Re: RedHat = MS-Linux???
On Sat, 27 Mar 1999, Don Custer wrote:
> I've been toying with Linux for about 3 years now. I do not have it
> mastered, but I haven't given up either. Part of me is delighted with
> the current regognition of Linux (RedHat), but the other part fears that
> some entity such as Microsoft will somehow crawl out of the woodwork and
> take over. What are your views on this? Eventually I would like to be
> running Debian exclusively. I will admit though that I am learning on
> RedHat. Just curious.............. Don
The problem is that with any commercial product, the key is
differentiation. You must somehow differentiate your product from the
competition. This is particularly true with "commodity" products such as
Linux.
Red Hat has jiggled the filesystem and configurations around to the point
where a vendor targeting Red Hat as their Linux platform of choice and
producing the package in RPM format may find that their software is
nearly impossible to install on any other Linux platform by the average
user. In other words, in order to embrace a market leader with a 50%
market share, they have locked themself out of the other 50% of the
market.
Red Hat's job, as told by their president, is to become the definition of
Linux. When someone thinks Linux, they are supposed to think Red Hat.
They do not particularly CARE if the product is good, but instead care
more about the identity thing. In other words, they want people to think
that Red Hat is the premium Linux brand while things like Debian should be
thought of as the cheap no-name generic bulk brand and other commercial
brands as fringe niche competitors.
Software vendors need to learn that by providing a SANE install script,
providing their software in tar.gz format and installing in /usr/local,
they can target their product to 100% of the market.
Yes, Red Hat is well on the way to becoming Microsoft-like Linux. They
screech their shrill cries of "But everything we do is open source" but
when you look at it you also find that it is also incompatable with every
other distro and would take so much trouble to modify as to being just as
easy to completely rewrite it ... the right way.
I tried porting the Red Hat GUI printer management stuff to Debian once
but gave up once I realized that it was going to take more than a couple
of hours and involve modifying several files. That was about a year ago, I
am not sure if they have cleaned it up since then.
You will NEVER see Red Hat 100% behind such efforts as LSB of FHS unless
they get to dictate the standards. They are all for open development
projects as long as they can get the work done for free yet control the
direction of the project to fit their business needs. Once there is a
conflict, they bolt from the project. It is not in their interest to
cooperate with other distributions or create standards so things are
interchangable between distros.
When a company issues a new product touting Red Hat Linux support, rest
assured that it is designed to sell more copies of Red Hat and may not
install on any other distro cleanly.
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