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<nettime> Capture, Capital - Red Hat's flight to Fedora [2x] |
Table of Contents: Re: <nettime> Red Hat Linux end-of-life update and transition planning (fwd) Brett Shand <brett@earthlight.co.nz> Is Capital taking over Linux? Chris Croome <chris@croome.net> ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 19:26:01 +1300 From: Brett Shand <brett@earthlight.co.nz> Subject: Re: <nettime> Red Hat Linux end-of-life update and transition planning (fwd) On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 14:21:47 -0500 (EST), Alan Sondheim wrote: > I find the following strangely disconcerting, as a major linux > provider slides out from its customer base. For some this would > indicate a growth and maturity of the community - for most of us, > it already implies a problematic development of open source > community. Why is it problematic Alan? It seems to me (without any special knowledge, I hasten to say) that it's two separate markets and that Redhat has seen the difference between the two. Enterprise wants a slow moving, very stable platform and RedHat thinks it can provide that and hopes that the market is big enough. It's going to leave the fast moving desktop market, which is very hard to service and keep stable, to work itself out. If that is so, and if it works, then it seems to me that everybody wins. Brett ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 23:04:41 +0000 From: Chris Croome <chris@croome.net> Subject: Is Capital taking over Linux? - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi The following article is also available here: Is Capital taking over Linux? http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2003/11/279908.html The latest version of Red Hat Linux will be out this week and it will be called Fedora 1 not Red Hat 10, also SuSE Linux has just been brought by Novell and this has been bankrolled by IBM. What is happening here and what does it mean for the world's most popular versions of the free GNU/Linux computer operating system? Red Hat is the world's most popular GNU/Linux distribution, SuSE is probably the 3rd or 4th most popular (2nd being Mandrake and 3rd or 4th being Debian) There has been lots of negative press regarding the lack of a Red Hat 10 distro with box sets and support for sale from Red Hat, for example: Red Hat Linux Support To End http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/03/1749259 Red Hat realignment opens door for Red Carpet http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/11/03/2136258 Red Hat tells customers, "No more freebies!" http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/11/03/1657205 Though not long ago there was a more positive discussion: Red Hat Linux Project Merges With Fedora http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/22/1712227 Progeny Brings Red Hat and Debian Closer Together http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/25/1345240 I think that Red Hat opening up the development process to the community, via Fedora [1] is a great thing. The exchange value of a Fedora CD set is basically the cost of producing and shipping them, there is some money to be made there but not much. I think this is why Red Hat are concentrating on selling services to businesses. Fedora is called Fedora in part because of the merger with the Fedora Linux Project [2], a group who were producing 3rd party RPMs for machines running Red Hat and also to enable the free as in free beer distribution to be reproduced en mass by anyone without having the hassle of removing the Red Hat logo before burning the isos [3]. However Red Hat could do what Mozilla does, sell cheap Mozilla CDs [3] or what OpenOffice.org does, link to people selling OpenOffice.org CDs [4]. After all Red Hat still sells hats, stickers, t-shirts and posters! [5]. I have been lurking and sometimes reading mail on the new Fedora lists [6] and lots of cool stuff has been happening, PPC ports, offers to help on internationalisation, the inclusion of more packages, support for other updaters like apt and yum and even a legacy project to support old Red Hat versions is being started. What is essentially happening here is that the free software mode of production is asserting its nature and getting more into the driving seat -- free software works best when it is developed in an open and free manner. In the meantime SuSE has been brought by Novell whom IBM have taken a big stake in. This gets loads of support and postive press: Novell Announces Agreement to Acquire SuSE http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/04/1336252 FLASH - Novell buys SuSE http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/11/04/1332252 I don't know what will happen with SuSE, will they realise that to survive they have to open up their development process and thus cede control to the community or will the hierarchical command structures of capital try to hang on to this distrubtion? Chris References 1. http://fedora.redhat.org/ 2. http://www.fedora.us/ 3. http://fedora.redhat.com/about/trademarks/guidelines/ 4. http://store.mozilla.org/ 5. http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/ 6. http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/coolstuff.html 7. http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/communicate/ - - -- Free Software may be the foundation of a new economy http://www.oekonux.org/ - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/qDCIIQYsxIuy3pERAp5YAJ0f3I1vAb7Mzmj255Kk2viM4wlPswCeLB8Y NJfygJDpIx9Q9EpvESFAVKs= =lOBi - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net