Red Hat Deserves Award for ... Most Awards?

malacai pointed out a story on biz.yahoo.com about all the awards that Red Hat has been getting. Plus, their recent (pending) acquisition, Cygnus, also seems to be getting a wall's worth of plaques. Maybe we should think about giving Red Hat some kind of special award for "Most Awards Won by a Linux Company in 1999." One thing's for sure: Red Hat has done lots to promote Linux in general, and deserves strong applause for their efforts no matter which Linux distribution you personally prefer.

Comments

Red Hat have done very good things for us.

[Goonie]

They:

1. Produce a pretty good distribution.
2. Pay several important kernel hackers to work on the kernel.
3. Pay lots of people to work on GNOME, full time, and give the copyright of the core libraries to the FSF.
4. Developed RPM, which most of the other commercial distros use.
5. Have helped publicise Linux, and Open Source, more generally.
6. Despite some well-publicised problems, made quite a few hackers a tidy profit on their IPO.
7. AFAIK and IMHO, haven't abused their predominant position in the distro market.

While I don't use Redhat personally, I think that, so far, that they have been good for Open Source / free software, and that they deserve recognition and financial success.

Redhat is a Force For Good (TM)

[Uruk]

I've read quite a bit of flames about Redhat and about how they're becoming evil and all, and I was geniunely worried when they went public, because they went from a company that has a profit motive that is held among private citizens to a company that has a profit motive that is owned by the public. So far though, I think they're doing quite well.

It's not as if Bob Young and Co. just snickered to themselves, "Now that our evil IPO is complete, we can begin ruthlessly screwing the linux community muhahahahaha!!!!" but rather they kept doing the business that got them to where they are. And it's a good business. It employs poor hackers like me (disclaimer: "like" me. I don't work for redhat) and pays them to write free software. Now, I don't know how the rest of you coders out there feel, but for me that's tantamount to getting paid to drink guiness beer and watch the Simpsons. Maybe not as easy, but as enjoyable. I think you get the point.

The purpose of this was not to be a Redhat cheerleader, just to point out that if you really really want to, you can search the net and find a million places that endorse redhat (and I'm not talking about companies, but individuals) and talk about how much they do for the free software community, but the only place that I've really seen that *slams* redhat and calls them all of the filthy names that we tag onto companies we don't like is here on slashdot, either in the form of AC ranting, or in the form of off-the-cuff remarks about how they're growing into the role of the Linux Microsoft or whatever propaganda people are spouting these days.

Rob Malda, slashdot crew, and pos[t]ers, I'd like to see somebody write a coherent article about how redhat is supposedly evil and then defend it against coherent questions. Now, like I said, there have been numerous things written in favor of redhat, but nothing that really makes sense or has a reasonable logical flow that's been written against redhat. If they are evil, I'd like to see some concrete material on why. It's not inherently evil to buy another corp like Cygnus. It can be, but it isn't always.

I think the moral of the story with redhat is moral relativism. Nobody can point a finger at redhat and say "you did this, you did that" and claim that since microsoft has done the same thing in the past, redhat must be like microsoft. But rather, look at the current and long term impact of the action. It depends on the context and the affect of the action before somebody can come along and label it "evil".

Redhat makes a good product, plays nice with free software, (compared to you or your organization, what does YOUR free software output look like up against redhats?) and does all kinds of things for the community. Like the whole "letter" business. I've seen a lot of posters point out that they didn't have to do that, it wasn't even expected of them. But they took the time to do that.

I see redhat as not only contributing a lot, but occasionally holding out an olive branch to the ACs of the world by doing things it doesn't have to do. If you choose to throw it away and say they're evil anyway, just don't go getting quoted on large news outlet websites saying you represent the feeling of the community.