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.

Comments

Makes sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:What Does Cygnus Make?

[Gleef]

Cygnus makes:
* The GNUPro development toolkit
* ECOS, an embedded operating system (designed to work with GNUPro)
* The Cygwin Posix-compatibilty environment for Windows
* Other development tools (eg. Code Fusion, Source Navigator)

AFAIK, their real revenue stream is in consulting, particularly for embedded systems developers. Check out their website: http://www.cygnus.com.

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Who's Cygnus: an off-the cuff history.

[Amphigory]

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 ;)

Why this could be a really good thing.

[Amphigory]

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!

Re:Hmmmm

[Amphigory]

Quoth the anonymous Coward:

Name a free compiler other than gcc.

One word:

lcc

Anybody out there ever tried it? I haven't, it doesn't appear to be on a par with GCC, but the point is that it /does/ exist.

Linux needs apps, apps require tools

[davie]

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.