Slashdot Mirror
Marc Ewing Speaks
Will in Seattle writes "Marc Ewing, Chief Technology Officer of Red Hat Software, opens up, in an interview with cNet, about Microsoft, the IPO, and more" C|Net gets Marc,
and Slashdot get's Donnie? Waaait a minute! (We love ya Donnie!)
Our interview with Donnie J Barnes (which has more meat than this interview) should be up tomorrow.
I guess that's -1 to CmdrTaco's Karma for being redundant.
I'm of two minds with respect to the competitive focus on MS. I want to say you're right, this is stupid, concentrate on making Linux better.
Well, we've always said that the advantage of having multiple Linux distributions is that they can focus on different groups with different needs: Caldera for newbies, Debian for hardcore free software types, Slackware for the old-school, etc. Red Hat can be the distro for the "destroy Microsoft" crowd! They're certainly a decent sized segment of Linux users, they deserve a distro looking after their interests!
And of course, any ideas and developments the different distros come up with while pursuing their goals, are there for others to take advantage of, if it fits their goals to do so..
Hmm. I'm having feelings of duplicity.
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http://slashdot.org /article.pl?sid=99/09/07/1646246&mode=nested
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I still think it's rather important. I mean really do you want this to be a common occurence?
+&x
I'm of two minds with respect to the competitive focus on MS. I want to say you're right, this is stupid, concentrate on making Linux better.
But MS will target RedHat whether RedHat returns the favor or not. I imagine MS has been quite frustrated for some months in not having a target they really understand with Linux. Where's the company you can attack? Who do you sue? Now, there is a real commercial entity that MS can attack in all it's usual ways. I expect them to try that out, especially after that little matter with the DOJ is retired.
By making their competitive stance clear, RedHat has keyed in the media to look for FUD and strongarm tactics, should MS attempt them. To some degree it's formalizing what has been partially responsible for making it's stock strong -- the tangible anti-MS sentiment everywhere.
On the other hand, it's also invited comparison in ways it may not be ready for. Some humility at this point may be wise, it makes defeats less painful, and victories more surprising (newsworthy.) As long as RedHat doesn't get too convinced of it's own invulnerability all should be well.
Linux has always sold itself quite well, it doesn't need to be promoted as a Windows(tm)-killer. It needs to gain marketshare to the point where hardware vendors write Linux drivers and software vendors release Linux versions concurrently to Windows versions -- after that it's all cake.
1) Goldman Sachs and Thomas Weisel started RHAT at a Market Outperform and Buy respectively.
2) Gateway announced they would be using RHAT's 6.0 OS for qualified ALR server platforms.
3) Burlington Coat Factory announced they would be using RHAT support (260 stores).
4) Entered into a pact with V-One, a security software maker.
5) Began a Japanese unit.
werd.
While he correctly stated Microsoft's market value as still being 100 times that of Redhat's (as a rebuttal to the upsurd price for Redhat), he did not mention anything about Microsft's sales being over a thousand times that of Redhat's.
;-)
And yes, I surely do work for Microsoft, to post such a thing!
C'mon guys! Cut the good Commander some slack! When he sees a good link, he has a duty to post it.. He can't go second guessing the other ops and mamby-pamby-ing around. The story fits the
Quit being flamebait over such a slight slip!
.sig: Now legally binding!
CmdrTaco's just tired of seeing us post redundant comments. He just wanted to know why we liked doing it so much and try it out himself....
Who moderates the meta-moderators?