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Red Hat Moves Into European Linux Marketplace
bOnUs (among others) slipped us the skinny on a story @ silicon.com that talks about how Red Hat is gonna use recent cash injections from Dell, Oracle and IBM to increase its presence in the heart of S.u.S.E. territory, AKA Europe. Normal business expansion in an increasingly borderless world? An attempt at creating Red Hat World Domination? This can be interpreted either way.
While world domination might be the trademark of Wall Street (as enshrined in US corporate law), I'd like to respectfully point out that other countries might not share the same extreme values. A study of the best US corporation compared with the second best revealed a long-term vision and strong NON-financial values where critical to their success. Sure you can be as successful as Bill Gates at the cost of half the planet hating your guts/products but then a few hundred billion will smooth that burden, right? Frankly, from the point of view of Wall Street, they wouldn't care less if Red Hat staff stripped naked and ran a circus because next year there will be another fad, another media frenzy, another roll of the dice. As the day traders are finding out with the brokerage fees and vigorish (mandatory payments to the dealer) the only people guarenteed to make money are the financial wheeler-dealers (guess who's pocket their mulimillion dollar bonuses are coming out of?). Now capital markets have a role but they are not the end-all and be-all that some people think. Basically companies are trading labor, goods or services to satisfy the wishes of consumers and if what you have to offer is superior and at the low-cost end of the efficiency spectrum, then natural dominance results. Growth for the sake of growth is rather pointless. Afterall, in biology we call unlimited growth a cancer.
So I wish Red Hat luck along with the rest of the Linux distributors.
LL
I once thought of getting ISDN card to my Linux box. Then I checked the price of an ISDN router (ZyXel Prestige 100) and went for that one. I've never looked back at the some USD200 I paid more for the router.
That said, I'm a happy user of Rawhide who welcomes RedHat to Europe. When they open an office or service point or get a contractor to provide RedHat support in Finland, I'm all the happier. Even though I might not need it, that would probably mean a lot to many companies ('Look, we can get OFFICIAL support in Finland in Finnish, and they have these administration courses to get OFFICIAL RHCE like we have these MSCEs.').
There's been a history of Red Hat's unwillingness to take on standards that the rest of the Linux community has recommended. Being so large, they can refute our standards and begin their own, even if they're crap. In that respect you can liken it to MS, but I won't :)
It promised me during the install that it had updated the KDE menus; had I been running SuSE I dare say it probably would have
I doubt it would for any other distribution at all except where KDE is packaged identically. In terms of being a user, it should be recommended that unless the product says it has specific support for the product, then assume it hasn't.
It's unfortunate Code Warrior is a single-dist-support only application, otherwise I'd go for it. What's impractical for a company producing apps for Linux to support, say, the top 5 Linux distributions? The variations must be surely minor, and the research time to find the difference is most likely quite minimal. Thus it would keep the proliferation of Linux dists up with the competition, and to make it easier for application programmers they would strive to be as standard as possible. The more robust and unfragmented the better, but not better when there's fewer distributions.
You have a point here.
from The Nethelands:
I'm more or less a newbie Linux user.
I recently bought my first Linux distru.
To me things were easy:
RH 1 CD 149 Dfl.
SuSe 5 CD 79 Dfl. -> much more value for
you money (and a nice book)
secondly SuSe is more up to date here,
because RH is allways takes about 2
months before it hits the shops, after
release in the USA.
I don't know if RH is more secure,
more into SMP, or whatever.
SuSe ran clean out of the box for me.
I was running KDE and X windows within
an hour after inserting the CD.
(on pretty new hardware, i had waited until
there was a distri in the shop with Xfree 3.3.3,
because older didn't support my hardware)
Within 2 days i had figured out how to compile
my own kernel.
And now i'm writing here about it...
(now on my own machine, it has no connection to
the Inet.)
Downloading from Inet isn't an option for me,
, maybe in the future, CableModem is gaining
rapidly in the Netherlands, and the bandwith
promisses are sky high. Next year my town will
get cablemodem.
Goetjes,
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
true. even though its 2am edt and i'm not ready to discuss this further =8)
If the govt is really that powerful, it is the people that let it happen.
Taco is Rob is and he's cool.
I think you're at the wrong website. You should go make your own.
Redhat is becomming the MicroSoft of the Linux world. =( While this may seem bad to many linux users, it may be a good thing in reality as it will help push Linux into the average home PC as a "dummyed-up" version while letting sysOps and the like use the more hard core versions.
I doubt this for the Netherlands. ISDN is pretty strong there, too, and so is SuSE. UK+Ireland are a different story, maybe speaking of continental Europe would be more appropriate. There, only Mandrake in France has the chance to be a serious competitor at the moment, simply because RedHat has a lousy package quality compared to SuSE. Mandrake fixes a lot of that, and adds a decent KDE setup. Unfortunately it'll go the MS way: Not quality wins, but money and marketing (RedHat).
I don't really know what peaple complain about with slow SuSE updates/patches, but that's maybe an US problem. The german website is always quickly updated. Now that they've redisigned their web sites, it should be better anyway. BTW, RedHat is way behind SuSE with packages, not the other way round. This is mostly due to the faster release cycle and their probably better packaging team (things work usually out off the box, as opposed to RHAD).
It's always the same, people accuse MS drones of FUD and then they do the same within the community.
YaST is not commercially licensed, it just has a no-rip-off license, meaning distribution outside the official distro has to be cheap (e.g. cheapbytes). There is no restriction in hosts/clients etc.
You can get around well without YaST. You still benefit from the superior package quality of SuSE (vs RH)
Mandrake could have based their distro on SuSE as well, as they use different install tools anyway. They didn't b/c SuSE was already strong in the market, and there was no 'KDE hole' as with RH
On the surface it was sarcasm.
But at the next level down I think he/she was poking fun at some of the Europeans that read slashdot. Specifically, I think he/she was trying to point out two things:
1. Making sweeping generalizations, believing media stereotypes, and reciting cliches you have heard about other nations is stupid and ignorant.
2. Many (not all) European slashdot readers are hypocrites. They flame American posters for making uninformed statements as above (point #1) while doing the same thing.
That is what I think the sarcasm is meant to imply. I could be wrong.
Perhaps the fact that Red Hat invited a large percentage of the core Linux community into the IPO will result in strong community representation on their board. I don't know, but I hope that is the case.
I disagree with it being an attempt at "world domination". If people in Europe prefer SuSE RedHat just won't be sucessful over there. RedHat won't be able to force people to use it, but since I like RedHat, I wish them the best.
.. booohoo), slackware, redhat and suse. I ended up using SuSE simply because it was the best (most up to date imho) distro on the cd's.
.. I only found slackware 4.0 at a decent price. RedHat beeing sold at $70 , no debian or suse in my stores.
People buy the distros that is *available*. I for one first bought a "combo-distro" from infomagic with debian 1.3 (it said 2.0 on the package
When I recently wanted to buy a newer distro
Then I got a friend of mine to burn out a copy of Debian -- which is my absolute favorite distro.
Point is -- if you don't have a cd-writer, you need to buy what is available. If suse is most widespread in europe -- My guess is that its most available for those without much bandwidth.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
come to think of it, could RedHat be becoming a sort of M$ ?
No. As long as they keep all their tools opensourced they can't. They may kill of competitors by delivering a better product or having better marketing, but quite frankly - it doesn't worry me.
If you want to swap from one distro of linux to another, it doesn't take you more than a couple of days getting to know the other distros installation tools. And -- except for that they *are* quite much alike.
M$ has gone too far, let's hope RedHat doesn't. If it does, it might get some users like M$ has. ie. "i must use it, its the standard, but i don't want to" kind of deal (even though it might not happen b/c its linux, so it'll run on any other distro).
*exactly*. I can take redhat linux, make improvements, and sell it as 'arcade linux'. Provide my own tech support and so on.
Personally I don't like the RedHat distro. I personally prefer Debian. So what? If someone uses redhat - that's their problem. And if I get an account on their box, I won't notice any big difference anyways. The programs I want will install on RedHat just as they will on Debian... AND, the other way around works just as well.
So, stop worrying. RedHat and competition is a Good Thing.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Yeah, so Roblimo's way off topic post gets moderated --->UP FORGET IT, SLASHDOT IS AS BIASED AS IT GETS
Standardisation is necessary for a product to succeed - be that the pedal layout in cars, or the user features and API's in an OS. Uniformity and market share are what perpetuates Microsoft Windows and QWERTY.
Standardisation for the directoy structure.. yes, I think it's needed. But it's beeing worked on afaik. Standardisation of programs? Well. Not necesarily. We need standards formats, not standard programs. It is important that the document produced in my editor imports the right way into your editor.
And remember one thing. Installation and so forth should never be done by non-techies. Neither for windows nor for linux. They try to do it all the time. In windows they do it and fails. In linux they wouldn't come that far.
As long as the techies know what they're doing, we only need standards for "the things people see and use". And, standard 'inwards' in each company, so that the company-network is easily maintainable.. and so forth
*ach. i'll stop ranting, i think you got my meaning*
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Linux users are high tech users, and they install ISDN at home in many European countries. The cost of installing and using ISDN is low here in Norway, and in Europe in general. Installing ISDN is difficult on linux in general and especially on RedHat. Make a quick search for ISDN on a dejanews, on the norwegian linux news group (no.it.os.unix.linux.diverse) to get the point. I got 3200 matches on ISDN and 900 on ethernet since jan 1 1999. Now people are recommending Suse when ISDN problems pops up. If RedHat spent a few engineering weeks on ISDN support the RedHat goodwill rice dramatically in my eyes.
RFC1925
Redhat has much to do for the european markets. Our own distros are quite well localized and don't have problems with 8-bit characters etc. which seem to still be problem for Americans. Last time I tried redhat it had some problems with our local characters a and o with dots. That is not acceptable here. Also gnome is quite poorly localized still so KDE is the only choice for desktop if you want it localized.
Particularly since we heard about these plans in July
I don't really see that this is much different from the previous announcement, except for the fact that RedHat now has more money. And besides, did you really expect RedHat to not expand its base of operations?
Hook. Line and Sinker. I'm taking a bite of the flamebait.
.. swap..
There will only be ONE distribution to survive the coming price and Capitalist war. It will be Red Hat simply because:
Not everybody participates in it. If I remember correctly - Debian doesn't even sell their distro at all, but let third parties take care of that. They cannot lose, and they cannot win.
+ They emply almost all the useful developers
Please define "useful developer".
+ They are the most widespread distro
And? So what? What does it matter?
+ They simply have MORE MONEY THAN ANYONE ELSE
Oh, and therefore Micro$haft should win, in your opinion?
Now stop complaining, code for the Good of OSS and let Red Hat make all the money.
Code for the good of Open Source. Use the distro you want to use. Stop supporting ONE distro. At home, I currently have SuSE installed on my main server. RedHat on my private machine, and Debian on my secondary server. Debian will replace SuSE on the mainserver as soon as I get a temporary server up'n running so that I may build the server and transfer the data -- and have everything up'n running -- and then just
Why? Simply because I prefer apt. (Debian installtion-tool-thingie). That's MY opinion, and therefore I go for it.
That's the important thing here. People should get to know each of the major distros, and maybe a couple of the minor ones, and choose the one they prefer.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Here in Norway, most people I know use either redhat or slackware (a few people use suse and debian, but that isn't many).
Hi Norwolf, my fellow countryman.
The oldschools do still use Slackware - yes. But I really don't see the growth there. A lot of people use RedHat. But, after the gathering ('99), where free SuSE cd's was handed out - more and more people are moving to SuSE. Nearly everyone I've talked to the last 5 months, that has installed Linux -- has installed SuSE.
So - SuSE is growing, RedHat is 'well known', and slackware is on the way out. Debian on the other hand is slowly growing, as more and more people try it out. It's a great distro imho.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
well, it's definitely not Open Source. you can't redistribute for a fee.
I agree!. Perhaps RedHat is becoming the system all *ix users despise with a passion.
I always interpreted the motives of the linux operating system as somewhat open with the allowance for sale and distribution being a good thing. But with the recent cash injections from major companies into RedHat, the whole system is going to crash and burn. The less fortunate distributions will bend to the competition or go "underground" while RedHat continues making money.
Sure its a great distribution but with the money it makes and the "brandname" software that it will soon support allows it more chance of getting the unfair advantage, much like drugs in an olympic event.
Smaller distributions like Debian and Slackware are the ones that will suffer and it will be sad to see something as great as the linux philosophy and its 8 year history be replaced with the values of the evil green.
Sure Im A Lemming - But Ive Got Teeth
It all stems back to RedHat 4.2. One UK magazine had a copy on a cover disk, and I installed it.
:-)
They had decided to make the sound drivers in the 2.0.x kernel modular, and had managed to get soundblaster drivers working, but had prevented a number of other drivers from even compiling. My soundcard was one of them. Grrr!!!
I also was shocked that there was no real documentation as to what each package contained, and I ended up installing a lot of junk I was never going to install. This included a lot of utterly useless daemons. Why doesn't the install mechansim tell you what you are installing in some detail.
Did a quick dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb and went back to Slackware!
When I looked at RedHat 5.1, they hadn't improved the install method, although the sound drivers now worked. The commercial X server with this release didn't work with my card, exhibiting the same screen corruption as the server with a previous release of XFree86 - spooky!
2. Many (not all) European slashdot readers are hypocrites. They flame American posters for making uninformed statements as above (point #1) while doing the same thing.
I haven't noticed that so much; more Europeans have been to the US than vice-versa. Of course, it's human nature to generalize unreasonably -- because it's a very valuable trait to be able to generalize to some extent, and inevitably it'll be overdone. Uhh, I think your point may be slightly overstated, but in essence I do agree with you.
That is what I think the sarcasm is meant to imply. I could be wrong.
As it happens, you are wrong
Actually, I'm specfically refering to the DPT Raid controller source. http://www.dpt.com/
I asked that this source be included in the next release, no response at all. It's available, but not included. (?) I'd just love to ditch RH.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
why don't we let linux get popular?
redhat is sometimes thought of by newbies as the best one out there (many non-newbies as well *smelling a distro war*) so let it get popular so linux will grow even faster than it is now!!!
getting more and more comfotable with dvorak btw... who ever said Americans never try anything new? heh heh heh...
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
Frankly I don't think that the growth of Red Hat is sustainable if all they do is increase their market penetration. They should probably branch out into areas other than distributing and supporting Linux. Well, maybe they are already. Does anyone know what else they are doing?
-- $SIGNATURE
I disagree with it being an attempt at "world domination". If people in Europe prefer SuSE RedHat just won't be sucessful over there. RedHat won't be able to force people to use it, but since I like RedHat, I wish them the best.
My greatest congratulations to all those who make Redhat available. The last version I used was 5.2 before my switch to debian, but RedHat, Caldera, etc are certainly making Linux known to big business and the world. I wish them the very best and look forward to see how this endeavor migh benefit RedHat, but mostly its effect on the Linux community as a whole.
its not world domination..its just channelling out to a larger market. why shouldnt they ? everyone else does it too. And redhat is (lets face it) a normal boxed product.
RedHat could either go and start targetting advertising for people that are already using Linux and try and grab as much of the existing Linux market as they can, or they can try and target advertising towards people that aren't yet using Linux.
Traditionally, RedHat has done both. I've seen RedHat advertising in the Linux Journal as well as in other computer magazines (probably mostly ones aimed at Unix users or programmers, though).
I suspect that RedHat will continue to do both in Europe, too.
At the very least, any attempt to completely only target at potential new Linux users instead of existing Linux users would be suicidal if successful because part of what helps to get new Linux users using a particular distribution is that it's the distribution their long-time Linux using friend (or colleague or random people in a local LUG, whatever) either uses or recommends.
So, of course RedHat moving into Europe will take at least some business from SuSE, in the sense that there are people that might try SuSE and will instead try RedHat.
Hopefully they'll both manage to expand the general Linux market enough, however, that business will continue to expand for both of them.
come to think of it, could RedHat be becoming a sort of M$ ? however, they're all after a 'bigger business'. SuSe did it by perhaps releasing a 'better distro', RedHat already has a 'wicked distro' so they move on, and try to destroy suse's distro with their wicked one by 'moving' into Europe. ie. opening offices, etc.. hmm.
its all in a good business plan. and trying to outdo your 'enemies', however, M$ has gone too far, let's hope RedHat doesn't. If it does, it might get some users like M$ has. ie. "i must use it, its the standard, but i don't want to" kind of deal (even though it might not happen b/c its linux, so it'll run on any other distro).
hmm, interesting stuff though..
Standardisation is necessary for a product to succeed - be that the pedal layout in cars, or the user features and API's in an OS. Uniformity and market share are what perpetuates Microsoft Windows and QWERTY.
Right now, Linux needs standardisation to become a more viable mainstream platform, and it needs backing from serious industry players; Red Hat are a driving force in both areas. Whether you see this as good or bad probably depends on the future you'd like to see for Linux.
I just re-installed Star Office, from the new Sun distributed kit. It promised me during the install that it had updated the KDE menus; had I been running SuSE I dare say it probably would have, but it doesn't show up on my RH6 system. The failure is a minor inconvenience to me, but a showstopper to a non-techie.
There will be an inevitable shakeout with the number of Linux distributions (of significance) coming down, and Red Hat is positioned well to be on top at the end of the shakeout. Let's just hope the open source model really works, and that they're not alone.
As I understand it the GPL essentially prevents World Domination in the Linux world in the way MS have done it in the Windows world. It would be pretty much impossible to add undocumented API's or write some software that everyone else depended on to leverage your position in the Linux market.
So since it can't be done in theory, why not try anyway?
Red Hat are a public company. They have an obligation to their shareholders to earn a profit. Good on them for trying.- --------------
----------------------------------------
my blog: good times, man, good times
No one makes a big deal of SuSE selling in the U.S., "RedHat turf", so what's the big deal with RedHat selling in Europe, "SuSE turf".
It's no ones turf. I don't see why this a suprise. If it is then wake up.
Snoop
how will this affect Redhat's ability to include things like SSH, or other packages involving strong crypto, in european releases?
they aren't allowed to ship those things outside the US now, right? so now will they be allowed to just send over the source code to the european offices and have _them_ compile the packages, thus circumventing the export controls?
unless i'm really confused, this would be a _very_ interesting test of the "code-is-free-speech" waiver to the export controls. An american country publishing open source software with strong crypto through a branch located outside the US.. hmm
-mcc-baka
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Nothing like mature,well documented and intelligent conversation threads on slashdot.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
No--I'm not writing flame bait. I'm stating brutal, legal, fact in U.S. law.
Everybody got all kinds of enthused a few weeks back when Red Hat did an IPO. Yeah, things got kind of funky about who could get pre-IPO shares and so forth, but Red Hat did the right thing and lots of deserving people got in on the bottom floor.
But guess what? Red Hat is now a publicly-traded company. And the directors of a publicly-traded company have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize revenue. Let me re-phrase that in a different way: the directors of a publicly-traded company must always view the interests of their shareholders as being more important than the views of any group--employees, customers, community--anybody.
So it is entirely fair to assume that Red Hat is moving into Europe intent on dominating the European marketplace for Linux. (Note, BTW, that the Red Hat official doesn't say, "for our distro of Linux"--he says, "for Linux.") Red Hat has to fight for market dominance, and defend their marketplace dominance, or else they're going to join the long list of technology companies that get clobbered by shareholder rights suits.
We might all agree that the people at Red Hat are worthy folks. We might all agree that they are noble of heart, and true of purpose. But once they become a publicly-traded company, they have to constantly increase their share value, or their stock will be hammered. And if their stock price is hammered, and a plaintiff can demonstrate that the directors acted on behalf of another group to the detriment of the shareholders, Red Hat can lose a huge chunk of money. In other words, Red Hat cannot act "for the good of the Linux community" if that means that Red Hat revenues--in this quarter--will suffer.
My little company develops large-scale software projects--but we also develop components for database vendors. Two of our clients have been through this process--when you go public, the rules suddenly change. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more whim-of-the-boss perks like Free Pizza Day or flying the staff to Bermuda for lunch. And all of a sudden there is no more visiting back and forth with industry chums, no more collegiality, no more "hey, we're all in this together." Suddenly the view--driven by all those guys in ties that Wall Street required you to hire--is that if we're all in this together, "this" must be a knife fight. (More or less verbatim quote from a finance guy--with really good hair--at a client's.)
Red Hat's going to wipe the floor with SUSE--and SUSE won't know what hit 'em. It's not that Red Hat is Evil--it is simply that Red Hat has moved up to a different league, and in that league that's how the game is played.
If we go beyond the things that probably aren't going to go wrong, we have one fear - that Red Hat may achieve name recognition and brand loyalty elsewhere, as it has in the U.S.
Pardon me if I don't throw a fit about this :-)
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Let's look at an example. I own RedApple, which sells apple piesixs. I make all my apple piesix recipes freely and openly available, on the condition that anyone who sells a modified apple piesix without making a special deal with me has to give the recipe to anyone who buys it.
Of course, apple piesixs ingredients are also all distributed under similar licenses, and anyone with some culinary expertise can put an apple piesix recipe together in a short time. So all that RedApple has over the upstarts a recipe that reflects more time in planning.
And what if a competitor sells cooked piesixs for $2, or offers to squeeze them through extra-wide phone lines straight to your house for free? I've got to make money, don't I? So I offer support and consulting, to help you deploy Official RedApple Apple Piesix in your large dining room. I advertise and raise awareness not only about my brand, but about apple piesixs in general, and put apple piesix on stove tops and tables that used to use RottenNOP.
All this time I continue to give back to the apple piesix community with new and improved recipes, even while some of my competitors are turning profits by including proprietary crusts. Yet because RedApple now has a ticker symbol and an insane market value, I'm now more evil than satan himself.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Even if, in five years time, there is only desktop OS: RedHat 2005 (Linux 4.10.1365), you'll still be able to roll your own distro. That's in the nature of the GPL. RD would have to replace all of the GNU tools with proprietary stuff *and* change the kernel.
dave
No doubt many of us will grab our foreheads in disbelief that Red Hat has chosen to spend its money battling another Linux distro rather than increasing its market presence in the US. But if you take a moment to think about it, you see how much sense it makes.
In the US, Red Hat is the talk du jour, as is Linux itself. The disorganized (or, actually, unwittingly organized) mass media have done a far better job marketing Red Hat Linux in the last few months than any targeted ad campaigns could do.
In Europe, however, SuSe is making the bucks. It's the number one rule of publicly held companies that the stock must go up. That imperative overrides all other converns. It's for this reason that we see companies purchasing their competitors after they have exhausted their slice of the demographic pie. They have to keep growing if they want to survive.
Well, RHAT wants to survive. They can't ride the tide forever, but eventually the journalists will discover some other new fad. Thus they have to send a message to their stockholders that RHAT is a sound, competitive investment. One that will continue to grow its market share and maybe someday (preposterous as it sounds) make a little money.
Thus this maneuver against SuSe. It's the obvious target. The only target, really. They can't pique interest any higher in the US directly, so they're doing it indirectly. And if they happen to gain market share while they're at it, I'm sure they don't mind a bit.
Oh, and if you're worried this will be a bad thing for Linux, don't. RHAT is not big enough yet to be a MSFT, so in the mean time they'll just be one more capitalist company fighting for dominance. And that always brings benefits to users. At least in the short run.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Humm.. Not in my experience, and personally I pay for the software I use.
But, if they didn't want to pay for the software, they don't have to, as both Red Hat and Mandrake offer their distributions on the net. Oh, and by getting it off the net, you don't have to wait 3-4 months for them to ship it over here, either.
May contain traces of nut.
I hope you meant you babble sarcastically - otherwise i would have to say that you represent what causes europeans often to have a prejudice against citicens of the United States of America: .o.
Ignorance of present ongoings outside their State or Country, Ignorance of present ongoings inside their State or Country, unquestioned repetition of authorities and their views and clichees (aka religious leaders etc.), a backward nationalism, that ignores the possibility of a people to learn and remember. But then again i hope this was meant
to be sarcasm or irony or whatever and if not then pray to your god to send down some brain - open your eyes and question your authorities, please
The leader is written as if they are not already here !!! They have been selling Red Hat Linux over here for years. How can they move into a market that they are already one of the leaders in ?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Simply put, it breeds a better product. S.u.S.e. has enough of a user base in the E.U. that it will not be erased by RedHat. In order to compete with RedHat, S.u.S.e will likely become more open and "developer-friendly". In order to compete with S.u.S.e., RedHat will likely become more solid.
No, not good, necessary for a business to survive in the computer industry.
This notion is somewhere between silly and ridiculous. RedHat and Microsoft are both experiencing success and profit, similarities end there. Where MS uses its weight to develop closed "standards" and thwart independance, RH is doing the opposite.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
Your mother wears army boots and smokes cigars
It's linux world dominations. And yes, anything good that happens to RH would be automatically inheritied by Linux. Forget that not sweet geeks.
--
This expansion is logical and necessary move for Red Hat and they're welcome on the European mainland. Attention to local language support in the software itself and in the helpdesk facilities is still a must over here if RH is to grow.
Suse's dominance is often trumpeted but Red Hat certainly has its share of fans too. I don't think we need anybody to be claiming anything as their turf. Suse can defend itself on technical merit or with marketing just like everyone else. In some ways they appear to be aiming more for the desktop where RH is more of a server thing. It's nice to have a choice. Of course, they both consist of mostly the same software anyhow and can both be made to do most things quite easily.
They could well coexist. Or we could all be switching to Mandrake next. We'll just have to see what happens. Me, I honestly wouldn't mind if everyone would just use one Linux distribution, or at least all the novice users, it would make support and identifying and getting rid of common problems easier for sure. Choice is good, chaos can be disruptive.
Suse sells in europe and north america, so why can't RedHat? This only help's linux.
I fail to see how this could be bad on any front. Competition forces both parties involved to make their product better in order to edge out the opposition. This helps linux grow as both suse and rh will develop new things for linux. MS stifles innovation by eliminating competition. We don't want to go down that road.
-Dan
Now everybody moderate this into oblivion, okay? ;-0
- robin
IF SuSE would get off their duff and include the "freely available source code into the distrib"
I don't understand. Which source code don't they include (aside from the commercial stuff, where they're not allowed to)? The sources for every program in the distribution are in Series zq.
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Actually, this is story is outdated by a few weeks, (don't remember the url though) but IMHO this is a good thing. First off, I personally run SuSE at home, but at work we do the RH thing, mainly due to our Raid controllers. IF SuSE would get off their duff and include the "freely available source code into the distrib" then I wouldn't have a problem. Email response yet to come after 1.5 months, btw. Security patches for SuSE seem to lack, and definately package updates are WAY behind RH.
Possibly SuSE will read this and fix these minor, but yet important issues. (along with RH btw)
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
In Europe RedHat is seen as an American Company, just like Microsoft. But we have a strong European company distributing Linux. RH distro libs are mostly broken and its poorly built. On the other hand the European distro it's probably the best one out there.
Turbo Linux started as a fork of the Red Hat distribution, much as Mandrake and so many others have done since. In other words, Red Hat do not 'assimilate' like the Borg, they *disseminate* to any and all who want to make use of their work.
Those who would promote their preferred distribution by ineptly riduculing another do a disservice to both.
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John 3:16 - God's Public License
rhat needs the asian market more than the europe market. check out the size of the asian population! this is where I want rhat, SuSE rules and is doing a great job in europe as of now, I hope rhat doesn't try in any form to strangle SuSE, because they are on the same team, not competitors but rather teammates, the competitor is microsoft, I hope they don't forget this.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Competition.... the more the merrier! I can't wait till Caldera, Stormix and Corel setup shop their too cuz the last thing we need is for the major vendors to become regional overlords
And we don't want their hormone beef either!
In my experience there's no point in talking
about 'Europe'. There isn't a single market
here at all. In Germany (where ISDN is massive) SuSe is the lead distro. But I'd say RH are in
1st place in Ireland(where I'm from) and in Holland (where I work).
different cultures = different distros
my 0.02 euros
-Ciaran
RedHat won't be able to force people to use it
That's where you're WRONG.
Germany is a European (read: Radical Socialist) nation. They have given up their God-given Sovereignty to the EU, and the inevitable result is a fantastically permissive/repressive Liberal police state, just like they had under Hitler. Permissiveness is repression, don't doubt it for a moment. Except as regards guns, of course. And pinching chicks' asses. If I can't carry a gun and pinch a chick's ass, I'm being repressed and emasculated by Feminazi Liberal Secular Humanists, and you know it as well as I do. Anyhow, as I was saying, Germany is a totalitarian Communist police state. There is no freedom there at all, except for the freedom to do things that no honest Christian white man would want to do anyway, which obviously doesn't count. You're not truly free until the State frees you from your own base, anti-God animal urges by throwing you in jail for talking about them in public. Germany refuses to grant its citizens that essential freedom, but the Germans of today have degenerated over the last 54 years to the point where they don't even understand what's being stolen from them! It's DISGUSTING! And this fascist society is just the kind of place where a liberal humanist like Rob Young can get the jackbooted stormtroopers to RAM HIS DISTRO DOWN EVERY SEXUAL DEGENERATE THROAT IN THE ENTIRE NATION. And that IS his plan, have no doubt about it.
Communist gray space aliens put flouride in my beer and now my cock is shaped like an artichoke -- BEWARE! IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!
(What the hell posessed this Taco character -- if that really is his name -- to make "HTML Formatted" the default when posting?! God damn, that trips me up half the time at least. It's the kind of sneaky, devious trick a LIBERAL would pull! I'm not fooled.)
Well of course RedHat is expanding into Europe. This is something Bob Young explicity said he wanted to do with the IPO bucks: expand into the international market.
Frankly, this just makes sense. Linux has had a strong history of being an international effort. Linus, Alan Cox, etc etc etc. There's lots of users in Europe (and lots in Japan too, I might add.) Look for Redhat to expand there in the coming months.
So what does this mean for RedHat? Look for an increased prescence in Europe (read: ads, offices, new hires), as well as increased international features in the distribution. Support packages worldwide will also be stepped up and enhanced if RedHat is sensible. Their current support model is terrible, IMO. Perhaps moving to new markets will lead them to streamline and refine it.
What does it mean for Linux? Obviously, more users, and thus more bugs get fixed, more apps get written, and the usual benefits of increased market share will result. Increased acceptance in Europe can only be good for Linux on the whole.
In short, I applaud RedHat for moving forward. This is what commercialization of Linux is good for: moving things forward in ways the community alone cannot, or not at least not rapidly enough. The next few months will be exciting indeed.
Hell no, LET THE DISTRO WARS BEGIN.
Maybe we can start seeing some real innovation out of these guys beyond Papa-Smurf installation scripts.
There will only be ONE distribution to survive the coming price and Capitalist war. It will be Red Hat simply because:
+ They emply almost all the useful developers
+ They are the most widespread distro
+ They simply have MORE MONEY THAN ANYONE ELSE
Now stop complaining, code for the Good of OSS and let Red Hat make all the money.
Easy!
Red Hat could be sued by their shareholders if it could be demonstrated that they willingly withheld from an obvious and logical venue to expand their business.
Added to which, linux users should be be suspect of any arrangement that creates "territory" for any of the distributions. This is worse than Microsoft - thats a cartel.
Linux users need to understand that RedHat and others have transformed this into a business. The quaint notions of "community" may be useful fictions to keep the masses enthralled, but at the end of the day its about getting higher revenue, sales, and profits.
Europe is known for nobody wanting to pay for software. If Mandrake does any decent advertising, they will blow Red Hat away by a bigger margin than in the US, due to pricing.