AOL in Negotiations to Buy Red Hat?

bstadil sent in this rumor. The Washington Post isn't exactly a rumor site, so there's probably truth behind it. Wow. It would make a great deal of sense for AOL/Time-Warner to acquire an operating system for leverage against Microsoft - same reason they bought Netscape.

Why, It's free already?

[cide1]

Isnt this the beauty of the GPL, AOL already has the full source to RedHat.

Same thing as Netscape, eh?

[saviorsloth]

Somehow, that does not reassure me. At all.

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[account_deleted]

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Please no....

[Saeculorum]

You've got Linux!

Sell it to me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have the Electrical and Water Utilities and hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I have a monopoly to maintain, dammit!

True motivation

[Tablizer]

They hate MS so they buy what MS hates. The Larry Elisonization of corporate strategy.

What the heck would AOL do with RH anyhow?

At least I could get a new RH disk in the mail every 2 months.

Re:The End of the MS Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

.. a Linux distro with an AOL client strapped on

For some reason, that sounds . . . arousing.

~~~

Re:AOL buys *all* the cool stuff.

[ekrout]

Except Slashdot. Are you trying to say Slashdot isn't cool? Are you? Huh?! Huh?!!!

Nice ...

[antis0c]

Then they can finally rewrite Linux so it can support skins and built in ecommerce links. Then they can remarket it under Linux XP to catch up with Microsofts versioning schemes, and bundled hundreds of little AOL trial links in it. I can hardly wait.

OK, after thinking a few minutes...

[chip_s_ahoy]

All I can think of for a reason for AOL to buy Redhat is that they need new group of employees to pit against "those damn Winamp guys."

OK, I've thought some more...

[chip_s_ahoy]

Alan Cox works for AOL?...Dude! You've got patches!

Redefining 'Dumb Terminal'

[long_john_stewart_mi]

"... a rival operating system that works exclusively with the media giant's own Internet service provider, its Web browser or proprietary content."

Now that's what I call a dumb terminal. =)

Tech Support

[istartedi]

Customer: I can't connect.

Tech: What's your operating system?

Customer: AOL.

Tech: (trying not to laugh) No sir, that's your browser. I need to know what comes up when you turn on your computer.

Customer: I told you. AOL.

Tech: Maybe AOL is in your startup folder. What comes up before AOL?

Customer: It's the first thing that comes up.

Manager: Can you put the customer on hold?

Tech: Can you hold please?

Customer: OK.

Tech: Sorry this is taking so long. I've got a real idiot. Thinks his OS is AOL.

Manager: Didn't you get the memo?

Tech: What memo?

Tech 2: Hey did you see that guy go postal in cubicle 6?

Tech 3: No. By the way, there's some kind of memo. Have you read it?

Tech 2: Nah. I was gonna wait until break...

Re:well, holy crimson fedoras...

[Robotech_Master]

Not only that--but get this...

AOL discs could be useful for something other than a coffee cup trivet or a pretty microwave oven light show.

"AOL disc? Heh heh. That's a Red Hat Linux install disc in disguise. And they sent it to you free, you lucky bastard! You didn't even have to pay the Cheapbytes cost!"

Re:Perhaps it's time to give Netscape/Mozilla anot

[Anonymous DWord]

Oho, so you're the guy that coded the Olympics site!

unix shell gets banner-ads.

[SkewlD00d]

unix shell gets banner-ads, film at 11. =)

Re:AOL just isn't the 'internet....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'd notice something was different about the OS. No more viruses, trojans, worms, crashes, daily reboots, ''Illegal Operation'' messages ...

Geeks wouldn't be the target

[wirefarm]

Wouldn't it be great to get stuff like the latest RPMs on those free AOL CDs?
What about free security updates for AOL members - goodbye CodeRed-style nuisances... (Something like Apt-get on connect...)

If they can discourage members from running as root, they'll virtually put an end to a lot of the nonsense that we've had to put up with from email trojans, and VB Script crap.
Yes, they'd probably not let people run a lot of services on the network - telnet, smtp, etc, but isn't that a Good Thing for end users as a group?

Plus, wouldn't it be nice to be able to SSH to your mom's/uncle's/friend's machine to fix something, rather than have them drag it out at Thanksgiving?

Just some thoughts...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Stallman?!

[rice_burners_suck]

Richard Stallman will go on a shooting rampage when he hears about this:

It's not GNU/Linux anymore! It's AOL /Linux!

Re:Good and Bad.

[bonzoesc]

...Why would your aunt need to recompile a kernel anyway?

Perhaps her name is Tillie.

Re:What would we do...

[Anonymous DWord]

Maybe they'd pump 100 million bucks into writing a spellchecker for Taco.

Re:Well put

[ocbwilg]

On top of that, its not clear that RH needs to be bought. What are they missing? They seem to have decent capital available to them, and they are slowly cleaning up in the linux distro market. I would think IBM would be a better partner for them.

Cuz IBM *really* knows how to compete with MS in the OS marketspace...

I can see it now

[A_Non_Moose]

1) Red hat AOL user (aka RHAOL...pronounced RAH-OOL) fires up the AOL security check and hears "you got owned".

2) Just when you think it can't get any worse, they place ads on TV with Scooby Doo as the spokes 'toon saying "Red Rat Ray-roh-rel rits rumber run!'

3) The Red hat on the Redhat symbol gets down to the "chin level" to hide its shame.

4) A vulnerability in sendmail allows a script kiddie to parse all the email from AOL thru the "borkinator" script (inserts Swedish Chef comments into text)...oddly enough, no one notices for 2 years even when calling tech support and "this is (insert name of tech) how may I BORK! BORK! BORK! Help you".

5) World-wide several BSD and Slackware users are hospitalized for asphixiation from laughing so hard they could not breath for several minutes.

Just a few thoughts.

Re:I put the Coaster in my Coffee-Cup Holder, and.

[Jacek Poplawski]

Customer: ... and now it wants me to recompile the kernel.

Tech: Are there any Aunts in your house?

Re:AOL buys *all* the cool stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to run AOL on FreeBSD and you are calling other people clueless?

Finally, the AOL CD's will be usefull!!!!

[StormyWeather]

Wooo I can finally tell folks to KEEP their CD's. D00d, what are you thinking! Don't trash that AOL CD, it's got a current kernel on it!

Free Linux CD's?

[gir]

Does this mean that AOL will start sending me hundereds of CD's that contain something I want, linux?

Thanks AOL, saves me the time it takes to download ISOs.

New Red Hat Install Sound Clip

[commodoresloat]

"You've got root!"

Gee, this Linux thing sounds great...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and it's as free as all these AOL shiny round cheese slicers I keep getting in the mail.

Isn't technology wonderful? Now, where do I get a penguin to install this thing?