DB on their middle tier (which is true AFAIK).
(...)
R/3 seems to be still from the age before relational DBMS.
This could also mean that they have a nice object-oriented database-scheme and map this model onto a relational database to use the rdbm's transaction model and (perhaps more important) to please IT managers who want their data on "a reliable database". OODBMS->RDBMS mappings have the same characteristics.

Maybe SAP is afraid of MS by tjansen · 1999-03-30 03:14 · Score: 2

The reason for this investment could be that SAP is afraid of Microsoft. Microsoft has shown several times that they are able to capture almost every market. And ERP seems to be a very lucrative business so they might do the same thing with SAP that they did with Oracle (SQL Server), Netscape (Internet Explorer & IIS), to Lotus (Exchange) and all the other markets. They capture huge a amount of market shares just by their presence.

Yes! (But only in your paranoid mind) by nekonoir · 1999-03-31 10:33 · Score: 1

Redhat, because they are a business (you know they have wages to pay, shareholders they are responsible to, this is a real world concept(tm)) are unwilling to commit to something that is *PURE VAPOR*.

Describe to me the requirements of LSB compliance.
You cannot. It does not exist. Now if Bob Young was to commit to something that is completely unspecified - dontya think that his employees, shareholders and *customers* would be just a wee bit ticked off at his stupidity.

Example {for the obviously clue challenged pimple-faced Slashdot paranoid troll}: to be a 'genuine GNU loving Linux user' you have to agree to do foo - ohh but we are going to tell you what foo is until 6 months from now. Sign up *NOW*.

Six months later it turns out foo is participation in a Jonesville style statement at 'the evils of proprietary software.'

Dont be an idiot. Dont drink the Kool-Aid. Bob Young is AFAIK no idiot.

{Sigh}

Yes! (But only in your paranoid mind) by nekonoir · 1999-03-31 10:35 · Score: 1

s/are going to tell/are ==not== going to tell/

Dontya hate it when a tyop ruins a good flame...

This Could Be Bad by Donnie+Barnes · 1999-03-30 05:55 · Score: 1

Could you please enlighten me as to just what the hell you're talking about with respect to RPM? RPM 1.x was written in *perl*. By definition it was 'open'. RPM 2.x was re-written in C but was always open as well.

--Donnie

SAP - Linux by Freud · 1999-03-30 03:23 · Score: 1

Since I work at the largest SAP-HR company of holland, i know a bit about SAP. Not much, but a bit..heh..anyway, I am gradually getting linux inside this company, and well, finally SAP is going to Linux. Sap already runs on HPUX, other Unixes, and windows NT.
I will probably get a beta copy of it soon, so if i do, ill test it, and let you all know how it runs.

--
Blah blah blah, etc.

LSB by seva · 1999-03-30 11:21 · Score: 1

Would you people stop talking about secret plots
by RH to take Linux over, it's just stupid.

RH is part of LSB, and when LSB becomes usabale
it won't matter which distribution you have.

/Seva

SAP isn't just big in Germany by Zagadka · 1999-03-30 03:03 · Score: 0

They're big in the US, and elsewhere as well. In fact, according to their website, they're "the world's largest enterprise software
company", whatever that means.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: just because they come from country X, doesn't mean they're only big in country X.

Um... by Andreas+Bombe · 1999-03-30 07:09 · Score: 1

I heard of a Linux port of SAP R/3 quite some time ago (maybe 5 months), but it was an unofficial, unsupported port then (sort of like Quake1/2). It's just that recently SAP decided to make that an official port with company support (after lots of requests from people who want R/3 on Linux).

To correct myself... by Andreas+Bombe · 1999-03-30 07:21 · Score: 1

... or not actually correct, but to give some more data: first rumors of SAP R/3 for Linux were on the newsticker of Heise in october.

See http://www.heise.de/newsticker/search.shtml?T=SAP+ Linux (German text only)

not just big in germany by GodEater · 1999-03-30 17:10 · Score: 1

They HAVE ported to Linux. I posted a story on this yesterday but no one at /. thought it was worth posting.... =)

The link I have is this article

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Gentlemen, start your penguins

Future conflicts over software licensing? by JoeBuck · 1999-03-30 03:48 · Score: 2

Red Hat has attracted lots of outside investment now. Unfortunately, outside investment can lead to outside control if things aren't managed very carefully. SAP is going to be more comfortable with traditional, proprietary software company management than with Red Hat's approach of putting the software they develop under the GPL.

Much the same thing happened to Cygnus. At one time, everything Cygnus did was freeware (GPL, LGPL, etc). As they grew and hired more folks from the traditional software industry, and started thinking about going public, "value added" thinking started to take hold. Now they've got proprietary products and one of their founders, Mike Tiemann, now says that infrastructure should be free but applications should be proprietary.

Red Hat may come under increasing pressure to create proprietary "value-added" pieces (or, as RMS likes to say, "freedom subtracted") to improve their competitive position.

One could argue that this is OK as long as the GPL version of Red Hat is a complete system. But the old-time Red Hat folks might have to fight their new investors to keep this.

Maybe SAP is afraid of MS - food chain theory by PinglePongle · 1999-03-30 20:55 · Score: 1

Boring suit type stuff, but the ERP market is running out of space to grow into. Most of the companies who can afford to spend the kinds of money required for SAP, Baan, Peoplesoft or what have you, have already done so.
So, these guys have to move down the food chain to the smaller companies, who can't afford $2000 a day for an "Implementation Partner" - these firms want to buy something off the shelf and have it working without any hassle.
Now, if I were SAP, I would look at the NT server license, the MS client licenses, the fact that NT (and the other MS software) shifts shape with Service Packs etc. every other day, and the trouble MS is having releasing Win2K, and a bet on linux becomes a lot more attractive - you could literally put Linux, a database and app server pre-configured with "Small business SAP" on a $10K Intel box, ship it, and have a small firm up and running with minimal effort.
Course, this is just hypothesis, and I know more about Peoplesoft than SAP, but these guys are getting squeezed for space to grow, and their shareholders are still expecting nice big revenue figures.

--
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.

ERP as a model for Open Source ? by PinglePongle · 1999-03-30 21:04 · Score: 1

Here is a random, and flame-provoking thought :
In some ways,you could view the ERP market as a weird version of the open source thing -
The ERP vendor (SAP, Peoplesoft, Baan) ships source code to the client (this is the way these things work).
The client either leaves it alone and uses it out of the box, hacks it themselves to do what they want, or employs "partners" to do it for them - essentially a service company making money out of understanding the source code better than the client.
The fact that money changes hands does not really matter, but that the licensing is often restrictive clearly scuppers a direct analogy. However, I am pretty sure that for many implementations, the cost of the software is only a part of the cost - a SAP consultant often runs at around $1000-2000 per day. A lot of companies, both big and small, are making money out of implementing SAP and other ERP packages.
Compare : Linux is open source, and companies like RH or S.u.S.e make money by understanding the source better than their clients, or making it simply more convenient to use/install/configure.
So, who wants to bet on SAP reinventing themselves as a service company, supplying the software for a minimal amount, and concentrating on charging for implementation/customization ?

time to return to the real world.

--
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.

ERP as a model for Open Source ? by PinglePongle · 1999-04-04 11:41 · Score: 1

Well, look at the big players - all have had a pretty rough time on Wall Street recently. And everybody knows they have run out of places to go - the companies who can afford million dollar implementations are just running out.
Peoplesoft ( the company I know best ) is responding partly by creating "partnerships" all over the shop - but is that enough ? Their software is pretty smart, and a lot easier to work with than SAP, but it makes me furious most of the time - so much hard coding, so few common functions, etc. So, perhaps this software is not really worth quite so much - perhaps it is the membership to club that matters ? And how is that different from the "membership" to the linux club ? Oh, except for cost, of course...both require a substantial dedication, a leap of faith, a commitment to stick with the product...

--
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.

This is good for Linux by MntlKaos · 1999-03-30 05:13 · Score: 2

At the Company I work for, we have used SAP for quite a number of years now. The "NEW" direction is to move away from our AIX and Solaris boxes to Windows NT. However, with all the news about Linux, I have been put on a committee to evaluate Linux and its place here in this company. I've already heard today after reading this article, that they are thinking of Linux instead of NT. This is a GOOD thing.

IMHO, any big company exposure to Linux can only help the Linux cause, not hurt it.

I now use my Linux laptop for dial in support instead of having to rely on my Windows box because SAP did not have a port of its GUI. I downloaded it last week and have since installed it and it work great. Just the MSCHAP stuff is giving me fits.

I will reserve comments about RedHat becoming the next Microsoft and SAP suck comments because that is the kind of talk that will hurt the Linux cause. If people view Linux'ers as complete anti-Microsoft bigots, it does hurt Linux in the suits eyes. I'm definitely NOT defending Micro$oft and its tactics, I would just like to help Linux get into companies such as mine. Now that SAP backs Linux, it truly does stand a chance of getting used here.

SAP by daviddennis · 1999-03-30 06:40 · Score: 1

Could someone do me a favour and describe what SAP does that's so special?

I mean, whenever I hear SAP, I hear:

It powers an entire enterprise
It's very customizable
It's very hard to learn and use
It costs boatloads of money

So why not just hire in-house programmers to do a totally customized solution instead? With the prices they charge, you could certainly do a lot.

D
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Maybe SAP is afraid of MS by geocajun · 1999-03-30 03:38 · Score: 1

this isn't really relavent to the story but I am just so very happy that ms hasn't been able to make intuit fold yet =o)
I am still waiting for the big "quicken for linux" story. The real one this time....

Good News for PC Vendors, Bad News for IBM and Sun by IntlHarvester · 1999-03-30 05:01 · Score: 2

Right now, if you were to look at the applications that move hardware for the big mini/mainframe vendors such as IBM, Sun, and HP, I would guess that way up on the list is ERP packages like SAP, Baan, and JC Edwards as well as PeopleSoft.

Sure all of these packages theoretically run on NT, but right now that's sorta the Loss Leader to get the customers in the door. Once there, they figure pretty quickly that NT (and MS SQL) is not up to the task.

Enter Linux - Possibly a way to get these huge applications to run on relatively cheap hardware. The big win is going to be for Compaq and Dell, and the folks who can get the integration services done.

Of course, a couple years down the road, when IA64 is established, there's going to be little or no reason to run these big apps on Solaris/IA64 or HP-UX/IA64 versus Linux/IA64. The big minicomputer vendors are running head on into the commodtized hardware market, where there's a perfectly good and free OS waiting for them. It's going to be interesting to see if they can stay in business.
--

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.

SAP and Redhat by josepha48 · 1999-03-30 03:06 · Score: 1

Well congradulations Redhat.

I hope you will continue to maintian your ftp distributions as you have in the past.

I have tried SuSE and although YaST is the best setup tol around, there 6.0 Distribution is slower than Redhat's 5.1 Distro, on the same machine(Mine!). The simple fact is the best OS will win. I am beginning to see that Redhat is the one, and why. As other companies are also seeing this. I have tried several other distros, and they all ahve there plusses, but Redhat simple ahs more backing. Unlike M$ thou Redhat is not threatening other companies into backing them.

keep it up.

--

Only 'flamers' flame!

you don't ahve a clue do you? by josepha48 · 1999-03-30 09:31 · Score: 1

Look at the dependacies of RH and SuSE they are not the same.... SuSE still links many packages with tcl7.6 & tk 4.2 while RH has done away with that. Also SuSE does more Static linking of binaries, than RH. I am talking a noticable 'end user' difference where apps actually 'feel' slower. It has nothing to do with the kernel! you need to really get into the various distributions and see what they ar all about before you can bash someone for what they have noticed. Go to Linux mall and get a RH Cdrom and a SuSE 1.89 cdorm SuSE gives an incomplete "Evaluation" cdrom. Then start looking at the deps of the rpms in the 2 cdrom.. you will startt to see the light.. then look at where the executables are stored, kde on SuSE is in /opt/kde with /opt/netscape, then look at where RH stores its Netscape exe.. /usr/X11R6/bin maybe???? They are different !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--

Only 'flamers' flame!

not just big in germany by pluteus_larva · 1999-03-30 03:01 · Score: 2

SAP isn't just big in Germany, you know. It's the number one ERP developer worldwide. Everything is going to SAP, there's tons of money falling into SAP development, and if SAP were actually to port to Linux, it would be a real coup.

--

--
Wage Slave Journal

Not all wine & roses at SAP. by swb · 1999-03-30 06:17 · Score: 1

The trade rags have been saying that ERP/corporate system spending is down generally, as 99 capital expenditure dollars are being spent on fixing Y2K cruft, not on new system investments.

This probably hurts SAP disproportionately.

Future conflicts over software licensing? by Maciej+Stachowiak · 1999-03-30 04:42 · Score: 1

Maybe I'm misparsing your message, but it sounds like you are saying that Michael Tiemann's comments about infrastructure vs. applications are a very bad thing. However, you work for a proprietary software company yourself (not that this is a shameful thing, I do too - but it seems unfair to hold Cygnus to a higher standard).

As for Red Hat being controlled by outside investors, I think the founders are being _very_ careful to sell only small minority stakes. Both RH and the investors are looking at these investments as more meaningful in strategic and political terms than in strictly financial terms.

Incidentally, I think the Cygnus pendulum is swinging back towards free software somewhat - I remember there were a few years when they did their best to expunge their web site and marketing materials of any reference to the fact that their code was free. Now they play up the open source angle in almost every press release.

MS vs. Oracle by pwb · 1999-03-30 05:30 · Score: 1

I agree that MS hasn't done much against Oracle. But remember most MS products suck, and that hasn't stopped them before.

I see Oracle on Linux eventually being the defacto small to medium sized database platform. The stability of SQL server and Win-NT make this very likely. We can only hope.

Not all wine & roses at SAP. by sammy+baby · 1999-03-30 05:28 · Score: 1

You're right about SAP being big-big-big, but that doesn't mean that SAP is doing as well as you'd think. Take a look at their stock prices over the last 52 weeks. It's fallen by more than half over that period. (As of today, 3/30/1998, anyway.)

So when does behavior become a "plot"? by BlackHawk · 1999-03-30 03:33 · Score: 1

True, SAP is multinational, and Red Hat does have the momentum, in spite of Caldera's claim to being more "corporate-oriented." The truth is, there are more apps being written primarily to Red Hat. This is very much in keeping with what we discussed a few days ago on Slashdot regarding Red Hat's aims for the market and the community.

But I would like to ask at what point does an entity's behavior become "a plot"? When do we state, "Alright, we have enough examples of behavior to make a statement about the pattern of behavior"?

I don't pretend to know what is in the collective mind of Red Hat. And frankly, I like Red Hat. The distro I'm experimenting with is Mandrake, based on Red Hat. But we do need to watch the players in the early game, as we are now in. Their moves will dictate the shape of the mid-game. And I wonder what might have been had there been some serious scrutiny of MS in their early days. Would we now be going through the DOJ trial, the "MS Tax" on new computers?

If it seems that we're being harsh on Red Hat, well, we have the example of Microsoft to be wary of. If Red Hat and its people are "good and true" members of the community, their behavior will show them to be such, and we'll rightly respect them. If they aren't, a watchful eye now will serve us better than a thousand voices raised in protest later.

--

Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha

Good for redhat, but sap..uhh..sucks by lazzz · 1999-03-30 05:11 · Score: 1

I agree it is good that linux is getting support wether it's RH,Debian or other distro's. RH is not my choice though you can make any linux work for you if you have the time to work with it. The SuSE 6.0 distrobution is the best I've seen yet and will be using it for a while. I haven't tried debian but maybe L8R. Live Long And Linux
LAZZZ

The investments are concentrating only on RedHat.. by BassZlat · 1999-03-30 03:44 · Score: 1

I remember I was very happy back in october (november?) when I read at /. about the netscape and intel investment, so happy that I found it unbelievable. Things have changed a lot since then, and this pattern has repeated several times.

The news about linux gaining momentum were also wonderful, but the futher investments in RedHat by IBM, HP, etc.. and now SAP do worry me, and they should worry you too. Selling out and betraying the open source spirit is completely out of question, but this neglection of the other distributions so openly displayed by the investors is more than worrying. Don't get me wrong - I like RedHat and have always used it, but:
if you want to buy server from Dell, HP, Compaq, IBM,SAP, even Sun and you want linux, all that you'll get will be redhat. Since these companies are the ones that shape the corporate market anyway, the possibility of those making the decisions for big corporations to remain completely ignorant about the great diversity of distributions, and which is worse, they will become ignorant about the possibility of compiling and building a linux system from the scratch. Since the corporate market shapes somewhat the overall direction of software progress, this situation might have some unpleasant long term consequences.

I do hope, however, that redhat will be succesful in meeting the needs of that market and not forget that it is one of several distributions.

--
Don't go silently into that peaceful night

not just big in germany by W · 1999-03-30 05:22 · Score: 1

what are you smoking? I like Linux just fine, but
for full scale dev env it's not even in same
ballpark as DUNIX, Solaris or HP, I'll let AIX
out, since I have not used it in a long time, and
wasn't impressed when I did. Please - buy a clue

Maybe SAP is afraid of MS by W · 1999-03-30 05:26 · Score: 1

Afraid of M$, probably, but m$ hasn't taken a huge
cut of the DB market, and they never will SQL Server sucks !

The investments are concentrating only on RedHat.. by W · 1999-03-30 05:29 · Score: 1

wrong! Linux runs on Compaq with several different
flavours besides Red Hat, get your facts straight!

Not a problem by Arandir · 1999-03-30 04:02 · Score: 1

It's only a matter of time before HP, Compag, Dell, etc., come to an understanding of Linux. When they do, you will see these manufacturers preloading their own custom distributions.

--
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned

Isn't SAP the software that... by Arandir · 1999-03-30 04:10 · Score: 1

We use SAP at my work. The suit types adore it. The engineers hate it. From what I understand, this is true everywhere it is used.

Every seen a grown hacker cry while using SAP? I have, and it's not a pretty site. It's a twist on FIFO. First in, first to be lost in a bewildering query mechanism.

--
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned

The community should insist on LSB by quax · 1999-03-30 17:04 · Score: 1

I talked to a SuSE employee at the CeBit. They plan to go public soon.

For what it is worth he told me that SuSE is committed to LSB but he said he has his doubts when it comes to RH's commitment. I mentioned to him that relying on revenues from distros is not a healthy profit strategy and he agreed saying that this part of the revenue is already shrinking and the service part growing.

To drive the point home I told him that I might switch to Debian, because I want to comfortably update via ftp. He was meentioning that I could do that with SuSE, but once I tried it with a pre-SuSE 6.0 and killed my system. So I rather give Debian a shot now that I feel a little bit more comfortable in administring my own Linux (Note: I am using it for more than 3 years now).

So if anybody wants to invest in a public traded Linux distro company, check out when SuSE is doing their IPO. I assume they will have an IPO at the "Neuer Markt" stock exchange in Frankfurt. An electronic stock exchange designed comparable to NASDAQ.

The European stock exchanges are going to be consolidated into one electronic market soon, but already a competent bank should be able to get your stock traded in Euro at the "Neuer Markt" exchange.

Hey, you don't even have to send me money for this investment tip ;-) Take it from a "suit" who works for free occasionally.

SAP R/3 on Linux vs. NT by HvK · 1999-03-30 18:22 · Score: 1

The thing that makes me gladdest to hear about this is that now people will have a chance to run SAP on an imminently scalable platform (various clustering solutions) that is easily remote-administerable. I have watched people trying to deal with huge NT server farms and it was a nightmare! I think they're going to be extremely glad to do that under an OS that is designed to be used remotely.

Herbert von Kammerstein

--
Herbert von Kammerstein
Nosferatu Hacker extraordinaire! Well, I wish, anyways... ;]

Not impossible without database support for Linux by jnolan · 1999-03-30 06:30 · Score: 1

SAP R/3 on Linux does not require database support for Linux... the app server is on Linux while the db server could be on anything from SQL Server on NT to DB2 on a 390.

SAP ships source code to all customers by jnolan · 1999-03-30 06:40 · Score: 1

Distinguish between proprietary in the sense of someone owning it and proprietary in the sense of someone hiding it.

SAP already ships source code to all of it's customers, along with the ability to use SAP development tools or someone elses to modify it as they wish. If SAP customers wish to share their extensions or modifications, they are fully able to do that.

The fact still remains that someone has to pay for right to benefit from the application. This is not an OS, not a utility, but a mission critical application platform used to run large businesses. That software is used to create efficiencies and ultimately competitive advantages that realize those companies financial benefit.

Questions by jnolan · 1999-03-30 08:01 · Score: 1

1. probably not
2. Through each investment round the valuation of the company grows (hopefully). The previous investors can contribute in subsequent rounds pro rata to preserve their share, or not and have their share diluted. When RH, or any company, files to go public with their S1 you can see who owns what.
3. Yes it is possible, but you have to be able to articulate what you are going to do for the company you are investing in. Companies do not just take money that is offered to them, they have to determine how active the potential investor will be and what value add they will contribute.
3a. Is corporate ownership bad?
3b. Absolutely

check out http://www.sap.com/enjoy/ by jnolan · 1999-03-30 09:57 · Score: 1

for a look at the new UI initiative

Largest enterprise app vendor by jnolan · 1999-03-30 10:07 · Score: 1

At over US$5 billion in revenue, SAP is the largest enterprise application vendor worldwide. Oracle is larger in total revenue, but their application business is less than $1b. Microsoft is the largest software vendor worldwide in terms of total software sales. IBM's software business is significantly large as well, but you have to break out the numbers to rank it.

ERP as a model for Open Source ? by jnolan · 1999-03-31 04:54 · Score: 1

implementation costs typically run 3-4x the software license cost. The problem for app vendors, like SAP, is that Wall St. looks to top line license revenue growth as the benchmark. Service revenue is lower margin than licenses. Furthermore, if you grow service revenue you can create channel conflict with the integrators.

Questions by jnolan · 1999-03-31 06:36 · Score: 1

The management, board of directors, investors and potential investors know how much is invested - it's in the capitalization table that is provided with the term sheet, purchase docs and other material.

The investment community doesn't make token investments, we put money to work to earn a significant return on investment. The hard truth is that it's not worth the time to invest for trivial percentages when other opportunities are available - it just takes too much time and effort.

SAP already involved in SuSE and, AWAIK, Debian by kmj9907 · 1999-03-30 03:47 · Score: 2

I'm relatively new to linux, so slap me if I seem out of line, but isn't one of the main points of linux that you can write things for linux, and you don't have to port to each different distribution? If a program written for one distro won't work with another, then how exactly are they the same OS?

Thanks.

kmj

--

kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.

sap = big everywhere by mwillis · 1999-03-30 03:04 · Score: 2

SAP is a big deal everywhere, not just Germany. They obviously like Red Hat's business side. This isn't some secret plot by RH to kill SuSE. SAP is new to linux so it is going with the market leader.

not just big in germany by Mr+T · 1999-03-30 03:52 · Score: 1

This is an ugly market that I think will jade most of the linux and OSS community but this is great news. This is the million dollar app business, much worse than how we visualize MS... THis is the old school "IBM in the 60's" type business. SAP has the killer apps for enterprises right now, if you buy a 390, you generally put SAP on it. It runs on a ton of lower end equipment too and linux should be on that list. If world domination is the plan, then this is a key step in it.

FWIW, if you're running UNIX, linux is just a comfortable and pleasant unix to run. It's much more usable than AIX, HPUX, DecUNIX, Solaris, etc.. The GNU tools make a lot of difference. I can't think of too many reasons why you wouldn't want to run linux if you're a unix user. The only real gaps in linux coverage (aside from support for commercial unix apps, which is going away) is the highend but most people don't have highend stuff. Typically SAP runs on a mid range UNIX workstation (I'm pretty sure that's what most r3 installs are on) so if that is a $50,000 workstation, ~$5,000 of that is in the OS. Replace it with linux and you get a better environment and you knock a substantial amount off the price. SAP certainly knows this, their UNIX developers have experienced it first hand becuase if they are like any other shop, half of them have linux at home.

Like it or not, Linux is going to be the enterprise platform of the 2000's, it's too good, and too cheap. Whether or not any of us like enterprise computing is another matter..

--
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..

SAP big in Germany? the SuSe connection? by noom · 1999-03-30 05:50 · Score: 1

SAP is the second Largest Software company in the world, right behind IBM

Umm... Maybe I've missed something, but I could have sworn that Microsoft was the largest software company in the world. SAP *used* to be no. 2, but (at least according to their TV adds) I think that Oracle has the number 2 spot now. That would put SAP at number three, if even that high.

And IBM? I really don't know where they fall in the Top Ten List of software companies. I'll check with Letterman...

not just big in germany by LucaL · 1999-03-30 03:05 · Score: 1

They have already started porting their suite of applications. I imagine also the backend. This is particularly important because last year it seemed that an "iron alliance" was in the making between SAP and Microsoft to push NT. I guess SAP is afraid of WIN2K.

SAP by Teelo · 1999-03-30 07:28 · Score: 1

Yep, you could certainly do a lot with the money, but nevertheless you could not write a fairly complete, although difficult, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). SAP is in the market of ERP since more than ten years, and they did acquire some expertise in that field. It is definitely much cheaper to go with SAP R/3 than writing and maintaining and customizing and extending your own system...

Hmmm, by Tony-A · 1999-03-30 15:03 · Score: 1

Consider this possibility. IBM, Oracle, SAP et al never see a dime return on their investment in Red Hat. Any direct return on their investment would be insignificant on their bottom line. If they are able to depend on a stable, supported, and supportable OS, the impact on their bottom line can be enormous. This looks a bit like IBM, Oracle, SAP et al doing to Microsoft what Microsoft did to Netscape. Red Hat is not a non-profit organization, at least not yet, but it does act somewhat like one. At any rate it is *not* a get-rich-quick scheme.
The only problem I can see with Open Source, Free Source, or whatever you call it, is how to fund it. These big boys may have figured out that it is to their advantage that it *be* funded, and decided to chip in. There is a lot of work still to be done, methinks, dull, boring and expensive.
Think of Red Hat as carrying the Linux flag for the benefit of corporate management, PHBs, and suits. The "fragmentation" of un*x is more apparent than real, but will bother corporate types. (Compare libc versions to DLL versions -- now exactly *which* version of windows are you running? If you need incompatible versions running together, nothing like statically linked libraries -- do I have that right?)
Red Hat becoming another M$? With Cheapbytes, "knock-off" distros, and free downloads, no way. Besides, the big boys would *not* like it.
One mild caution. This cannot be a "change of heart" of the big boys. I cannot imagine the big boys willingly supporting a "hacker's OS". They are not interested in free (speech *or* beer). However, there is a large common ground in having a base level that is *not* wonky, *not* flakey, *is* well known and understood. If it is not messed up too badly, everybody (except Microsoft) gains.
Yep, these are exciting times.

What's so good about commercial Unix? by Tony-A · 1999-03-30 16:36 · Score: 1

OK, I'll try a shot at putting this into perspective. This is a bit exagerated for effect. This is coming from second and third generation mainframe experience.
With mainframes, or other big iron, the situation is "little computer, big problem", so you throw everything you can afford at it.
With PCs, the situation is "big computer, little problem", more like a toy.
Current PCs have much more power than second generation mainframes, but they do not come close to doing what was done on those second generation mainframes.
Mainframes attract what you *must* do. You have to solve all the problems.
PCs attract what you *want* to do. You solve a few easy or interesting problems.
This doesn't automatically make a mainframe OS better or more reliable, but there is a suble distinction in what is a bug and what is an unacceptable bug. Above all, a mainframe OS must perform under load, heavy load. With a PC, the idea of load doesn't really come up. There are real differences and apparent differences and hidden differences, with no good way to sort them out. These differences cannot be seen from the PC side. They exist in places where PCs don't have places. It is more subtle than features. NT has features, ... well the appearance of features.
The commercial Unices are pretty well proven under load. Linux is unproven, but that situation is changing. Beowulf proved a few things.
Hope this helps a bit. Hang on to your hat, red or otherwise, these are interesting times.

Why keep bashing Redhat? by Tony-A · 1999-03-30 19:44 · Score: 1

Amen from the chorus.
Red Hat is taking the point, the cutting (bleeding?) edge. (but not as bloody as NT ;-)
Red Hat is marketing Linux to the suits.
World Domination? Looks more and more plausible, but it is *NOT* a Red Hat domination. It is not a Debian domination. It is not a FreeBSD domination. It a domination of computers, of computers that work, of computers that do what they are supposed to do. It is a domination of computer by mankind, not the other way around.
Maybe I'm dreaming, or hoping, but this keeps looking better and better.

What's so good about commercial Unix? by denissmith · 1999-03-31 10:14 · Score: 1

In addition to what Tony-A has to say, in large enterprises with ERP and Database Transaction servers there are two primary considerations- transaction speed and scalability. The proprietary Unix systems are usually built on propietary hardware ( Solaris being the major exception). These systems scale to a large number of processors ( 128 processors for HP-Unix, Solaris, and SGI). They often have higher bandwidth capabilities ( Gigabytes/sec throughput). They have tremendous reliability and combine that with huge numbers of transactions per second. They are still not as reliable, nor as fast, as the mainframes- though they are improving quickly.

--
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?

Press Conference (RH is the MS of OpenSource®) by remande · 1999-03-31 00:17 · Score: 1

I read the Compaq Vs. RH story, and the MS-behavior is not obvious to me. Okay, so they don't feel that support for Alpha is important. Note that they aren't dropping the platform entirely. Even if they did, Compaq could start up their own distribution.

Nowhere in that story do I see Red Hat threatening anyone who deals with competitors. Compaq is using multiple Linux distributions. Compaq/Red Hat relationships are strained. No cause and effect are implied.

Most importantly, Red Hat _can't_ ruin Compaq's day. In the worst-case scenario, Red Hat pulls every scrap of Alpha code from its next distribution. Compaq can either branch off from an older RH, can go with a distribution that supports Alpha, or go into the Linux distribution biz themselves. They have more than enough Unix engineers for that!

With MS, the problem is that you have no option. They can cut you off, and you are no longer in the Windows computing biz. Nobody can cut anybody off from the Linux biz, even Red Hat.

--

--The basis of all love is respect

This Could Be Bad by brian-b · 1999-03-30 05:17 · Score: 1

1) What is proprietary to redhat that will keep
codewarrior from running on any other dist. of linux since everything they do is 100% open source??

2) Use whatever distribution you like, but without
RMS, we'd still be at 2.2.5 as Linus would've simply used BSD-style tools. Contrary to popular
myth...other tools DID exist before RMS wrote GPL'd ports.

3) You obviously have no idea what you're talking about and you're only serving up more FUD that has no place here. RedHat is not the enemy.

This Could Be Bad by brian-b · 1999-03-30 08:48 · Score: 1

First, Linux is linux is linux. Regardless of the
distribution. If you don't understand that, then stop reading and reboot into Windows right now.

RedHat's name plastered on the product is NOT RedHat's fault...you should blame Metrowerks. But no, your kind assumes that you should label RedHat as "evil" since they make a profit from Linux.

Nevermind they've not done anything anti-competitive and they give away source to the code they pay people to write, you apparently don't like them for being successful.

Fine. Don't use their distribution.

However, you're not being attacked by me.

You prove that,
while you have concerns, you don't see the big
picture. It is impossible for a 100% open source
company that gives everything it does back to the community to be another Microsoft. It cannot happen. If other companies associate Linux with RedHat, so be it, but it's not RedHat's fault nor should they be blamed.
Your lack of comprehension amazes me, but your assinine opinion does not.

I also do not reject the contributions of the GNU project (I've run linux for four years exclusively). However, I could've run BSD and gotten a very nice Un*x clone that is *not* GPL'd if I chose to.

You're entitled to your opinions, but spreading general FUD (RedHat is gonna be another Microsoft! RedHat is evil for making any money!) is wrong, pointless, and not very smart.

Don't get mad at the community for pointing out
that you're opinion is based in misconception and
ignorance.

The End.

This Could Be Bad by brian-b · 1999-03-30 09:08 · Score: 1

I just couldn't let this go...

> I'm sure you hate the term "Gnu/Linux" -- that
> would be bad, eh? But perhaps "Redhat Linux" is > perfectly acceptable?? Hypocrites!

No, I say Linux. If anyone else says GNU/Linux,
Debian Linux, Slackware Linux, or I couldn't care less. I realize something you don't; */Linux==LINUX.

You say "RedHat, and it's supporters, have apparently become GNU/FSF detractors and I will not longer tolerate that." Where is your proof???
They GPL EVERYTHING THEY DO. Good grief, Charlie
Brown, you've got nothing to base this on!! Show me something they've written that they haven't GPL'd and I'll eat my (Red) hat.

> I do post anonymously, since I fear attacks from > vehement people like yourself.

Attacks == People with a clue pointing out that
I'm unable to substantiate my opinions with fact.
I don't blame you; I wouldn't want my name on what you've posted either.

Ok, now I'm done.

RPM comment out of line. by brian-b · 1999-03-30 09:13 · Score: 1

Well he says "I can't find support for my statement about RPM anywhere in the news archives. So, I will say that it must have been something else."

Yeah, complete and utter horseshit.

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out. If only the rest of the clueless would follow suit.

This Could Be Bad by brian-b · 1999-03-30 12:17 · Score: 1

> Is this your ass taking to your head, Brian?

Oh? You DIDN'T leave as promised...well then, let's continue. I would refer to you by name, but then again you're a wuss...

> Untrue. It's a fact; some progs will not run on > anything but RedHat.

Name one. Programs may require that you install
the RPM package, but no such program exists to my knowledge that will ONLY run under RedHat's distribution of Linux. Put up or shut up, asshole. I'm waiting.

> All I am saying is that RedHat gets the glory while others get the shaft. Where is the humility?

What does "humility" have to do with anything and who cares? Why do you bash RedHat for the oversight of others?

> i can't remember the details, but it would be useless to show evidence to someone like you, anyway.

Right, right...Yeah, jerks like me have the audacity to tell people like you to put your money where your mouth is and *surprise* you can't.

> like many others here, you denigrate fsf/gnu, and you constantly twist my words.

The only person screwing up your sentiments is you. I've used *nothing but Linux* for four years, moron, I do NOT denigrate GNU. Do you even read what I wrote or do you just spout off martyr rheotoric endlessly??

How bout you STOP responding to me unless you can provide one iota of proof to your pointless rants?

RPM comment out of line. by brian-b · 1999-03-30 12:22 · Score: 1

> oh yeah -- you're not attacking me. I looked, I can't find it. Fuck you, Brian

OOOOOH! That hurt. Heh. Well, I'm glad you turned to your limited vocabulary rather than backup what you were talking about with PROOF. Look a little harder if you like. Won't matter. You're wrong.

I *know* you don't know what you're talking about...I just wanna hear you *say* it.

Heh. Moron.

Why keep bashing Redhat? by brian-b · 1999-03-30 12:27 · Score: 1

Amen, brother. You hit the nail on the head.

Unfortunately, as you've seen, there are those among us who ...

1) Don't remember all the infighting that did the unices in the first time around.

2) Have watched too much X-Files and are looking for a new conspiracy theory to replace Microsoft since they're not gonna be as high on the list after the butt-whipping from the DoJ.

Oh well, nothing new really. The best way you can have fun with these idiots is to ask them to back up what they're talking about. As they stare slackjawed at the terminal because they *can't*, they formulate insults because that's all they *can* say at that point.

This Could Be Bad by brian-b · 1999-03-30 12:55 · Score: 1

> What are you talking about? There's GNU, Suse, RedHat, Mandrake, etc. Most have utilities that do > not run on the others.

You said there is software that runs only on RedHat and nowhere else. I'm still waiting to find out what this mystery program is.

> Many have filesystem layouts that differ. Maybe > something like the LSB could help -- oops, RedHat isn't sure they want to support that.

That doesn't mean a program won't run on some other dist. of Linux ... one just has to *gasp* be knowledgable enough to install it. Keep trying.

> Do you speak officially for RedHat or Metrowerks?

And your point would be....??

> ...if all Linuces are the same, maybe it shouldn't say "RedHAt", and have the "GNU Edition" -- which cost $99 -- ship free with RedHat products.

A business decision. What's wrong with that? Why don't we ever hear people complaining about Caldera? They pack tons of proprietary crap in their dist. Oh, because they're never in the news.

> I have never called RedHat evil, but I am concerned that they are having a lot of success without giving a lot of credit where credit is due. I suspect FSF/Gnu/RMS and others are being given short shrift when they made, and continue to make, real and substantial contributions to Linux.

What would you have them do? What would be appropriate in your opinion?

> I'm just saying that these constant "RedHat"
announcements seem unfair, and whether or not anyone else agrees, I'm about ready to jump ship on RedHat.

What does fairness have to do with anything? RMS could go into business tomorrow selling a Linux dist. with GNU stamped up and down all over it.
Why doesn't he, do you think?

> I agree with you that people can pick and use their own distro, but it seems like you think I should just shut up and go away.

No, I simply want people like you to "give credit where credit is due". RedHat has kept the GNOME project alive and contributed to it in spades. RedHat appealed to Adaptec to release actual low-level support rather than reverse engineering.
RedHat hasn't done anything bad yet and your original post implied as much. After much beratement, you've filtered out the extraneous and seem to be saying, "RedHat getting all this attention seems Microsoft'ish and may not credit all those involved."

Fair enough. If that's all you're saying. I still don't compeletely agree, but at least it's a start.

However, you shouldn't get your clit in a knot because I asked you to ante up on your other claims.

> I never said it was wrong for them to make money. But how many people, who helped them up, are being left in the wake?

Oh for God's sake, you can't read Slashdot/ZDnet/Wired without RMS reminding you about this...believe me, no one is being left at the wayside.

You read what I write as some agressive punk blindly following some RedHat jihad. I've used most all of the dist's at least once. I'm not even defending RedHat. You were errant in your early criticisms and I merely called you on it.

PS I'm not a "slasshole" and I would never DoS you
or anyone else and am not really thrilled about being labeled as such. If I disagree with you, I'll do so with the written word. No offense, but your opinion doesn't mean enough to me to do something like that.

Why keep bashing Redhat? by brian-b · 1999-03-31 03:32 · Score: 1

Thanks for leaving out where I proved you were full of shit and couldn't prove anything.

Real objective, but I would expect no less from an unbiased, ANONYMOUS guy like yourself.

Big Everywhere by Znork · 1999-03-30 05:30 · Score: 1

SAP runs on most commercial unix platforms, mainframes, and some obscure OS from Redmond for demo purposes.

It's a bitch to setup, but wouldnt it be a cool replacement for Quicken under Linux? (heeh)

SAP big in Germany? the SuSe connection? by rking · 1999-03-30 06:31 · Score: 1

What you've missed, I would think is that the statement is almost meaningless unless you state what criteria is being used to compare them.

Biggest by unit sales, biggest by total value of sales, biggest by profits, biggest by net assets, biggest by number of employees, biggest by square footage of premises, biggest by combined shoe sizes of employees....

SAP's investment in RH by pepsi-guy · 1999-03-30 03:44 · Score: 1

Maybe they're looking at all the other companies who've already thrown money at RedHat. IBM is still the biggest mover and shaker when it comes to IT.

Isn't SAP the software that... by merlix · 1999-03-30 05:41 · Score: 1

That's certainly an odd 'understanding' you have there. As an engineer/hacker through and through, my opinion is the opposite, and so is that of all my colleagues. Look at SAP (R/2 or R/3) from a technical standpoint (architecture, technical design, realisation) and you can't deny it's a very well engineered system-/application software.

Perhaps as a user ("we use SAP at my work") your view is different.

Hackers crying while using SAP? Maybe they didn't know what they were doing. Change your hackers. ;-)

dj adams

Not all wine & roses at SAP. by hope1ess · 1999-03-30 06:42 · Score: 1

Yup...many big SAP clients spend big bucks bringing them in, then spend bigger bucks sending them back out the door. Me thinks they have a better sales staff, than coders...

Press Conference (RH is the MS of OpenSource®) by dand · 1999-03-30 11:03 · Score: 1

So why should Oracle and SAP ever think about supporting anything else
than Redhat after they invested money in Redhat and what seems to even
more important (at least for SAP) they are NOT interested in diversity

At least for the Linux community at SAP, I can hardly imagine that they are going to support _only_ RH.

The whole developement took place in the employees free time (like staroffice) and if they (the developers) want to support SuSE or whatever theyll do so.

The SAP-software developement policy is more or less a laissez-faire style model, with a good deal of freedom for their programmers.

163 comments