Red Hat Evil?
Tony, author of the Lockergnome Penguin Shell newsletter recently made some comments about Red Hat’s corporate strategy. Quoting this article, he infers that Red Hat is trying to drive the non paying customers away.
There is another interpretation of the article, which I think is closer to the truth. Right now, you either download or pay for the basic version of Red Hat, or you pay a lot of money for Advanced Server. There is no middle ground. By producing some better mid range products, Red Hat can shift some people from the free versions to the newer products.
For those of us that don’t need Advanced Server, there are some features that we’d like out of Personal/Professional, namely support. I’m not going to pay $2500/year/box for support. So far, I (well, my work) has ponied up $60/year/box for Red Hat Network. For that, we get priority access to patches, the great web GUI, and a way to show our appreciation to Red Hat. For my boxes at home, I take the cheap road out, and either use the free demo licence that comes with installation, or just manage packages with something else like Red Carpet or AutoRPM.
There is a huge market for Red Hat between the home user, and the enterprise Advanced Server. All they’re trying to do is get into that market.
Sure, the public “Demo” server is swamped when a patch comes out. For that matter, when a new kernel or version of Red Hat comes out, most mirrors are pretty busy too. If I need a patch in a hurry, I know I can always get it off a mirror (who themselves have a separate way to get the patches).
I like and use Red Hat because they “Get it”. They build a quality product, and IMHO, do a very good job of balancing new features software vs stability. They successfully combine Open Source and business. Despite what people say, they still remember their roots, and, in my eyes, have not yet done anything to try and extort money out of the home user.
We agree in many ways, Sean. Like you, I’ve used Red Hat for a long time because they do, indeed, “Get it.” They’ve advanced Linux in ways no other distro manufacturer has been able to. Along the way (especially with RH 8), they’ve created a Linux desktop that will make the transition to Linux very easy for Windows users. My hat is off to them for all they’ve done.
As with any article quotes in a blog, I’m assuming that the fact-checking has been done in the quoted article. I also try to whittle out the obvious opinion statements when fitting it into my own perspective and my own recent experience with Red Hat. In fact, I left out a couple of items from the article that would support my thoughts:
“The enterprise product family is the only Red Hat product that ISVs (independent software companies) and IHVs (independent hardware companies) will be certified to,” [RH Chief Financial Officer Kevin] Thompson said. “If their customers are not running a version of Advanced Server, they cannot guarantee a level of service and support.”
And:
“Although customers can ‘cobble together’ products to create something very similar to Red Hat, they’ll be on their own when it comes to supporting the system,” Thompson said.”
“It’s impossible to replicate a certified version of Red Hat Advanced Server. That only comes from us,” Thompson said. “Yes, our model is open-source, but it doesn’t mean it’s free.”
These seem to reflect a clear move toward supporting only the enterprise products.
The other disquieting element of the recent Red Hat strategy is the diminishing participation in the Open Source community as a whole. As you know, the recent changes to the desktop in RH 8 came at the expense of critical relations with both the KDE and Gnome developers. Both teams watched the release of 8.0 with some sense of alienation. Red Hat is certainly free to modify the DEs as they see fit - they’re open source, after all - but there appear to have been some real problems in communicating with these developers.
Finally, given the strength of the current RH desktop (which, by the way, has really spoiled me), RH seems to be in a leadership position for helping to advance the Linux desktop in general. Their lack of participation in the Linux Desktop Consortium is disturbing. If their focus is shifting to the enterprise, which it appears to be, and the enterprise product line is as strong as I’ve read, they have nothing to lose by sharing their obvious expertise in the desktop arena with the rest of the community. That they’ve chosen not to do so smacks of the elitisim I noted in the Penguin Shell article. In other words, advance the business, just don’t do so at the expense of the rest of the community.
In then end, I don’t think we’re too far apart in our opinions. I was just probably a bit less than articulate in expressing my additional concerns.
February 9th, 2003 at 2:28 pmDisappointing Turn
I just really feel a shrinking sense of good will on Red Hat’s part. I’ve worked for three companies that are now vapor. I clearly understand the need to show a profit. But Red Hat has reached profitability even with free offerings - OS, updates, etc. …
February 9th, 2003 at 2:45 pmThanks for the comments, Tony. I’m inclined to give RH the benefit of the doubt. My experience is also on the server side — I don’t give as much weight to their desktop activities as I do their server and support stuff.
Sean
February 9th, 2003 at 9:18 pmI would agree with most of your statements. I personally like Red Hat and believe they’ve done a great job with their new products especially the ease of managing packages on the system and the RHN which is also free for the home user (first machine).
As a desktop distro, I’ve liked SuSE the most but it really does’nt work as well for me when I want to intall Oracle on it or even for that matter, software like clisp and gcl from source. With Red Hat, I’ve never had a problem.
And besides, whats wrong with them making money as long as they have download mirrors for the home users.
Sanjay
February 12th, 2003 at 8:43 am