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Red Hat Buying Cygnus?
Ok guys, this is purely a rumor, but its one that I've heard from several points on the globe so I'm gonna share it:
Vulture Capitalist writes "I just got out of a meeting with Matthew Szulick and it appears as though Red Hat has inked a deal to buy Cygnus. In related news- we also understand that some people at Red Hat were so upset with the acquisition and it's corporate implications that they have decided to resign from their Sr. management (founding) positions. After the failed acquisition attempts with both Linuxcare and TurboLinux- this should prove to be a very interesting deal. I'm personally looking forward to the annual report! " Again, none of this is any more than rumor, but I've caught wind of it from several spots so I figure its worth sharing. What's interesting is that Cygnus has more employees then Red Hat, and actually generates more revenue.
Is their going to be some change in the attitude toward open-source? Will the buisness plans change?
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
Is this Redhat getting greedy? Also why would their sr. emps resign over this?
Do we have the makings of the next monopoly?
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
The name sounds really familiar, but I'm not certain what they make. Can someone enlighten me?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
This deal will give Linux an inside track on GNU tools. Not that it doesn't already, but in the past Cygnus dragged their feet providing Linux support, now things will change. I remember the time when Cygnus couldn't be bothered with updating GCC for the Pentium instruction set. I remember their high handed disrespect, and I won't forget it.
Got used to using the beta for the longest time for free, for some reason just assumed the final version would be free.
To price this admitedly useful package in the range of Win-98 and 3rd party office packages is kinda silly.
Why do you think "Red HAT" sucks? Out of sheer curoisity...
...they were right about you...
The real question here is "What does this move mean for the community?" If this comes to pass will it have any effect, good or bad, on the community?
Does it mean that Red Hat will get "special" versions of compilers that "optimize" for Red Hat? I mean, come on, "they" already "have" Codewarrior.
I don't really know what it means for the community, so I'm asking those more qualified to answer. I do know that Red Hat appears to be pretty smart when it comes to serving the free software/open source community, so I'm hoping that after such a merger, it would just be business as usual. However, if the rumors of senior execs leaving Red Hat over the acquisition are true, then perhaps something else is going on?
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
...how long has the deal been in the works?
I ask, because many of you probably remember the "name the company" contest Cygnus had a while back. It was rumoured that they wanted to change it because of 1.) a lower neccessity to emphasize "GNU" (cyGNUs), and 2.) because they'd been considering an IPO, whereas there's a Cygnus Pharmaceuticals already.
This said, a while back, the outcome of the contest -- an indefinite delay -- was announced. In this light, such seems fairly interesting.
Then again, I just might have seen one too many X-Files episodes. But I do find the resignation of senior management interesting as well.
I hope that they aren't getting greedy. M$ used to be pretty decent untill they got greedy, then they got sloppy about their code. I dislike monopolies as much as the next guy, but if a product is supeiror, You'll buy it.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
RedHat's Market cap is at around $7 Billion now. It has nothing resembling prospects of earning that kind of money any time soon so the logical thing to do is buy up some other companies that make a lot of money but have small or none existent market caps.
:). Turbo Linux is good.
The greatest barrier is that a clash of cultures is dangerous and buying up something that's practically dead is almost suicidal.
In other words, Corel is risky. SCO is bad. Cignus is good. Linuxcare would do wonders for RedHat's reputation
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
If this is true, and Cygnus is a financially healthy company, then why on earth are they being bought out by the smaller, less profitable(as of right now), RedHat?
It seems to me that the purchase should go the other way around if it were to happen at all. Something is up with Cygnus that we don't know about (why would they sell if everything was all ok?). Possibly internal troubles, or the like. Maybe RedHat will be getting a worse deal than they thought they were getting.
I hope not, but that's how it looks to me.
-Toaster
--
brave little toaster
"Remember, don't try this at home until the statute of limitations has expired."
Red Hat and Cygnus are in vertical, software-only markets, so a buyout or merge makes sense. Cygnus' major markets are the embedded space, GCC/tools customizations and GCC development. Red Hat is doing all the software work orthogonal to that: kernel development and packaging/maintainance/support. It's ridiculous to suggest that this could create any kind of monopoly, both companies are writing software under the GPL - if users are unsatisfied with any product they can take it and go a different path. Just like Mandrake does. If this deal proves to be true then there will be interesting times ahead!
like the old saying
"those that can, do
those that can't, teach"
those with cash can buy what they can't do
isn't there another company that likes to buy
what it can produce on it's on?
this is an ignorant comment not flamebait
The reason people think of it as becoming a monopoly is not because they are making horizontal acquisitions, but rather strategic ones. In computers, you can acquire a monopoly by simply dealing in too many areas. This is the reason Microsoft is one of the first companies involved in horizontal acquistions that has gotten in trouble. They were right to say computers would change the world. They didn't know it would modify the legal world as well.
RedHat+Cygnus = A company with control over a popular environment for development (read:mindshare)
Microsoft+VB,VC++,VJ++,COOL etc = A company with control over several key languages. People see this as what RedHat is trying to do. I find the Linux market to be something that naturally prevents this from happening. But, that said, it could stil happen.
Luckily a lot of what is in RedHat Linux is not developed by them. Otherwise there would be a case against them.
Lowmag.net
RedHat has more money then any distrib, and
all it's work is GPL'd, so this is no problem
for Debian, SuSe, etc.
It would actually bring more developers into
RedHat, and just imagine what is in store.
They have done nothing against the community,
yet every one says "Next MS".
Has anyone compared there market sizes?!?!?
--
CodeRed, the lower user #. No relation to SirCam.
Cygnus has been in trouble recently -- the outcome oftheir "name the company" contest suggests that they weren't financially strong enough to IPO. Getting acquired makes good sense there.
RedHat, by contrast, has the advantage of a delusionally high market cap that is buying power today but could be gone the moment the market comes to its senses. Making an acquisition makes good sense.
What it does signal is an agressive position for RedHat -- Cygnus isn't a Linux company, their expertise is more general Un*x and IDE/compatibility stuff. That jives with RedHat trying to push Linux as the Un*x of the future -- they need to build or buy more expertise in that direction.
In my view -- this would be good for RedHat, good for Cyngus, good for Linux, and probably seriously bad news for all the other Unices (eunuchs?) on the block.
--G
Red Hat shares have gone through the roof since their IPO, and therefore they have a lot of money sloshing around not working for them.
;->
I'm speculating [not literally], but I suspect they'd probably buy Cygnus using RH shares - they wouldn't have to offer that many to buy them out at current rates
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I think this is a sad sign: if true, with this deal, Red Hat has shown that they are not confident about their own business strategy. Now they compensate for this by buying up other (profitable) companies.
I don't see what the benefit is for the public.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
I wonder what the average revenue is for a good McDonald's location. Seems to me that it wouldn't be too far behind RedHat. Considering RH is going to generate so much money from running a portal...a slashdot competitor actually...I guess the large market cap must be justified.
Now, if I could only get those fries on-line...
slashdot.com All the news that isn't.
Its nice to know that Redhat is spending its new found wealth buying up companies, when it could be helping the development of linux more.
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
While RedHat isn't profitable it's market cap is huge.
This means that it has the power to buy up larger more profitable companies using only stock. One reason to do so is to get Cash, employees and salable products. Cygnus has all 3 in abundance.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
cout "N"; for (;;) { cout "OOOOOOO"; cout.flush(); } I can just see it now, the whole cygnus package is commercialized... WHY?! It's the only way I can maintain sanity when using windows, I need my bash!
Well this does explain away a lot of stuff going on such as RH's new Open Source projects, the Open Source only distro etc. It seems almost like a balancing act of commercialism/open source mentality. They (RH) had the good taste to initiate a series of Open Source projects prior to this rumor getting released. The bit about founding members bailing is sort of worrisome, while acquistions (and sell offs of portions of a company, take a look at Lockheed Martin who is in a different sector, that freaking company has sold off parts, bought parts, sold off bought parts, it was a confusing mess while I was there) are part of a normal business cycle (except when it is someone like MS who buys, buys, buys and never lets go) it seems strange to me that Senior Management members - who could stand to make a lot of cash out of it - would leave. I mean if becoming successful or commercial was a problem for those individuals they would have quit a long time ago, I think there may be more to it. Nevertheless, I see no reason to worry. So many Linux users have a tendancy to use different distributions at any given time I am actually a little surprised at RH's success (Marketing?) but I wouldn't let it bother me.
" -- ow my brain hurts again -- "
One of the things that has helped Linux alot isn't just the fact Linus is a great programmer but that he has remained a fairly unbias programmer. The unbias de-centralized nature of Linux development has even been recognized by the popular press as one of the strengths of Linux. Several commerical packages may be the result of compromising long term scalablity for making a release date or clean design for adding features that a customer says they think they want. The Linux development community has not really had that. There was potental for hurting this view of things by RedHat taking on Alan Cox. However, Mr. Cox is one of the few people that can give the impression of not compromising goals for any one employer. If RedHat also takes on the developers of EGCS then I think it might hurt them in the long run. It is my belief that the presently growing SuSE market in Europe and growing TurboLinux market in Asia is more likely to switch to MicroSoft or a commerical *nix flavor than to RedHat. As soon as it is viewed that companies like SuSE and TurboLinux have lost complette control of the future of their products to RedHat then the demand for commerical Linux software packages will go down as the SuSE & TurboLinux market goes away from Linux. If RedHat truely feel a need to own Cygnus then they should make an effort to keep the lines of sepration between RH and Cygnus clear rather than allow Cygnus appear to be absorbed or controlled. Keep in mind that the expodental growth of the Linux community was occuring when Linux was promoted as being nothing more than a graduate student project or a product of the internet.
They are very strong supporters of many Free Software development projects, most notably gcc, GNOME and Docbook.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Oh wait I see now...
"If your change is going to be a significant one in terms of the size of your code changes, be aware that you will have to sign over the copyright ownership of your code changes to Cygnus or the FSF (depending on the source file) before we can include your changes in the main source tree. Your employer may also have to send us a disclaimer stating that they have no claims to your contribution. This is necessary for liability reasons."
Liability yeah right... why dont they just switch to some community license or QPL? I dont like the QPL but what Cygnus is pulling here is essentially the same thing... at least let them be honest about it.
I was wondering why I had to download external patches to Cygwin when I tried it out a while back...
If this would happen what would it mean to other linux distribs that use cygnus? I know that Corel has or had contracted them to do some messy work with WINE.
Makes some sense though, I remember reading not too long ago that Redhat was going to offer apache support regardless of the platform so I guess they would they are opening up to other markets. I will believe it when I see it though./p.
I've seen a lot of posts saying "Who's cygnus?" While I don't know the company especially well, I thought I'd make a quick post of some of what I do know.
;)
Cygnus has been around since the dawn of time. err.. Well, the late 80's anyway. Basically, they were founded to provide commercial support for the GNU project. Their biggest area of involvement has been in the compilers.
As nearly as I can tell, Cygnus makes most of their money from consulting, support contract for GNU stuff, and porting GCC to processor platforms for various vendors (e.g. Intel).
EGCS is a cygnus project. I think glibc is as well. They have produced a version of the GNU development suite called "GNUPro" which includes some moderately enhanced stuff. They have produced their own Real Time operating system called Ecos (if I remember right). They have produced a complete port of all the GNU stuff to Windows called "Cyg-Win" which they sell for $99.
When Linux came out, they blew it off. Now look at 'em
-- Slashdot sucks.
If they've got money to throw about, as it seems they have - why don't they buy into the Monterey consortium?
Rumour has it that many of the big players in Monterey are thinking of Linux as a viable alternative to the SVR4 base, and if one of the more vehement supporters of SVR4 were to be bought out by Red Hat, who knows what the result would be?
Wouldn't you love Monterey to actually be Linux/IA64?
3.03 release...Nuff said
and the way egcs optimizes sometimes, we are better off with real gcc
EGCS is, which is an intended replacement for gcc...and imho gcc 2.7.2.3 is a hell of a lot better then egcs is (egcs is very buggy still) and makes a lot better code. I had to say it, cause the people sparsed gcc comments all though these posts...
Consider that, without fail, every Linux distro and application, even the kernel, uses gcc. And Cygnus are the acknowledged world experts on gcc. So, if improvements can be made to gcc that make it 10% faster, then suddenly Linux is 10% faster!
On another note, one of the big things Linux needs to do is improve the quality and availability of "easy" development tools. Cygnus has a background in that area as well (although they are not necessarily the best). I know they've already done some work on precompiled headers and so forth.
Given Redhat's record of contributing back to the community, I think this could be a really good thing for Linux as a whole.
Go Redhat!
-- Slashdot sucks.
THey are totally different source trees, egcs is intended to be a general replacement for gcc, and IS all cygnus' product.
Check out this rumor on Slashdot
3 222
by: cyguy2000
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/10/082
No movement in CYGN's stock though, except for
the higher than average volume yesterday.
Beware, CYGN is not the Cygnus we're talking about here; CYGN does pharmaceuticals. Don't be taken in. In the meantime, could somebody please provide the real stock symbol for Cygnus software, or confirm that it isn't publically traded.
You're still perfectly welcome to develop your own code and do whatever the hell you want with it under your own copyright.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
EGCS has been merged with gcc for a while now.
I believe what was meant was 'if they could suddenly make the compiler generate code which ran 10% faster, then Linux would be 10% faster'.
:-)
As for the effect of RHAT buying Cygnus, the one thing that would be a little more likely is that while profiling an inefficient portion of code, it would now be feasible to work directly with the compiler team to generate faster code.
As for IDE's, I prefer vim
In April 1999, the egcs steering committee was appointed by the FSF as the official GNU maintainer for GCC. At that time GCC was renamed from the "GNU C Compiler" to the "GNU Compiler Collection". From http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html
Doesn't cygnus produce a few high quality unix/windows development tools? I don't know the specifics but I am under the impression that they have always had a few non-open-source software offerings.
Presumably, if they get absorbed into Red Hat, they would follow the Red Hat open source policy and we would all get access to the (GPL?) code.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
RHAT's fundamentals amaze me. They only made 10 million dollars last quarter, and lost 1 million. That is freaking peanuts. If ALL their revenue was profit, their P/E ratio would still be an extremely high 150 (6 Billion/40 million). That is insane. Also, if you look at Excite's excellent financial page on RedHat, you'll see that only .3% of its shares are held by institutional investors. They obviously don't believe that this stock is a good long-term buy. I firmly believe that this company can never live up to the insane valuations that it has achieved. Their services are not unique and will not become a dominant player unless...
Their only solution to this dilemma is if they are able to buy up enough Linux players so that they can offer a portfolio of products that they can be the one stop shopping site for all things Linux. Sort of the MS of the Linux world (I know they won't own the code, but for businesses, it won't matter [they'll be happy buying a total solution]). Anyway, I ramble, but it is an interesting phenomenon: A company with an insane valuation can justify the valuation by buying enough companies so that their valuation is justified.
Sig goes here
What I think would be cool is to use cygwin (and their native-compiler thingy) to produce a distribution of linux that actually runs under windows.. might have to make some kernel shims, but really just taking the exact same tools that you use in a standard linux distribution, and run them under the windows kernel. KDE for windows.. hmmm.. you can replace the shell in windows.. it would be the coolest thing, because I'm forced to run windows at work, and then I could run all the cool linux stuff too with just "./configure && make && make install"
What should it help, if they buy competitors. Such a behaiviour I know from M$. If you have no own ideas or the ideas of your competior is better: buy them Did we get a $Hat???????
Be that as it may... quoting liability as the reason for having to write it over is telling a half-truth. The reason is that they want to be able to relicense it under a closed source license.
I don't see RedHat doing anything that hurts. In fact, they may actually help!!!
Cygnus is quite profitable. And they have a lot of non-Linux products and interests. In fact, they are a great company when it comes to bringing OpenSource to non-OpenSource platforms. And they work akin to Sendmail (free product, charge for GUI and support).
So get off the "next monopoly" thing with RedHat which is impossible. In fact, I like that RedHat is at the top. It would be MUCH DIFFERENT if Caldera or SuSE was on top.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Looking to MicroSoft as an example, acquisition in this inflated industry is a good thing. RedHat has lot's of cash to blow and they need to blow it beofore it's gone or others outpace them. I think this particualr acquisition is probably a good move and I've yet to see any major RedHat moves that have damaged the community. I suspect that as a few other distros and support oriented companies gain mind and marketshare that they will have oportunities simalar to this. This is nothing but good for the movement and a sign of opensource's commercial viability.
I think this is a sad sign: if true, with this deal, Red Hat has shown that they are not confident about their own business strategy. Now they compensate for this by buying up other (profitable) companies.
A company buying another one, a sign of not being confident with their own business strategy?????? What are you smoking? I don't get all the alarmists posts here AT ALL. This buyout makes complete sense. They complement each other's business, RedHat has all the resources to buy them, RedHat can't become a monopoly (ever heard of Mandrake????) ...
I'm just amazed.
On the other hand, why doesn't Redhat just form a corporate body for Gnome, and buy them out and finish up that product? They seem to have all but abandoned the KDE environment, and this would allow redhat to have a redhat library and foundation class for more of a "redhat" system..
With all the money redhat has, why does't it start aquiring some of the startups? Like finish its portal it promised, buy up some foundation companys to increase its product line. Aquire Applixware to offer an application environment. Start a coorporate body for Xfree86 to offer support sertvices and funding, and then aquire it or spin it off. Do what others are doing, making things work.. redhat seems to be sitting on there arses!
Its amazing how slow redhat as a company seems to move, yet they can keep up with their releases every 6 months.
Aquire, grow, increase losses, but show earnings are on a rise, force more cash infusions from investors, show bottom line is increasing so that your stock isn't over valued as much as it is...
don't just sit there and look like an aquisition from the very same company's that you failed to aquire! it won't be long before turbolinux will snag you, or if Caldera wins its lawsuit, expect them to have tons of money with nothing to do except aquire..
This is a no-brainer. You're Red Hat, you've just been infused with tons of capital, you want to do things to improve the market penetration of Linux. How better to do this than to buy up the key Linux development tools vendor?
How many of you who are worried that RH are trying to become the Microsoft of Linux have considered what might happen if Borland repeat their 1980s DOS compiler coup on Linux? Before Borland's Turbo Pascal came along, a decent DOS compiler couldn't be had for less than several hundred to one thousand dollars; TP rolled out at ~$75 a pop, took the compiler market by storm. Suddenly, everybody was using TP to develop DOS apps. What if Borland's Linux compilers took the Linux market by storm and left Cygnus in the dust? How many of you would be complaining that RH weren't doing anything to preserve Cygnus and leaving us at the mercy of Borland?
Like it or not, the future of Linux involves NASDAQ, venture caps, and lots and lots of money. Technologies like "egcs" and embedded development tools that are important to the future of Linux will be acquired. What we should be asking ourselves is not, "Is it a good thing that someone may buy out Cygnus?" but "Which company would we prefer to take the reins at Cygnus? Turbo? Caldera? Red Hat? Microsoft?" I'd prefer that Red Hat end up with Cygnus since they've demonstrated that they are dedicated to the GNU concept. Some other vendors seem all too willing to market closed add-ons to Linux and would probably hurt Linux if they had control of Cygnus.
Right now, the Linux development tools space is where it's at, and this would seem like a wise move on Red Hat's part.
slashdot broke my sig
The GPL gives them and everyone else complete control over code but that's not real useful if you don't have a staff who understands the code and can work on it. Linux is going into the enterprise, that's where it's at. Redhat needs to be able to promise to customers that if something flakes out they can fix it. bad version of GCC comes out and you can't compile your kernel (this seems to happen with almost every release, it's not a fabricated scenario) redhat needs to have the facilities to promise that they can fix it and do it in a reasonable time frame. That's the way that market works. You need custom code? Cygnus appears to be masters at that game.
By in large, I see it as a step towards giving redhat more credibility and linux as a whole (especially the redhat variant) more credibility. Consolidate some tallent, deploy a support structure, win big corporate accounts and then have the capacity to solve problems when they arrise. It's worked before and it will work again.
This does lend itself towards the Redhat is Son of MS theme. I still don't think we need to worry about it yet but it does alarm me to some extent that Redhat could stop funding GCC work and GNOME work and have an impact on both projects. I don't think they'd risk it but at some point the appeal of profit from CodeFusion is going to win out over doing the right thing.
This hypothesis just doesn't seem to fit the facts.
P.S. If you follow the link to WRS above, either disable cookies, or disable "Warn me before accepting cookies". WRS's server is very cookie-happy.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The reason is that they want to be able to relicense it under a closed source license.
Is that the same reason that the FSF wants you to assign your copyright to them?
It seems to me that supporting Cygnus, which does a lot of open-source development, is a good way to help Linux.
--
I meant closed source as in not OSI approved open source, not as in source not available.
The FSF doesnt sell licenses for commercial development of its projects. "Note that only GPL'ed Open Source programs can be created with Cygwin unless an additional commercial license is obtained from Cygnus." Apparently Cygnus does... and the only way they can do this is because contributed source is written over to them. Liability is only part of the reason at best, I grant my original comparison with the QPL was rash... but their explanation for the need of writing over the copyrights is incomplete.
It was gratis ($$$ free), but not free in sense of freedom. (Only "fair use" for private persons.)
I had never really realised the kind of commercial value the FSF's posessions had... as I pointed out in my other posts Cygnus by their own words do relicense Cygwin under non GPL licenses. FSF obviously doesnt do that with its projects, but it could sell licenses or the copyrights on them...
Cygnus was going to rename themselves several months ago, were they not? Perhaps being acquired was a simpler solution than agreeing on a new name.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Folks,
Based on my previous experience with companies
being acquired, I think there is a good chance
this move would result in damage to Cygnus. Some
activities may be considered "non-strategic" to
Red Hat and shut down. It is also typical for
acquired companies to lose significant portions
of the best staff as they see control of their
destiny lost.
This is all part of the hurly burly of business,
but given the stregically important role that
Cygnus plays in the OpenSource world, most notably
with GCC, we could all suffer.
Geospatial Programmer for Rent
Sucks is a relative term. Red Hat "sucks less".
Ok,
If it's true, good for them, they need apps. And, I think that buying key companies that make Linux cool is good.
On the other hand, I would have loved to see them buy VMWare and open source whatever they can in it!
Of course, these bought companies should be independent divisions of redhat that keep their name and employees etc....
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
It is the part of the free software foundation that produces code. See Here. The original idea was to develop a completely free Unix. Some Finnish guy came along and created his own free kernel, though, before they finished. He used his kernel, and the add-on tools they developed, to create a complete, free Unix (or Unix-like) system. (He also used their development tools to build the kernel.) This is what most people call Linux. As they say on their website: "though these systems are often referred to as ``Linux'', they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems."
(Personally, I don't think that this rolls off the tounge well enough to ever catch on, but it is a shame that the GNU people don't get as much public credit as they deserve.)
The cake is a pie
The answer to all of your questions can be found at www.fsf.org
Can we stick to actual news? And no, a link to an article about romours would not be news either. If it want tech industry gossip, there's plenty of other places to find it.
They have a couple of proprietary products, but I doubt they make them much money.
So I don't think this would affect Red Hat much. Maybe they would make the proprietary Cygnus products free software, that would not cost them much.
Well, because Blue Hats are so much better. F'rinstance, I have a blue felt trilby, a blue cotton fedora, Blue Worsted Deerstalker, a blue texas cowboy hat and numerous blue baseball hats. Now when I attend Royal Ascot with QE2, I wear my Sterling Racing Blue Top Hat and she wears a broad-brimmed Ascot Ladies special - also blue. So you see old chap, when it comes down to it, Red Hats suck....
It's not about the specific technique used, it's a matter of picking something that everyone understands and sticking to it. Consistancy is very important in large projects.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
You can read all about Cygnus and its free software business plan from Michael Tiemann's chapter of "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution" (aka The Book that Slashdot Made).
--
Xenu loves you!
The only non-free software on the CD is the install program. This means that you can install it on as many platforms you want, and that you can put all the software (except the install program) on ftp if that is what you want. Free speach, not free beer.
It is *not* just b20.1, but a later version.
There goes the dang neighborhood. 122nd post!
What a sorry bunch of FUD!
Linux made it to the big tent without NASDAQ and will continue regardless of NASDAQ. It shows an atrocious misunderstanding of free source software to say otherwise. It simply can't be hijacked.
Suppose Borkland did release a killer IDE for Linux. Further suppose Borkland did intentionally make it incompatible with everything that exists now. How many free source developers would actually release code that *required* such a beast? Can you imagine a distribution that came with sources (as required by the GPL) yet couldn't be built except with the Borkland IDE?
You have got to be sleeping poorly to come up with any such scenario.
Like it or not, free source software CANNOT be hijacked.
--
Infuriate left and right
Was John Gilmore the founder of Cygnus (the same guy that started alt.cyberpunks)?
Time for a history lesson to understand all this. A lot of people think that UNIX was the first OS, wrong. What made UNIX special was that it was not written in assembler. Operating systems up until UNIX were written in assembler because the machines were so slow that the code had to be optimized (and C was not around yet). Then it was decided that the chips had gotten fast enough to have a non-assembly language operating system, which of course allowed it to be ported to many systems. UNIX was the first multi-platform OS.
What people do not realize that by using C/C++ and similar languages they are trading off speed in favor of portability and code that is easier to understand. What EGCS is trying to do is optimize code a lot more than has been possible to this point. Generally speaking the more optimizations the compiler makes the stricter the code has to be. The linux kernel has illegal references in it that EGCS does not like. The X-headers has illegal references that EGCS does not like. EGCS is not so buggy, the code of your sphere is.
egcs was derived from gcc 2.8.x... Earlier this year, the FSF decided to kill their version of GCC and make egcs the official one. Subsequently, egcs-1.2 became known as gcc-2.95. The remaining code from gcc-2.8.x will be merged into egcs/gcc in time for gcc 3.0
It is still available under GPL... and $99 is extremely cheap for an esoteric development package like cygwin.
When you assign copyright to them, they promise to make the code available under a free licence (there is a form somewhere, I don't know where though).
Do they sign a contract or something? I mean, other than tons of bad karma, is there anything that would legally prevent them from selling all of their copyrights to Microsoft or relicensing it all to Sun under something non-GPL?
Or do we all just blindly trust in the FSF and Richard Stallman to Do The Right Thing(tm) even after Richard Stallman dies and the FSF has been taken over by people with a different ideology?
I mean, what kind of safeguards are really in place to make sure this code never becomes proprietary?
Explain your last comment.
Erik Ratcliffe
Caldera Systems, Inc.
Cygnus develops Cygwin, which allows {some|most} command line Linux apps to run on Windows (has a bash shell, too, I think). If Red Hat takes this over, who knows where it may lead - since they already sponsor a good deal of GNOME development, maybe they're planning to take over Windows from the inside-out :) Also, Red Hat seems to be somewhat more community driven, sponsoring development and such (notice I said "seems", this isn't flamebait), so Cygwin could become completely free, installer and all. Just think, cross platform software, so cheaply and easily...
Cygnus apparently has support/contacts from other big names in the computer biz, like Intel (compiler development, I believe). The more support the better, IMHO.
Being able to test the waters before going whole hog (via Cygwin) may be an advantage for some companies. So, developers could write software, show how good it is on Windows, then show how much better it runs on Linux. Devious, yes? Alternatively, if a "Windows-only" policy was in place at a company, Linux-friendly developers could (well, they can as it stands anyway) write code on a Linux box and it should work just fine under Windows with Cygwin.
Red Hat could actually have something that is a revenue producer! Heck, that's gotta be an incentive, especially if/when the hype falls out of Internet/Linux stocks. They'll actually be able to "show them the money".
There are probably more, I just can't think of them right now.
Buying Troll Tech would make a heck of a lot more sense than buying Cygnus. It could push KDE into the mainstream - UNIX and Windows free development. Initially, all applications could be ported to Windows, so that the people could be more easily weaned to the more reliable and free UNIXes (Linux, FreeBSD, etc).
This is right on the money (no pun intended). The Linux community has to get used to the fact that there are two possible paths for Linux: Stay small (in terms of effect on the entire desktop market) and be immune to the nasty, corrupting effects of money, or become a serious force in the desktop arena and have to deal with some of the negatives, like buyouts and IPO's and companies (gasp!) trying to make their shareholders happy. Personally, I think the tradeoff is worthwhile, and I'm willing to see Linux and even the open source movement be slightly altered in the process of taking over the world. You can't run a country the same way you ran the revolution that got you into power in the first place. It's time to change.
I simply use it as a sane shell in the insanity that is NT. What was bill thinking when he stuck with dos version 5 as his shell for his New Technology Operating System?????
$99 for a collection of GNU tools with a few win32 hooks is silly.
That does not make sense for Redhat. Redhat perfers the GNOME because is alreadly completely free and they have dedicated a lot of resources to GNOME development.
Personally, I think it would be good for RH to buy them. But, i was curious as to what other purchases would be good for Red Hat and the Linux community.
Two that I have thought of are:
1) Be Inc. -- the Linux community seems to like BeOS, somewhat, but it's not open source. I'd love to see RH buy Be and then port a lot of BeOS's technology over to Linux. I think it would make Linux a MAJOR force in the graphics and design market, as well as help it out in the home desktop market. Plus, Red Hat could continue to sell BeOS as a separate operating system.
2) OS/2 -- Since IBM doesn't seem to have plans for OS/2 client after this version, I think it would be good to purchase the user interface technology from IBM. This could help Linux to develop a truly functional object-oriented desktop that would rival anything Microsoft or anyone else has.
What do the rest of you think? Any other ideas?
I hope that if RH does buy up Cygnus that this policy will continue. The GPL is not really any different than the BSDL if the copyright holders do not sue in the case of violations. Although this would not affect EGCS because the code to date is owned by the FSF, it could affect RH's other GPL'ed products if something were to happen to RH. I expect RH (like the FSF) to be around for a long time, but it is always better not to keep all your eggs in one basket.
JMC
This is pretty good. Where can I download the code? I can think of lots of uses for a rant generator.
They also love to come out with new features and tout them on their box and then they don't provide any documentation for how to use them or set them up at all for example:
Software RAID
High-Availabilty
LDAP
What is the point of annoucing these great features if you never tell anyone how to use them? DOH!
Isn't Borland now known as Inprise or something?
;)
Anyway Borland Pascal made a big hit because they offered it to comp sci students for $35 a pop (I know as I was one of them) and many of those students wrote programs (BBSes, DOS Utilities, etc.)
But besides all that, is Borland Pascal for DOS still relivant? Heck no! Now it is a Windows world and Microsoft took over with Visual BASIC and Visual C++. Borland aka Inprise got railroaded!
Let's see, would Borland Linux compilers take over? I doubt it unless they where giving them away for less than $25 a CD and included the source. Borland never was one for following other people's standards. I remember the Borland C/C++ compiler never did compile ANSI C code without having it tweaked a little.
Still I think it is a good move for Red Hat to purchase Cygnus. Having development tools is just one more step towards market dominance, just ask Microsoft! Imagine if Microsoft never made any development tools? We might all be using Amigas now or something?
Most compiler projects give the results away.
Back in the 1970's, Jean Sammett published a book with the Tower of Babel on the cover. It listed several thousand (yes, thousand) compilers. Her criteria was that the compiler had to have been used by at least one person other than its author.
By now, the total has to be past 10,000. Of course, almost all of them were abandoned, and the authors have moved on. But dozens-to-hundreds have active user communities. Poke around a bit.
So, GCC is simply the most famous of the free compilers. And, since it's GPLed, anyone who wants to can start up their own variant of GCC.
A problem with the Cygnus version of GNU C/C++ which they make available to companies who pay support is that it only comes out twice a year and doesn't get any external review before release. In the past at least (don't know about now), there also hasn't been an ability to get general patches for any problems found by others. That is, you seem only to be able get patches for specific problems you report. Ie., it ain't the same as your normal EGCS and GCC releases, incorporating many Cygnus specific changes which haven't yet made it into the mainstream releases and you don't necessarily benefit from fixes resulting from problems found by others. In a company where I worked which paid Cygnus for support and got this compiler, the problem was that every release would add new bugs to the compiler and we would have to waste time working out what the problems were and sending test cases to Cygnus to get them to fix the compiler. Usually we would end up having to get up to half a dozen patches for the compiler from Cygnus before it was usuable. One of the main points of getting a properly supported compiler is that one expects it to work first time which hasn't been the case. Right now that company is still using the 98R1 release as it took months to get most of the problems in the 98R2 release fixed and even then there was one problem which Cygnus just never fixed which made the C++ compiler option -frepo unusable. With the patches we had got for 98R1 it seemed stable enough so we just didn't bother with the 98R2 release in the end. The company in question has now recently received the 99R1 release and again it has problems which until the compiler can be fixed make the compiler useless for some things. The question thus is what would happen with the Cygnus specific version of GNU C/C++? They wouldn't ditch it completely as it is the basis of their cross compiler and embedded systems business. At present Linux distributions tend not to use the latest version of GNU C/C++ but use one which is known to be stable. Thus for example you don't see distributions yet using GCC 2.95 which has problems when used to compile the kernel in Linux but also has serious problems with its template expansion code in C++. Would this continue or might Red Hat start shipping the Cygnus version of the compilers which for us at least has mean't a compiler which never worked straight away.
Infamous early Cygnus employees include Fred Fish (Amiga & later BeOS free software god), Sean Fagan (general troublemaker on the net), Tom Jennings (author of the original FidoNet software), Brendan Kehoe (G++ maintainer, author of Zen and the Art of the Internet, one of the first open source books and one of the first popular books about the 'net), Steve Chamberlain (extraordinary speed hacker, creator of Cygwin which built on DJGPP - he's now at TranceMeta), Ian Taylor (author of GNU/Taylor UUCP), and others too infamous to mention.
What the market will bear!
Obviously this one person segment of the market (just wants a unix shell for NT) will not bear $99 hense no sale.
Does not matter if the AC caries the Open Source flag a little further or not.
Methinks the 3CD boxset will rise in price if this happens... with an acquisition such as Cygnus, they gain some muscle on their pretty market-friendly figure, and can provide some decent content alongside their CheapBytes-able product. And that justifies the box price, even more so than the support they provide.
Add to that the fact that Cygnus are a respected group amongst geeks: Are RedHat trying to buy their way back into the fold? Looking for any respect they may have lost among the anti-commercial begrudgers?
Maybe it's simply a means to expand their support base. I was working in Cork (Ireland) recently, in the same building they're setting up their European base in. Something scary looking about 4 bare walls with nothing but blue carpet between. It would be sensible to buy into an established Linux support base, instead of headhunting and training up some relative unknowns.
I hope Cygnus don't lose their strengths to the corporate monster we fear in RedHat. Last thing we need is another Big Blue / Big MS / AOL / GE
/me
be needed? I don't think GCC's architecture is a good match for Merced's architecture. To make software work on the Merced, the onus is put on the compiler to optimize properly.The code generation is really really hairy. Expect compile times to quadruple for optimized Merced code. I don't think Cygnus can do it, and if Red Hat buys Cygnus, this is going to be a real money sink for them. Maybe Red Hat Cygnus should make a proprietary compiler for Merced (like Aladdin Ghostscript) in order to recover their costs which will be astronomical. Then later after they have recouped some of their costs, they could release it under the GPL.
Interesting link. The two authors of lcc, Chris Fraser and David Hanson, are both working for the Microsoft Research group and have written some articles for the Linux Journal. It seems that some people @ MS have some sensee and intelligence after all... Mark
I have a copy of this book! Got it for 50 cents at a school library used book clearance.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
Applixware? There's an idea. I use Applixware and I'm impressed by it's depth of functionality and it seems pretty stable. A purchase of Applixware would allow Red Hat to spend a little of their cash and a) open source the suite and development tools and in doing so move the product forward. Bar some architectural changes to allow their development tools to be released under the GPL the actual applications have not added any significant functionality and their UI needs a total revamp. Go on! Red Hat give us a good office product that integrates with GNOME...
this has been linked from Redhat's news page since September.
.. is that no one charges for Cygwin. That's the last way some of us stuck in an M$ world can cope...
Dijital
Diji
"I came, I saw, I WTF'd!"