Re: RedHat = MS-Linux???
On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Andrew Hagen wrote:
> >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.
>
> It strikes me that the Red Hat strategy may be to get Linux software
> released for their platform and not others. The RPM format facilitates
> this. Eventually they would control GNU/Linux, because "if it doesn't run
> on Red Hat, it's broken." OTOH, Red Hat does pay the salary for a number
> of developers releasing software used by the entire LInux community. The
> compelling advantage of GNU/Linux is the freedom: to use it, customize it,
> and control your own computer. Red Hat control would remove that
> advantage.
I wish I could find that "Heinz Ketchup" article again. It was Red Hat's
president saying that their #1 mission is to make Linux=Red Hat. If you
send someone out to get Linux, he wants to be 99% sure they are going to
come back with a Red Hat box.
Red Hat will pay lip service to the community and even support it to the
extent that Linux and Red Hat have a common interest. Otherwise it is in
Red Hat's interest to follow its own agenda ... market share. How do you
get market share if you are not an applications company? You "capture" the
applications to your platform.
If you want HP FireHunter to monitor your servers, you have to remove
Debian and install Red Hat on them. The individual market is what ... 5%
of the computer market? They are after the enterprise customers that pay
the $50 and get the supported boxed set. When they make their distribution
incompatable with others and capture enough applications, they can then
wag the dog. They force the other distros to try to catch up but they can
always change course and cause Debian to have to do it all over again.
What is worse is they can use the community to do its devel work as long
as they call the shots in the course of that development. Once a project
decides that their interests and Red Hat's interests are no longer in sync
and decides to go its own way, Red Hat will drop it. I seriously doubt
that you will EVER see Red Hat sign onto any standard that forces it to be
compatable with other distributions. It is simply NOT in their interest to
do that. I could then get HP FireHunter and install it on ANY
distribution.
I have a different idea and I am about a week away from starting a distro
based on Debian that is commercial but is much closer to Solaris than to
Red Hat in layout. It will be designed as an easy Linux for vendors of
Solaris software to port to.
George Bonser
Support The THING -- http://shorelink.com/~grep/THING.html
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