Open Letter to Red Hat

tilly writes "The recent article, An Open Business Plan for Red Hat, Inc. (which appeared on /. as What if Red Hat Bought SCO) has inspired an interesting follow-up article on Freshmeat. "

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat. Not that makes any difference in what I post, but, hey, I figured you'd wanna know.

Comments

Acting like a 18-billion dollar company

[Skyshadow]

If Red Hat wants to keep their stock price up, they've got to start acting like the 500-pound gorilla that Wall Street obviously thinks they are.

Yes, this means acquisitions. I like the Borland idea -- sure they make other products, but who doesn't? In any event, well-planned and managed acquisitions are a great way to grow the business and have it not seem like your company is standing still. Of course, a poorly-handled acquisition (SGI's handling of the Cray situation stands out in my mind) can be fatal to your company, so make sure you get some serious business experts in line before going this route.

I'm actually beginning to think that SGI might not be such a bad target -- their stock price is relatively low, the morale of their shareholders has got to be at an all-time low after Rick's defection. If Red Hat were to buy SGI (and complete the spin-off of the Cray and NT lines to narrow its focus a bit), they'd gain access to all the goodies IRIX has to offer, a huge foot in the door of the server market (sure, they'd have to keep shipping with IRIX for a few years), and the chance to port some neat-o "wow" type packages to Linux.

The drawback is that Red Hat probably doesn't want to move into the hardware market as well -- this is likely a Good Thing(tm). Of course, my logic still holds for VA Systems once they're worth a mint...

----

Well, I guess I'll repeat myself.

[Fizgig]

I can't ever seem to get a comment posted on Freshmeat (unless they're taking 12 hours to propogate, and it's a better site than that).

My comments:

GCC is interesting. As long as there are CS majors/grad students coming out with compiler knowledge there will be at least some people willing to work on compilers. Plus there's Cygnus. Red Hat has limited resources (a large market cap but negative profits), and they seem to be doing o good job with what they have. They pay people to work on the kernel and the foundations of things like GNOME and KDE. They pay people to do the strenuous work that is either boring (not that Alan Cox's job is boring) or requires a "get it right the first time" attitude. These are the things that make sense to pay people for. GCC has been doing fine.

Also, for the subscription method. If Red Hat did that, they would die. Simply because stores do not want to sell something that will make people not come back. They want to sell a physical product that means that people will come back to the store. If Red Hat offered a subscription service, not as many stores would carry it. This would severely hurt Red Hat since they are currently very reliant on stores. It's the same reason they have the no-support option only availible online--they don't want to confuse customers or annoy stores.

Shelf life, a plus or minus?

[BadlandZ]

Also, for the subscription method. If Red Hat did that, they would die. Simply because stores do not want to sell something that will make people not come back. They want to sell a physical product that means that people will come back to the store. If Red Hat offered a subscription service, not as many stores would carry it. This would severely hurt Red Hat since they are currently very reliant on stores. It's the same reason they have the no-support option only availible online--they don't want to confuse customers or annoy stores

Wait, stores carry magizines, and news papers, why wouldn't they want a product that a subscription. Say, $30 a copy insted of $100 for a four copy subscription.

If anything, I think stores would be MORE likely to carry it, because they know the shelf life dates. They wouldn't have the fear that it will sit forever, they could only order a few copies at a time, and less right before they know a new issue will come out.

My school bookstore for one has stocked boxed copies of Red Hat right before the upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1, right before 5.1 to 5.2, and right before 6.0 too. I KNOW first hand they are pissed off because they are always a step behind, and Red Hat already releases faster than other software on the shelf and its an unpredictiable schedule. They don't mind other software as much, but Red Hat has made them look stupid.

On the other hand, even the grocery store carries magizines and other periodicals, because they know if they don't sell, next month they will buy less copies, and the shelf life is known.

So, I guess I don't agree witht that.

Watch this get moderated down by RedHat lovers...

[RISCy Business]

Well, for ONCE, somebody presents something just barely recognizable as intelligence in a statement that mentions RedHat. I'm amazed.

Well, unfortunately, barely recognizable doesn't cut it. Time to get out the hacksaw and tear that hammered together writing apart.

Robert says: dump money into GCC. RedHat lives or dies by GCC.

The REALITY: Good MORNING, WORLD! Let's see. Last I heard, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, RedHat, Debian, Slackware, Caldera, SuSE, and some others use GCC. Now in case you cluebies haven't noticed, egcs is now gcc, and egcs is about as useful for, say, Alpha, as bootable AIX tapes on a Dell PowerEdge. gcc may as well be written off as a loss, because Linus doesn't suggest, recommend, or advise compiling your kernels with egcs. Neither do I. So it's going to end up in a big bloody argument probably. Fun fun fun.

Robert says: dump money into a GPL office suite.

Reality: Money doesn't grow on trees, and in case you haven't noticed, business users are buying StarOffice and Corel's products. That's just a waste of resources if you want to replace Windoze, which is RedCrap's big happy goal.

Robert says: Make what they have now work better.

Reality: What, were you born yesterday? Why do you think they hire people in the first place? Hint; it's NOT to do tech support!

Robert says: subscription plans, this is important.

Reality: HA! AHAHHAHAHAHA!! REDHAT? Give you a reliable product at a fair price?! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHoh gods, I'm laughing so hard, I'm *crying*. Here, it's the cluephone. It's for you. RedHat is in this for money, not fairness. Money comes before all things Linux as far as RedHat's concerned. If they have to spend money to fix bugs in their distribution, it costs them money. So they rush to release, include bugs, and make up for it with the profits from the next version. Which in case you haven't noticed, is now double what the last version was. Can't wait till RedCrap switches to AIX-style licensing. "A two-user RedHat 7.0 license is now $80. A four-user license is now $200..."

Robert says: open up the RPM standards.

Okay, Robert. You see this? This is a cluebat. *WHACKWHACKWHACK* Next time, research before writing. Saves you a lot of pain, as you now see. RedHat has *never* been tight-lipped with but a few specifics on RPM. However, they tout RPM as the standard, when it's NOT. RPM is ineffecient, difficult to work with, and impossible to upgrade with. RPM should be dumped altogether, and the *spit* Linux Standards Base *snigger* needs to get off their asses and decide on a standard. The chances of that happening before 2010? About one in six trillion *against*.

Robert says: Cygnus and Borland/Inprise would make great acquisitions.

Robert, once again, money does NOT GROW ON TREES. Whether or not Borland/Inprise has been in decline, it COSTS MONEY. Lots and LOTS of money. Furthermore, Inprise is a faltering company, and is NOT a good buy. Linux is NOT the OS that will make or break any company's long-term profits and stability. You people need to get a grip and freaking realize this NOW. Linux is a media-darling because it's anti-Microsoft and as long as Microsoft is on the hot seat, Linux will be hot. And as soon as Microsoft is off the hotseat, some loyalists will stay, and the rest will dump Linux like a bad habit.

Robert says: Compaq or Dell would be a nice partner.

I reiterate; DO YOUR RESEARCH. Compaq *AND* Dell already HAVE partnerships with RedHat. THANK YOU, DRIVE THROUGH! Gods. I'm getting really frustrated reading this blatant lack of research.

Robert says; support the LSB.

The day I support the LSB is the day the LSB gets off it's ass and actually does some work that people follow that's of use to me. Now, the chances of THAT happening anytime soon, is so incredibly low, it would probably factor out to be six pages of digits ending in ':1', *against* it happening.

So.. next time somebody wants to write this kinda crap, do your research FIRST, so people like me don't have to basically *flame* you for misinforming. Or better yet; don't tell RedCrap how to run their business. They seem to be doing just fine without your input, which I'm sure you emailed to them directly, and were politely thanked for your 'valuable input.' They don't care, folks. They're gonna do it their way, and all you do is contribute to the growing flames of media hype that make people who actually *know* and *use* Linux, for the most part, SICK.

-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH