ARTICLE: Red Hat launching Linux subscription services network

[der.hans]

Am 26. Sep, 2000 schwäzte Kevin Buettner so:

> On Sep 26,  6:35pm, Craig White wrote:
> 
> > all the debian devotees round here...I thought this would be heresy.
> > 
> > I actually agree but recognize that it's a thin line between love & hate.
> 
> You have to look at the big picture.
> 
> Red Hat wants to be profitable, and to be so, they're going after a
> substantially different market segment than the folks that the Debian
> distribution appeals to.  Red Hat is attempting to build a reputable
> brand that the enterprise customer feels comfortable with.  Debian
> is a good distribution, but its community based organization probably
> doesn't give the corporate IT customer the same warm fuzzies the
> way that a company like Red Hat does.

Nope, that it doesn't :).

> So, for Linux to really become pervasive, it needs folks like Red Hat
> to provide training, support, etc.  Red Hat does other things too. 

The prob with dist provided training is that it's apparently very
one-sided, e.g. dist specific. That makes sense from the dist's corporate
standpoint, but from a customer standpoint it doesn't make sense, IMHO.

I really wish the dists would support one or both of the Linux training
initiatives instead of trying to brand the training.

> One of the things they're working on is embedded Linux.  Red Hat
> (thanks to the Cygnus acquisition) also employs the majority of the
> GNU toolchain engineers (GCC, GDB, binutils, etc.) The work that Red
> Hat does on embedded Linux, on the GNU toolchain, and even on the core
> of Linux (OS and kernel) does benefit other distributions like Debian. 
> How?  Remember, it's all open source (most of it GPL), so any changes
> that Red Hat makes are fed back into the sources used by other
> distributions too.  So, to a large degree, what's good for Red Hat is
> good for Debian.  And vice versa.

Yup. All of the major dists help Linux this way. RedHat specifically pays
many people besided Alan Cox to do Linux work that goes back to the
community. I'm told he helps us out some too ;-).

> Some folks worry about Red Hat's committment to open source.  I will
> try to allay those fears.  Red Hat is absolutely committed to open
> source.  The former Cygnus organization had a really major closed
> source project that was intended to become the bread and butter for
> the company (prior to the acquisition).  Shortly after Red Hat
> acquired Cygnus, this project was killed even though it was still a
> viable project and even though Cygnus had sunk *a lot* of money into
> it.  The reason it was killed?  It wasn't open source; nor could it be
> easily made so since it relied on proprietary libraries.  Also, Red
> Hat has opened up previously closed projects like Source Navigator. 
> Red Hat is working to open up other previously proprietary Cygnus
> projects as well.

Thanks for letting us know about this. While I don't doubt that RedHat
likes Open Source (I also don't think they're just using it to make a buck
as other companies sometimes seem to be), I did think they were a little
too ready to toss in closed source stuff.

> Remember who the enemy is.  For you Debian fans, it's not Red Hat. 
> Nor the other way around.  This is something that all of us should
> keep in mind when posting to this list.  When a distribution does
> something really bone-headed, it's okay to crticize, but make sure that
> it's constructive.  Also, if you really want to make sure that the
> distribution in question improves, you should let Red Hat, or the
> Debian maintainers, etc. know about the problems that you see.  If
> no one reports the bugs, they won't be fixed!

bug[1] is one of my favorite programs :). Does RedHat have something
similar or must one register and use the web page? How about the other
dists?

ciao,

der.hans

[1] bug (1)              - Report a bug to the Debian Bug Tracking System.
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