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It's Official: Red Hat Buys Cygnus
Well, now it's official. Red Hat buys Cygnus for $674 Million. (Short story here.) I'm sure we're going to see lots of attention from the media in the following hours. What do you think?
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I think that with the commitment that Redhat has shown to the community, this can only benefit. Cygnus gives Redhat a great technology portfolio, and provided redhat continues their trend of making their contribution free, we shoudl see some cool new things for linux from this...
five fingers make a fist amalgamate and resist
Let's just hope (and pray) that this is not a Microsoft style embrace-destroy buy out.
I hope they stay good and give some of that technology back to the community.
I'd love to see some of their development tools and innovations folded back into gcc/egcs et al...
Man, it's nice to see what they do with their IPO money. That's sweet! Keep it up, Red Hat...
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Sounds like RedHat is following in the footsteps of Microsoft. Let's start buying small companies up to make ourselves bigger.... It'll be an interesting trend to follow...
Despite being a Linux enthusiast, most of my customers demand Windows NT versions of nearly everything I write. Cygwin has been invaluable in allowing me to write high quality *nix software and provide a running version on NT (relatively painlessly).
I'm most interested in Red Hat's continued support for these Cygnus projects.
This is great news!! Hopefully, g++ -o hello hello.cpp will generate a 10 KB code!
Personally, I think it's a good move for Red Hat -- they're protecting their interests by ensuring they don't lose their development toolchain, which is pretty critical to their survival.
It'll be interesting to see what they do with the parts of Cygnus that aren't related to their core Linux business, though. I think there are huge opportunities for Red Hat in the embedded space now, but I wonder if they're too Linux server oriented to see them...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
From cygnus.com: "We believe there is tremedous synergy between Red Hat and Cygnus." Synergy? They're using the word Synergy? Uh-oh.
if (RedHat == Microsoft) {
printf ("I'm moving to Debian.\n");
} else {
printf ("Let hope they keep it open.\n");
}
There's a FAQ up on the Cygnus site regarding the merger.
Most interestingly (perhaps) is that a new CEO will be taking the helm at RedHat.
Check the Press Release on www.redhat.com about the whole deal. There is some good information as well as a nice FAQ on it.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
It clearly shows their commitment to open source, and in particular making money on the support side.
This means my most important tools will be :)
better - gcc and snes9x
Mmm...well-financed compiler development...
Unfortunately, no business would pay 672 million to make their products into free software.. However, if they're planning to open any of it.. open their compiler! please, please, please. I would really like to see 20% better performance than vc++ in integer tests and precompiled header support. Oh yes I would.
Well I reasoned this was possible after redhat's apache annoncement that would support any platform.
Will this benefit the redhat distrib? I seem to of heard nothing but problems about 6.1- the install is buggy and look at the errata.
"In five to 10 years, we'll look back and wonder how software was developed in any other way than (like Linux, via) open source. The Internet has changed the way software gets developed."Alex Daly, President and CEO, Cygnus Solutions,Investor's Business Daily, 9/24/99
This buyout by RedHat has to have been designed to create a one-stop shop for Linux solutions for the corporate market. Do RedHat feel that need to emulate Microsoft by providing such an environment?
Microsoft - "We sell the OS, the DB and the development tools
RedHat - "We sell the OS and the development tools...were buying a DB company next week"
And yes, I know the quote and the comment don't go together. It just seemed poetic that Cygnus is now being bought by RedHat less that two months after that interview.
Anyone have any more information on the rumours of senior RedHat people leaving?
since Cygnus certainly don't share all their products with the community.It'll be interesting to see what happens to this quote on About RedHat:
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Lets all just hope that Redhat doesn't simply swallow Cygnus in the way that AOL swallowed Netscape (see: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/12/021024 4&mode=thread ). I urge Redhat/Cygnus not to make specific Redhat/Linux specific features in previously Cygnus produced packages. We don't want another Microsoft, do we now?
I believe this is a positive move. As long as RedHat maintains Cygnus' attitude towards open source (develop, enhance, support), adding RedHat's revenue stream to support Cygnus' development effort makes good business, and I think makes good sense for the Open Source community. Of course, only time will tell. *shrug*
For more info, check out (this was jointly developed by RedHat and Cygnus, so it's obviously partisan):
http://www.cygnus.com/news/c-rh_faq.html
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
They seem to have been quite a good company - cranking out free software and working most notably on egcs I think.
If redhat buys them, it's because they see the value in the company. Let's just hope that redhat doesn't mess with success and lets them continue to do what they're good at and what made them attractive to redhat in the first place.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I think this sounds pretty good actually. Given the current smallish nature of all the current Linux dist. companies, Linux could potentially benefit from there being a couple "bigger" companies around which have real capital with which to pursue R&D and advertising.
I mean, everyone keeps talking about Linux as a potential threat to some of the bigger more established OSs (the Win, Mac, other UN*X, whatever), but seriously, while most average Joes out there have most likely heard of Linux by now, could any of them probably name even one company doing a Linux distribution? I doubt it.
While I think it's undesirable to have one company which everyone thinks of as THE Linux company (yikes!), I think we are a long way from that yet. However, a Redhat/Cygnus company can now devote even more to R&D of a single product, and a promotion of their Linux based product in the home and work place unlike any other company trying to do the same.
So overall, I think this is a pretty good thing.
On a side, note, I really don't see why everyone keeps bringing up the buyout as a MS-like thing?...so all corporate acquisitions now forever in time are to be MS-like? Even if they are beneficial?
Both RH 6.1 installs I've done have gone smoothly.
/dev/hdc1 ]
Only problem I had was making a boot disk for my second system [complicated 'cos it runs Linux on removeable hard drive
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Actually, it's a good idea to become a one-stop. It means that your customers can come to you for all their needs and be confident that all of your particular configurations will work smoothly together out of the box. That's why OEMs who sell the OS and their hardware seperately never caught on.
This is a case of seeing the best road and taking it. If you have to emulate the way MS does something (so long as its not something like RedHat crushing Debian by threatening OEMs), so be it -- the MS folks are obviously bang-up business guys; they didn't make their money by being good coders.
Additionally: Stop comparing Red Hat to Microsoft. RH is in a position where they could start bullying, but they don't. They deserve some sort of recognition for that, not more flames. Just because you're the biggest kid on the block doesn't automatically make you a bully.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"who do you think has been maintaining all that stuff for the last bundle of years? Anyone who uses gcc or gdb is heavily indebted to their work on it.
"
If there's one thing I don't ever feel towards a commerical organisation, it's indebted. Unless maybe I steal their goods. That's the whole point of the business transaction. Now, if we are talking about a whole new business ethic, where people purchase from a company not just for a positive ROI, but for reasons such as moral support, strategic alignment and so on, then that's very interesting, but it's not at all obvious.
Every day I go to small butchers and bakers and get a worse ROI on my cash than if I go to the supermarket. That's because I morally prefer small shops and I'm willing to keep them in business even when I'm forced to agree that they basically offer a worse product at a higher price than in the local Waitrose.
However, I struggle to apply that way of thinking to RedHat. A typical US startup, full of geeks and suits and cash. Great, best of luck to them, but these aren't people I talk to on mailing lists - they aren't part of my community, and I don't feel like being charitable. I'm 100% not indebted to RH for anything.
I'm all in favour of making purchasing decisions based on more than a cold calculation of product ability versus product TCO, but RedHat is not behaving like that kind of company. I'm looking forward to seeing how these OSS business models end up...
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While they are spending $$$, they should try and buy the portion of Netscape that makes the browser from AOL. Then we know that Mozilla won't be screwed up by AOL/NS and it would put RH directly opposing MS.
Here is my list of companies RedHat shouldn't buy ( not buying anybody isn't an option when you are overvalued as they are ).
:).
1 : VA. Stay out of the Linux on iNTEL hardware business. More money in working with people who do that. Don't want RedHat Linux to go the way of OS/2 now
2 : LinuxCare. Partner with Linux support companies don't buy them.
3 : SCO. Very tempting, but repeat after me. "A culture clash will make all the good programers quit".
4 : Troll Tech. This is an eggshell and we don't want it broken. Let them do QT under the QPL at there own pace.
Now my list of companies to buy.
1. Corel. Go for it, they make closed software that should stay closed so buy them up and keep a hands off approach; "It's not us it's the "Corel Division'". Best of all they are grossly undervalued.
2. Borland/Imprise. MS got to be what it is buy building the best dev tools and practically giving them away at crucial stages. You could force them heavily into Linux.
3. ISPs. Buy as many as you can get. You need to keep the cash streams pumping without disturbing the core business.
4. SGI. Another money stream just waiting to be taped. Eat them up but don't try to manage them.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Remember, this was $672 million in stock. That is not the same as handing over that much in cash. The news wire is acutally reporting it as $674 million. The only reason the dollars are listed is because it looks good in print. What should really be said is that, "RedHat is acquiring Cygnus for a 9.5% ownership stake in the company." The Cygnus owners will be given 9.5% of the company held RedHat stock.
Do you think that RedHat is at least 10 times the size of Cygnus? If you say no, then this was a very good deal.
RedHat has established a history of supporting open source development efforts. Why does everyone just assume it will be different with new acquisitions? They know where their bed is made.
World Beach List, my latest project.
I am interested in seeing where this will go. If they still deliver it as open source that will be good, and if they offer it with either there developer tools or there distro that would be great. I have been looking for a decent ide for Linux, that can handle C / C++ that will not be difficutl to install and get running. If Redhat offeres it as an option in there install for there distro, then what could be easier.
It does make me wonder thou a little about the Redhat tactics. Is this a step towards a Microsoft like monopoly thou? With Redhat owning Cygnus they could make it slightly "redhatish" with a RH icon and force other Linux distros to distribute as a RH product with a RH icon. Imagine having a SuSE distro, with Rh icons all over the IDE. Or worse image if SuSE buys an ide co and then a situation that if you uses SuSE you get this IDe while if you uses RH you get this ide. That could be bad for the whole community.
Honestly I do not see this happening, but it is a thought. RH has been supporing much of the GNOME development and it has not gone the RH way. It will be good if they have RH developers working on Cygnus and Open Source it.
just my .02 cents.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
(k6 linux 2.2.12 egcs-2.91.66)
bubbles:~$ cat hello.c
#include
main(){printf("hello world\n");}
bubbles:~$ cat hello.cc
#include
main(){cout"hello world" endl;}
bubbles:~$ gcc -o helloc -O6 hello.c;strip helloc
bubbles:~$ g++ -o hellocc -O6 hello.cc;strip hellocc
bubbles:~$ ls -l helloc*
-rwxrwxr-x 1 mojojojo mojojojo 3012 Nov 15 06:17 helloc
-rwxrwxr-x 1 mojojojo mojojojo 4208 Nov 15 06:17 hellocc
Is there any reason why they waited until this comdex thingy?
I think you are wrong. There is a widespread and damaging perception that good == big in the technology world.
:-)
One of the great benefits of OSS is that we might be able to get away from the fear that if I buy into a minority technology I'll be left standing. I'd love to see Linux distros filling tiny little niche markets, and being able to do so becuase people know that they will be able to painlessly switch of their vendor goes belly up.
The other relevant point is that RH are growing by acquisition, which is what MS is famous for. To be fair, the skills shortage is so accute in some areas that it's nigh on impossible to grow except by acquisition, which exonerates many of the MS buyouts as well as this one.
Nonetheless, acquiring companies is a sure fire way to spread the message 'we are a big company who can buy little companies - we won't go bust'.
It's also wrong, of course.
The one thing I know about OSS is that it got where it is without commercial interest, and while I'd like to see some OSS business models work out, there is not the slightest evidence that any of them do*.
*A few people sustaining a turnover for a couple of years, and paying a few hundred salaries does not prove a business model
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What does this mean for Cygwin? Will Redhat contribute to porting applications for windows? Or will that particular product be canned or put on hold?
RedHat realizes that the battle for the desktop, aka replacing Microsoft, will be a hard-fought battle with Microsoft having a better chance because they have more money.
In the embedded market, if you work is what matters. Consider too, that what has kept Microsoft where they are today is the OS and the supporting software (Office, for example). In the embedded world, the supporting apps don't matter.
(Note how WinCE isn't taking over as others thought it would.)
OpenSource therefore has the best chance in the embedded market. Cygnus is quite a player there, with most of its coders contracted out. (over 50% is what I read...) And, like it or not, the BSD licence better protects the embedded players in court than the GPL. How can *ANYONE* take you to court to force a source code release with the BSD licence? In the embedded world, one of the most important thing is the IP (Intellectual Property) of your product. BSD licence better protects IP as expressed in source. As GCC is a compiler, and a tool, it can be used to make code for any licence type, so Cygnus is a win/win GPL or not.
Oh, think this is good for OpenSource and the GPL? Try this: Motorola uses GCC on its switches. Ask Motorola for its changes to GCC. You won't get them. They say because they licenced them from FSF, they don't have to.
(If you have products using Linux 'embedded', then write the companies and ask for the source code. See what they say, just for yucks.)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Basically they don't have to release the products allready in cygnus portfolio to the open source community since it reads.
Red hat shares all of its software innovations freely..... (GPL).
So strictly technical all the things cygnus has developed allready don't count as Red Hat's own innovations. But I too am curious to see what will happen with products born from this take over.
Beware of Wight Supremacists!
It's more interesting in that we've seen a company specializing primarily in Linux consulting buy out a company which once specialized primarily in Windows software. In 1998 90% of Cygnus's revenue was based on versions of GNU pro and Code fusion which ran on Windows and competed directly with Microsoft Visual C++.
Apparently, the name change came from where it wasn't expected. So, who gets the Linux box?!?
If the matter is not settled, I could readily help in the adoption of the mentioned system. Ahem.
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
Sales of Cygwin and such represent sales. Since the product is already developed, such sales may even come at virtually no cost.
There's obviously not too likely to be immense changes to GCC (note: it's not called EGCS anymore... ); it might be reasonably argued that RHAT is acting to counter VA Linux Systems, as VA has lately been involved with the IA-64 deployement of GCC.
As for eCos, I suspect that it's not something RHAT will care much about. I also suspect that it hadn't yet become a substantial revenue stream for Cygnus. That bodes somewhat ill for it getting much continued support, although that's no guarantee.
I'm actually rather more interested in hearing what RHAT policy is on Source Navigator and such; it would be a rather positive step if they are released under (L)GPL, and rather distressing if they are not...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
This makes me sick. Red Hat is not evil. Have you ever been to a trade show and accually sat down and talk with an employee of redhat? They're very enthusiastic about Linux, and would only do whats best for the community.
What are you going to say when Red Hat turns up a profit (They haven't so far)? "They're being greedy by charging us $80 for Linux". Whatever. The Book, box, CD, etc may only cost $15, but the rest is all "greed money". Phone tech support is expensive. You have to pay a room full of people $7.50-$10 an hour, plus all the hardware and phone equipment needed to do that (well, it may only be 3-5 people, but still). Plus there is employee healthcare benifits. Oh oh, but thats right, we wouldnt want our redhat employees to be healthy, they're tools of SATAN!!! And food is overrated, they shouldn't buy anything.
You people are all warped and sick.
Everywhere you read about the little guys taking on the big hitters. The little guys are weight training now but the big guys are still a lot bigger. With the combined employee count of redhat and cygnus it is a sum of just a little over 400. Microsoft, aka the big boys, are over 31,000 in strength. The merger does not give redhat the monoplic size. Until redhat gets a lot larger this is good.
The original story on Slashdot about this had a rumor that some founding members of Redhat would be leaving as a result of this merger. The FAQ on the merger seems to indicate otherwise. Does anyone know if that rumor was definately false or not?
That browser's not worth saving. Better to wrap a GUI around lynx!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Cygnus has a report of an obscure bug which prevents its development tools from running on a Caldera distribution. No word on when it will be fixed. :)
-- The Sheep --
I guess I must have missed something then...
Did I sleep for 100 years, or why didn't I see Microsoft making all their source available, or even permitting free (as in $0) downloads of their products...
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Is Redhat going to do what MS did with Transvirtual and ActiveState and let the products continue, or are they going to wipe it?
Now I know the alsa team are making a lot of progress, but what if redhat bought opensound and freed it? That would mean a hell of a lot more sound support for linux, something that every distro desparately needs. Just a thought.
Luckily, we have to GPL to prevent them from *forcing* us to use their compiler. gcc is gpl'ed, so no one really owns it. The other dists can compile their own gcc and use that.
However, I suppose they could provide a proprietary, but nice & slick, IDE that everyone chooses to use. But it doesn't seem RedHat's style to become a monopolist. Their business model is based on the notion that open source is a good thing (tm), as is Cygnus. I think it will end up being more like a 'pooling of skills', they weren't gobbling up a competitor. Cygnus was based (more or less) on selling support for open source software, as is Redhat, so there is no reason they won't continue on like that.
And remember, this is the company that hired Alan Cox and said he could pretty much do whatever the heck he wants. I'm not worried or nervous in the least.
Dana
I could be off here, but it seems to me that a lot of people are having a knee-jerk reaction to RH's aquisition plans etc. What did you expect,
:) ). Unfortunately there are going to be more and more pressures on RH from outside ( 'the community') to do things in conventially brain-damaged ways. That doesn't mean they will follow that pattern. I think this possibility is what people are reacting to, rather than any action RH has really taken.
:) --- and things didn't get really solid until 2.0.x kernels (for me at least). But for example, the 6.x versions ship with a buggy gnome, and then try really hard to get you to use it. My 6.0 machines would dump a core in ~ every time you log in! Sometime gnome would hang for a minute or two with *no feedback* as to what was happening (unless you count the X error messages) 6.1 I thought would be better but it has all the signs of being a rush job to get the new installer out the door. Gnome was still problematic, there are config hiccups with less often use packages, and the 'upgrade' changes parts of *my* config without warning or backups. Annoying. I don't want to pick on Gnome, there are plenty of other examples but this message is way too long already...
.rpm vs say , .deb. The .deb is a better design, and fits in to existing tools more easily. Why didn't RH, realising this, bail on .rpm and make a set of good tools to sit on top of the .deb format? Ok, I know this has been talked to death, but I recall it to bring to mind the problems we could face in a couple of years if redhat has both a) de-facto control of a number of significant projects and b) a not-invented-here syndrome...
really? They have to do something with the (absurd) market cap they have or they will loose it, *fast*. There are a lot of holes in the RH business plan at the moment, so of course they will try and plug them. Whether or not a particular purchase is good idea for redhat or for 'the community' (whatever that is) is not such an easy question to answer.
I think it is *way* too early to start lumping them in with MS. Look, big (market wise) companies buy small ones because it is cheaper than developing in-house (or at least some PHB thinks it is). Why should we expect RH be different in that? The question is, what are they going to do with this new leverage they currently command in the commercial linux world? And what can we do to help keep them on track? Just because a company has money doesn't actually make them evil (statistical evidence aside
One interesting point is the fact that while RH and Cygnus are (were?) both commercial players in the open-source game, they had different outlooks. RH may have bundled commercial software, but it has always claimed that in-house software will be returned to 'the community'. Cygnus on the other hand had a commercial version/free version approach. The question is, will RH free up the Cygnus tools, or bundle them as a commercial add-on?
A more important issue is the long term scope of RHlabs. Indirectly, RH has aquired the current gcc maintenance codebase and people, no? This is not inherently a bad thing. However, it does raise a few interesting points: like how much concentration of OS projects is a good thing? If at some later date RH starts playing silly buggers with some of 'our' cherised projects, is the OS community going to be faced with the possibility of a series of ugly forks?
On a related note, RH is putting a lot of effort into PR on one side, and eye-candy (see new installer) on the other....fine, but they have some more serious problems to look at. I have recently played around with 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1 on both i386 and alpha. For the most part things have been smooth to get up and going (excepting 5.x on alpha). The problem is, once the system is up. I have never had as much trouble with a linux box as I have with the 6.x machines. Okay, that is not quite true... the 0.11x betas would fall down hourly when you played with them (but it was fun
The point I am getting at (slowly, sorry) is that this is a bad sign. My debian machines, slack machines, and the machines that were hand-built (no distro) had never given me this much trouble. The problem is that in NA at least RH is becoming synonymous with Linux in the minds of the great unwashed. So either we don't care what anyone else thinks (a valid, if limited scope, view) or we care what people think about RH. In the later case we really need to push them on the underlying technical issues a bit. It is a bit discouraging, for example, to see the possibility of a BETA-VHS type thing being precipitated by RH. Look at
Enough rambling!
S.
Maybe redhat can buy netscape intergrate the broswer with Gnome, and have it crash more than it does now...... now that's more like microsoft.
:)
hahaha..... but seriously redhat is committed to open source... but be vigilant so they don't stray
Red Hat should consider bringing Qt into the LGPL'd fold.
CBS has some lofty comments about Red Hat:
"Red Hat, the specialist in software applications using the revolutionary Linux operating system..."
Revolutionary eh?
It seems the big media is really taking a good look at our little community!
You can read the entire CBS Story Here
I think VMWare would be a good thing to buy.
And open-source a max of it too!
VMWARE ANYONE?!?!?!?!?!?!
Oh and while you are at it, could you finally make that portal of yours. I dream of the day I'll have a my.redhat.com page that makes sense and gives some benefits!
Kill Microsoft? No! Just hire their GUI guys!
Why woudln't they do it? If they make those ides why wouldn't they require other people to do it?
I really don't see that it is evil.
What is evil is not when you own everything like MS. It is when you use that power to screw other people's work, innovation!
I wouldn't have cared less that MS makes win98, Office, IE , Visual Studio..... if they didn't use their cash to destroy other people's work.
I don't question MS's work. I question their market methods!
Kill Microsoft? No! Just hire their GUI guys!
Here we go again!
17 years (or so) cycle?
But really, shouldn't we read this news as:
"RedHat buys GCC?"
Hmm... I think GCC is (primarily) what made GNU project so important. Now GCC drifts away. What's next? GPL?
Originally there were HTML 5.0 Standard and tags in previous posting, but Slashdot's Preview->Submit sequence happily ate them.
BTW: Be warned...
Try emailing the guy's at Moretonbay who make routers and remote access equipment using embedded Linux.
Better still, save their time and just download it from their website at http://www.moretonbay.com/
Cygnus makes money by selling support and development contracts for GNU software to large and medium sized companies. They built the development environment and complete software simulator for the Sony PlayStation-2. They sell risk reduction to big companies where time-to-market is critical and delays of even a week in product release cost millions of dollars over the life of a product. They make the compilers that Cisco uses to build all of its products (and Cisco pays $M for support to make very sure that no compiler problems delay or impede their products). Every time a new 32-bit or 64-bit chip comes out, the company ends up paying Cygnus to port the GNU tools to it (because their customers demand GNU tools, and while they could pay anybody to do the port, Cygnus has a great track record of doing good ports on time and on budget). They're doing the Merced compiler for Intel, for example, as well as a whole pile of MIPS chips, Hitachi H8 embedded micros, ARM, etc. Check the Cygnus press release page.
Cygnus revenue has always been 90% from selling its services, largely to chip and product companies in the embedded market; RedHat revenue has always been 90% from selling boxed software to end users and companies in the PC OS market. The combined company will offer compatible POSIX APIs that let people write apps that will run on everything from digital cameras and cellphones, to MS-Windows, to Linux, up to Beowulf supercomputers. RedHat and Cygnus have an almost perfect matrix of overlapping and synergistic skills and markets. I'm psyched!
great, now they can hire some programmers to fix the pathetically buggy 6.1 install...
Inprise was woth less than $300 million this morning. It really would've been nice to see free versions of VisiBroker, Delphi, C++ builder, Interbase, etc. . . Not that I think this would happen in a million years. BTW, in terms of stock, Cygnus was also valued at 6 times as much as Motorola paid for Metrowerks. While I understand the reasons for Red Hat's purchase, doesn't it seem like they overpaid a bit ? --JRZ
I guess Sun didn't just pay 500+ million to give StarOffice away for free.
Not quite the same as being open, but still the same as cutting off direct revenues from selling the product.
I agree, I don't think RedHat has plans on giving anything away.
open-sourcing gcc could actually make vc++ 20% faster!
Here is my list of companies RedHat shouldn't buy... Troll Tech. This is an eggshell and we don't want it broken. Let them do QT under the QPL at there own pace.
Actually, I think this might be a Good Thing. People flame the GNOME folks for releasing GNOME 1.0 before it was ready, but look at the bugs in Qt 2.x and you'll see Troll has the same problems. The difference is, it is one company, not legions of Open Source developers. If Red Hat bought Troll, they could GPL Qt, which I think would be a Good Thing. IMNSHO.
Now my list of companies to buy... Borland/Imprise.
Fine, but don't kill off their Windows product lines. Borland's C++Builder and Delphi make Windows development bearable.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
While you and I and all the other /. kids know that Windows sucks, my employer (the USAF) is not going to say, "Oh, hey, you're right, let's throw out Windows and move completely to Linux overnight." In fact, they've been doing the exact opposite.
We use Cygwin here in order to do porting efforts, to help use good software on a worthless platform. If Cygwin suddenly vanishes because RH can't make money off of a POSIX emulation library, life is going to suck a little bit more.
I know that you (Foogle) are aware of the issues, but there's a lot of others in this thread that need to realize that you don't just throw NT out all in one day, as crappy as it may be. That's the real world. Deal with it.
Cygwin is one of the best toolsets there is to help developers with that "real world," and suddenly its future is in doubt. You expect me to greet this with joy?
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
that most of the Slashdotters are freeloading college students that don't work in the real world. They are still living off Mom and Dad, so they want everything for free. That will change when they get out in the real world.
The Slashdotters that do work in the real world are usually Admin types who are so proud that they open sourced their perl script to calculate to the last decimal the last time they had sex.
When the little boys in here who wind up being software developers go to look for jobs, they will realize that open source is s a fairly small part of the software industry, and that most companies cannot exist by giving their product awawy.
Both RedHat and Cygnus have been able to make the case to venture capitalists that they have an unfair advantage in the open source world. No startup gets funded unless you have an unfair advantage. I'm sure there have been many presentations to VC prior to this merger that clearly showed how these two companies combined could monopolize the Linux market. Time to switch back to non-copyleft, where this phenomenon of "network effects" is curtailed by individual programmer freedom.
.. then I would expect Jeff Law, Richard Henderson, Jim Wilson (well, maybe not Jim), Mike Meissner, et al would bail the fuck out and develop GNU software on their own time. Henderson is passionate about the Alpha; Meissner is equally passionate about PowerPC. If RedHat/Cygnus tells them that these targets are no longer being supported, then what reason would they have for sticking around?
-- Guges --
Just like pam !
And I CHALLENGE you to disprove me on that one.
I have always been dissillusioned with redhat
for their tendency to "forget" to release
a tar ball of stuff they work on.
Could it be that MS actually created something on their own (besides an installer that sort of works)? I am talking about the code here, not what everyone ripped off of %favorite company here%.
Great. Another great move by the redneck racists from NC in the tech industry. BTW, LNX SUX.
Who is this guy anyway?
As a funny sidenote: Szulik (in slavic languages, and I think it's a czech name) means Swindler. Matthew Swindler that is... Hmm.. PRs at RH will have some cool work.
Alright, youv'e got your Red Hat. Now Red Hat owns Cygnus. A Cygnus is a Swan. So it's got to be Red Swan. 'Nuff said!
I'm a member of the GCC (formerly egcs) steering committee, but this is just me speaking here.
egcs and FSF gcc re-merged in April 1999. There is no longer a separate egcs project. The former egcs team now controls the FSF gcc, the rifts have been patched up, and some of the key GCC developers are competitors to Cygnus (and possibly to Red Hat).
Cygnus marketing has no say on GCC releases, just as they had no say on egcs releases. Red Hat marketing won't be able to affect the timing or quality of GCC 3.0.
Cygnus donates a machine and network bandwidth, plus developers; however, the steering committee, not Cygnus (or Red Hat) controls the direction of the project.
Both Cygnus and Red Hat have good records in their interaction with the free software community, so even if we didn't have the safeguards in place that we do, there wouldn't really be anything to worry about.
you're still talking baloney. The rules don't change. The system is still partioned into OS and applications. From a software engineering perspective it's better that way. The guy who started this thread still lives in the MSDOS era of bypassing OS services and directly dinking the OS. Bad engineering. Bad philosophy. When you have an OS as rich in services as Linux, there is no need to resort to MSDOS "tricks" to run your application. A mature OS will have well defined open interfaces that give you what you need to do the job.
Not that your post deserves a reply, but you stomped on a nerve. Type on your monitor 1000 times: Not all Southerners are rednecks. Not all rednecks are Southerners. Not all Southerners are racists. Not all racists are Southerners.
What's with all the GCC paranoia? GCC is not controlled by Cygnus or Redhat.
From the GCC FAQ:
What is the relationship between GCC and Cygnus
It is a common mis-conception that Cygnus controls either directly or indirectly GCC.
While Cygnus does donate hardware, network connections, code and developer time to GCC development, Cygnus does not control GCC.
Overall control of GCC is in the hands of the GCC Steering Committee which includes people from a variety of different organizations and backgrounds. The purpose of the steering committee is to make decisions in the best interest of GCC and to help ensure that no individual or company has control over the project.
To summarize, Cygnus contributes to GCCproject, but does not exert a controlling influence over GCC.
Yo, dude, they made something like $60 million
with the IPO, not $674 million. According to
the story they are buying Cygnus with funny-money,
i.e. issuing 6,624,344 shares of their own stock.
At the IPO price that would be worth an order
of magnitude less than it is supposedly worth
now. It's not the IPO that made this possible,
it's the insane valuation given to Red Hat after
the IPO.
Issuing about 6 million shares when there are
about 69 million shares outstanding means
diluting the number of shares by more than 8%.
So, does the stock drop in value by 8% to reflect
this news? No......
$10 million/year in revenue, worth $7 billion.
Yeah, right. I think we should be discussing
what the suits are going to think after RHAT
crashes when the "we'll sell support" business
model is proven to be unsustainable.
That press makes mistakes doesn't come as a surprise. Let me quote the report I got from InfoBeat: "RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. (AP) - Red Hat Inc., maker of Linux computer operating systems that compete with Windows, is acquiring Cygnus Solutions for $674 million in stock." ... do you see what I see? "maker of Linux computer operating systems"??? While an interpretation making "a Linux operating system" a common name, as opposed to "the Linux operating system" is indeed 'fairly' close to truth, chances are that most people reading it are going to think that RedHat indeed made Linux. Blech!
Now maybe Gilmore will have the bucks that Hudson needs to get his rotary rocket into space. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As far as I can tell SGI is a hardware company. That would be bad for the future of Red Hat to be tied down to making decisions based on the situation of its hardware rather than software, because of the balance of income coming from the divisions... Stay a purely software company (except for those groovy Akubras)
Believe with me, my saplings.
I thought QT alread yhad been gpl'ed... where am I going wrong here?
Believe with me, my saplings.
Now if I remember right, Cygnus had a contract with Sony that they were providing something (I think developer workstation software?) for the PlayStation II, so, through inheritance, we can now, in part, thank Red Hat when we play cool games, eh? ;-)
look at the bugs in Qt 2.x and you'll see Troll has the same problems
I have reported over a dozen bugs in Qt 2.x, for all but one of those bugs Troll Tech, answered my mail, acknowledged the problem, and fixed it (in cvs) within 24 hours.
(Let's keep this quiet but I don't even have commercial support, I just develop free software and give good quality bug reports). The only bug that took longer than 24 hours to fix was the one I reported at the start of a weekend!
This is just meant to be a data point rather than a "you're wrong", type reply.
I guess I'm saying Troll Tech is an open company and releasing their stuff under a freer license (BSD, LGPL not really GPL) wouldn't necessarily make them anymore receptive to outside contribution. Also RH has released software before it was ready too, so I don't believe a buyout would remedy that situation.
Troll?????? wtf? bozos in the moderator
pool again I see.....
shut up asshole. RTP sux. RH sux. Linux sux. AND YOU SUCK.
No...no...NO. You've got it all wrong retard. RTP is for people who think they're technologists but in reality are clueless phukheads who can't get a job elsewhere...say in a real place like Silicon Valley. ANd (b) is Redneck Hat paying you to defend them ? BTW, Assh0le> you're loser who can't get a job anywhere else ! right ?!? And you need to get laid more often, you pathetic free software using communist bastard. If RTP and Redhneck Hat are so great, how come M$ hasn't yet flinched ? Oh..wait...but Linux is going to replace Windoze right ? WRONG...RETARD...Here's some news...RH's $6bn market capitalization is REALLY DEBT (i.e. $$$$ they owe their investors), and M$'s $4.6Trillion (i.e. $4,600,000,000,000,000) is liquid. AS in they can crush the Linux (Communist) movement by spending 0.000001% of it on a marketing campaign. So in the end...Go PHUK Your RTP fag bro's.
The only thing that canadians are good at is FREEZING their peanut sized balls !! What a great thing Linux is....the inventor is a Finnish Commie, and the largest US distributor is a Canadian !! Oh...I forgot...RH took Microsoft by surprise. Yup Bill G. and Steve B. dumped their multi-billion dollar pants when RH went IPO (an overused term by the general ignorami such as yourself). Do yourself a favor...invest in Solaris or a real UNIX system. Linux sux. You suk. And Finland sucks. PS: Here's a joke for you...what do Torvalds and Young have in common ? Answer: They both come from countries that excel in freezing !!
Ummm... after yesterday(?)'s news about RHAT licensing BSafe, I think i have a little different read on this one.
RHAT now owns the GPL'd compiler, and can create a closed-source version of the compiler and associated tools, right? (Please correct me on this if i misunderstand!)
Sounds good for the stockholders, but a little questionable for the open source (free beer) community.
Posted by cookieman.k:
...
With all my respect, I've read it but it does'nt sound troll to me, a little offtopic but moustly INFORMATIVE. Hey MODERATORS, whats the matter with you ! This must be a mistake, right ? At least this guy did not write "first post" like other stuppid geeks. back to work
Hi! Thanks for viewing my user info. I know you hate me for my karma, my good looks, my comments, whatever. I'm just too sexy for my shell.
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