Alan Cox to Leave if RH AOL Buyout Happens? 722
According to MartinG,
Alan has posted to the LKML and said "Im
insulted that anyone believes I would continue working for RH if aol/time
warner owned them. " This of course refers to the
Red Hat/AOL
Buyout Rumors that we have been
talking about
all weekend.
Re:Whooptie fucking doo (Score:4, Insightful)
Heaven forbid that a company with the clout to get Linux out to the masses get involved. Then Linux might not be just for the computer savvy anymore.
The ongoing hypocricy astounds me. Most Linux users don't seem to really want Linux to succeed. Having used Linux since long before it was 'fashionable' to do so, I for one hope that if this purchase comes to pass, it helps get Linux out to the unwashed masses of computer users out there.
Re:Whooptie fucking doo (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they do. They just want the core personnel to be independent of consumer-oriented behemoths like AOL.
Wouldn't that kill the deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't think AOL would move unless they had secured Alan for. So I would think this means it's a rumor. Who would by RH without Alan signing on at least for a while?
You can't *buy* employees... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the stupidest move AOL has made since the Netscape acquisition and seeing how they ran that one, a RH buyout is guaranteed to fail.
But then since I don't particularly like RedHat, I am 100% supportive of this decision! Go for it AOL!
Not just Alan, the user base (Score:4, Insightful)
So if Red Hat is bought by AOL, I expect much of their user base will move to Mandrake, Debian, and Suse.
The history would repeat itself (Score:5, Insightful)
April 1st, 1999 will be my last day as an employee of the Netscape Communications division of America Online, and my last day working for mozilla.org.
I think AOL still has all the stigma that it always has, as far as image goes. My friends keep saying ``jwz@aol.com'' and then laughing uncontrollably...
AOL is about centralization and control of content. Everything that is good about the Internet, everything that differentiates it from television, is about empowerment of the individual.
I don't want to be a part of an effort that could result in the elimination of all that.
RedHat is no longer an OS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you, AOL, for pointing this out to us.
This could be dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty of time for him to leave afterwards if it looks like AOL/TW is going to do a Bad Thing, but up to and until that time, I think it's in his best interests, and Linux's best interests, to take advantage of the possible benefits of being backed by one of the largest, richest companies on the planet.
Question Is: Where would he go? (Score:3, Insightful)
A good question is: who would pick him up?
I could definitely see IBM bending over backwards to get Alan, but would he work IBM, given IBM's overwhelming Linux support?
Mandrake might be a good fit, seeing as their distro is similar to RH. Then again, the fact that they have centralized their development out of France might not be a good deal for him...
Re:Quick heads up, Alan (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Quick heads up, Alan (Score:3, Insightful)
I hardly feel as though I have to defend Alan Cox, but he's not one-dimensional. He knows much more than just the Linux kernel and as far as I can remember he didn't even work in the operating systems business before he started working for RedHat (was it telecom? I don't know for sure).
But how this post gets modded up is beyond me (and that's why I'm picking on it). It's obvious Alan is a very very good software developer. Who cares how bad the economy is, good developers can get a job anywhere.
It's the bad developers that need to worry when the economy goes sour.
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:2, Insightful)
what if (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I'm not naive enough to forget that with money comes advice but... let's say AOL wants to create version of Red Hat Linux more targeted for Windows lusers. So now Red Hat might have a product line like: Embedded, Standard, *Home*, Professional, Deluxe Professional, Data Center, etc.. How is this bad for the community and Red Hat in general? I know alot of people don't want to see Linux beginning to pander to Windows lusers, but does anyone in their right mind think that Linus & Co. would pander to Windows users or Red Hat for that matter? Is Lindows going to destroy our beautiful Linux and wonderful community? NO! Then why do people think that Red Hat will allow itself and it's goals to be destroyed by a lesser evil than Microsoft?
I believe the stability of Red Hat is important to the future of Linux becoming mainstream. One more thing.... necessity makes for strange bedfellows.
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who really cares? (Score:0, Insightful)
The people working on the solaris kernel don't feel like they are mighty political figures or anything...it's just a fricken job, get over yourself.
Just becuase your program is open source doens't mean you're suddenly martin luther king or something, get real...
Ever hear someone who develops the HP-UX or AIX kernel blast of a bunch of half baked political rants? i don't think so...
Re:Whooptie fucking doo (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know which elitist linux users you are talking about, but if the're like the ones I've seen then they sure as hell don't use Redhat.
Most Linux users don't seem to really want Linux to succeed
Let me guess. By "succeed" I bet you mean one or more of:
1) "Become more popular"
2) "Make more money for it's owner"
3) "Get easier to use"
In my mind linux is already a tremendous success and no one company (including either or both or RH and AOL/TW) can change that.
I just happen to want to see Redhat continue to succeed.
And in case you're wondering what I mean by "succeed" I mean:
1) continue to create products based on what their users want not based on the interests of some other division of the corporation
2) continue to allow the employees the free creativity they require to achieve that (and other) goals.
Judging on past experience I have no reason to believe for a second that (1) will happen, and judging by Alan Cox's comment, he perhaps would agree with me that (2) would be more difficult after any AOL buyout.
Re:You can't *buy* employees... (Score:3, Insightful)
*cough* name recognition *cough*...
"Soon AOL will be held holding an empty bag."
An empty bag with the name "Red Hat" on it, for them to fill as they please.
Re:AOL only RedHat? (Score:2, Insightful)
AOL buying RH may not be that bad.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, this isn't AOL/Time/Warner buying out Linux, this is AOL/Time/Warner buying out Red Hat. Linux will be alive and well, and Red Hat will become whatever AOL wants it to become.
Second, AOL can provide the $$ to make RH a contender against Microsoft. Right now, Microsoft is (for all intents and purposes) the only operating system out there aimed for middle-income home users. AOL can help break that monopoly into a duopoly by introducing a user-friendly version of RH. Sure, far from ideal, but certainly better than having Microsoft still control the home market.
As long as there's Slackware/Caldera/Debian/* Linux distros, Linux will survive w/o Red Hat.
Enough dissing AOL (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll post anonymously, and nobody will see this unless it gets moderated up. Moderators, this post is at your mercy.
AOL has done a lot for the net by getting a lot of people online in places that would not otherwise have had access. Sure, many of these people are lamers who ask stupid questions. But they learn. And then they can come to contribute. Diversity is a GOOD thing, but in order to have diversity, we do have to put up with a bit of noise. That's life. The real problem with AOL is not the users, but the fact that AOL builds a kind of fake internet that tries to contain its users inside a mall full of commercials. But give them a break. Noone else has as many dialups for the little towns out in the boondocs. In that respect they are doing a great thing. Even if they are making money at it.
Re:Not just Alan, the user base (Score:1, Insightful)
I disagree. My boss, in particular, would prefer to use software backed by a company with a history of profitability. His fear is that we could be on our own next year if the company goes under. I tend to agree with this.
Don't get me wrong, I love RH. I use it at home and our important servers at work. But my boss would still feel more comfy knowing RedHat won't go under. If AOL/TW (etc) wants to buy RH, that's all fine and dandy with us. My guess is that RH would still operate semi-independantly; but with the financial backing of major corporation.
It's fine if Alan wants to bail. It's also fine if some customers get upset that RH "sold out". But as for me and my company, we'll support the move because it means we can depend on RedHat for years to come.
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have that, with IBM no less, not to mention a plethora of lesser giants. GNU/Linux will do fine without AOL/Time-Warner, and arguably better.
Or, are we going to start up with the "elitest want Linux to stay small"?
It's not about elitism, it is about the dangers of an industry which has as a stated goal the eradication of free software (at least for playing DVDs, and by extention managing digital data of any kind), has attempted to legislate exactly that, and is unlikely to change its ways anytime soon. Remember, this is AOL-Time-Warner we're talking about.
Is the evil of AOL/Time-Warner exaggerated? On the AOL side perhaps, on the Time-Warner side it is understated, if anything. Keep in mind that old-school copyright cartel content providers have been the most zealous, and most effective, opponents of free software (remember the DMCA, deCSS, SSSCA, the Hague Convention, etc.)?
OTOH the loss of Red Hat to the "dark side," if that is in fact how it turns out, won't really impact GNU/Linux all that much. Some other distro (Suse, Mandrake, Debian, Sorcerer, or Slackware perhaps) will take up the slack. More likely all of them will to varying degrees.
Hopefully the talented programmers such as Alan will find gainful employment elsewhere doing exactly what they love to do: working on Linux. IBM comes to mind as an immediate candidate for sponsorship of this kind, as do about a dozen large universities in the US alone.
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think anyone really likes their boss ... I mean you can get along with them, but you're not going to want to grab a beer after work with them and shoot the shit about all the pens you stole the day before from the storage closet because you're too lazy to take your kid school shoppin.
Then there's the wonderfulness of ... AOL HASN'T BOUGHT RED HAT YET ... and throwing out these kinds of attitudes can definantelly cause you to loose your job even if there is no merger.
AOL has yet to put massive controls on a company that they've acquired ... they're just looking for a solid investment ... AOL = online ... redhat = server ... these are just IT buzzwords ... and are recognizeable buzzwords ... hell I know quite a few people who will ask me if I run linux 6.2 or 7.1 ...
But Cox really needs to look at who puts food on the table ... I know if I had a nifty little job where I could do what I enjoy ... I'd work to keep it ... with or without slashdot's approval.
This would be a *GOOD* Thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Its not like Microsoft has Bill coding the kernel all day long all by himself, and they sure as hell don't have one person making fixes.
I'm sure of AOL buys up redhat, they could afford to do what they wish. Infact I bet the AOL purchase would force Alan Cox out to begin with. I can't imagine a company of such keeping someone onboard who hates the companies idealogies 100%. I hope Alan quites and starts his own company or goes over to Mandrake.
Capitalism.
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
Is getting financial benefits, in and of itself, really selling out? In my mind, selling out comes when you actually start compromising your art for the sake of cash.
Whether or not it's selling out is something we can't really decide until we know what AOL's plans are for RedHat. If, for example, it's part of an effort to displace Microsoft, it's feasible that AOL might be content to just throw extra money at RedHat to get some of the classic Linux desktop usability problems solved.
On the other hand, it's possible that AOL might turn RedHat into one giant AOL ad. Just as they've done with ICQ and Netscape, they could coat RedHat in an annoying layer of ads designed to increase their user base.
Overall, though, I don't think it's fair to call it selling out just yet. It's possible for AOL to benefit from this action without compromising RedHat.
Here's a thought (Score:2, Insightful)
Take off the anti-MS-colored glasses for a second and let's imagine what the
"Microsoft intends to purchase RedHat and use Linux technology and methods to better our products and the computing experience of end users. We will use our highly-developed sense of marketting to make Linux a household 'gotta have it' product in every nation. We will use our extensive research into UI usability testing to bring an easy to use approach to Linux without removing any of the 'hardcore' factors that allow enthusiasts to tinker with things. We will aggressively push Linux in the corporate community. We will keep the source open and abide by the GPL. We will use the best of both worlds."
Now, improbable as that might be, let's assume that MS actually said it and meant it. I would imagine that millions of Linux users around the globe would STILL oppose it. The anti-corporate mentality here is deep, way too deeply rooted for the community's own good.
Re:Quick heads up, Alan (Score:3, Insightful)
That's simply not true. I've recently found myself in a situation where I was forced to either accept a promotion at my present job or hit the street. I don't consider myself middle-management material, and I don't particularly want that job, but my efforts to find another job have gone nowhere. I'm not a great programmer, but I'm good, and several companies told me that they'd be happy to make me an offer just as soon as their executives lift the hiring freeze.
Don't be arrogant enough to think that just because you're good at your job you can find employment in bad times. More likely you'll be unpleasantly surprised.
My solution? I'm taking the promotion. Better hours and a lot more money, but more responsibility and I don't get to do the fun stuff any more. But it goes down on my resume while I keep looking.
Wait, we don't know AOL's motives yet (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, this could be a corporate dilution of a community-supported company. But it might also be an awesome opportunity to expand Linux's presence infinitely.
Certainly a corporate giant such as AOLTW is not a philanthropic patron, but maybe they will support Linux the way they have supported a profitless project like Mozilla for years. Not for charity, but enlightened self-interest.
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who really cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The AIX and HP-UX kernel devel lists probably aren't open for public view, so we really don't know what they talk about.
2. Some of the programmers probably do make political statements -- who doesn't? -- but they don't get much attention because they're not as well known.
3. If you look at Linux as the equivalent to Sun or IBM, Alan is about at the same level as Bill Joy or Larry Ellison over at Oracle. They make political statements all the time. Alan is employed by Red Hat partly because of his skill and also because of his status in the Linux community. They could hire someone just as talented, probably, but they wouldn't have the same priviledges when it comes to working on the kernel. Red Hat can't buy that priviledge -- it has to settle for hiring someone who has it, or submitting code to someone who does.
4. If you disagree with Mr. Cox, that's all well and good -- it wasn't his choice for someone to report his statement on the mailing list. He's discussing something in his usual forum. The fact that it's been widely reported and speculated over is not his fault, nor do I really think he's trying to call undue attention to his opinion.
Obviously, many people do care what Alan thinks -- why does that bother you?
open source making money (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that there's anything wrong with that. So many slashbots are quick to condemn AOL/TimeWarner and MS for seeking profit, but even quicker to overlook that their Noble Heroes earn a paycheck just like everyone else, I.E. profit from their labor. Slashbots drone on about the virtues of Pro Bono Programming... at least until they move out of their parents' garages and find out that earning a buck is necessary if they want to continue playing Diablo II over their cable modem all night.
Wake up clueless hordes: Your slashdot editors "g0t 0wNx0r3d" by VA, and I'm pretty sure they really don't mind an awful lot having a check every second Friday for what's got to be a killer fun job. Your heroes do not subsist upon GPL alone.
Re:Don't get mad Alan... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry about AOL taking an established, successful company with a real future and running it into the ground. Hasn't happened yet. (Netscape, GNN, CompuServe were already dying when we bought them. CompuServe is a relative success, GNN couldn't be saved, and Netscape has a new lease on life now that the MS contract is dead.)
Don't worry about AOL taking open stuff and making it proprietary. Hasn't happened yet either. (Everything that's proprietary at AOL started that way, and has slowly, if much-too-slowly, grown more open.)
Don't worry about TW's influence on the AOL side. There isn't any. Steve Case and Bob Pittman run the show.
Worry, instead, about people who simply don't want to be associated with AOL, cuz it isn't cool. Is it immature and short-sighted? Probably. Are geeks known for their maturity, social competence and rational decision-making? Not particularly.
Too bad, because when AOL buys a smaller company, that's usually what they're really buying - the brains behind it. Redgate got us Ted Leonsis. WAIS got us Brewster Kahle for a while. Netscape got us hundreds of net-savvy software engineers. Ditto CompuServe. Medior got us Barry Schuler - well, can't win them all.
It's stupid for Red Hat employees to announce they'll leave simply because they don't want a triangle with an O above their main entrance, but if they do, then THEY will have killed Red Hat, not AOL.
RH - AOL - MS (Score:2, Insightful)
MS won't purchase RH...Linux is open source, so it can't be stolen or summarily driven out of business, so they have no interest in it.
Alan Cox founds a new company, and calls it Crimson Fedora.
Life goes on.
Who says... (Score:4, Insightful)
Red Hat has some pretty nice embedded stuff going on, and a big name in the market. AOL may very well want Red Hat to provide some type of embedded Internet appliance that will allow them to bypass M$.
Think about this:
AOLinux/Red Hat appliance that uses a Mozilla front-end (like the OEOne device) to connect to Sun Liberty Alliance systems and utilizes Sun's Star Office and stores files on AOL servers (powered by Sun or Linux...).
Alan doesn't figure highly into such a plan, but eCos and other Red Hat technologies would.
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think AOL getting into the Linux business is a great thing. If anybody can bring Linux to the masses it's AOL. But why do they have to buy RedHat?
RedHat is doing well as a server OS company, not a consumer company, and it doesn't need any help from AOL in order to succeed.
Other more consumer oriented distributions like SuSE and Mandrake are struggling, could use the boost from AOL, and are a much better fit anyway. Besides that, they'd probably be much cheaper takeover targets.
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Would anyone bat an eyelash if the potential buyer is Microsoft and Alan Cox said this?
Well, many people feel that AOL/TW is just as bad as Microsoft... Microsoft is trying to control the computer OS and application space, AOL/TW is trying to control virtually EVERYTHING you see, hear or do ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Both have extremely questionable business practices, both abuse their positions of power. Which is worse?
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whooptie fucking doo (Score:1, Insightful)
Now the issues all the Linux purists have with AOL and TW are far more important than the issues with MS. No sense in picking the right battles, and focusing attention where it is most needed, a strategy for unseating the evil giant from Redmond. No sense in that at all....
From the posts I've read here, and on similar issues, capitalism is the enemy, not the companies that embrace it. AOL/TW, now being in talks with RH has simply become the target de jour.
So the pimply face, tempermental teenager still sits at home on prom night, complaining about the other more popular girls who have dates, because she's turned down every guy who has asked her to the dance because they didn't measure up to her high, impeccible standards.
Like it or not, this is a free-enterprise economic system here in the US. Just because you don't like it, don't start leveling insults at those who are inviting you to participate, claiming moralistic or idealistic patriotism as the higher ground.
So you don't like AOL/TW ? In the words of Han Solo, "What would you like ?"
Re:What a martyr! (Score:1, Insightful)
Would you work for Hitler, just because it was a good paycheck? No (hopefully), so there are lines that people draw. Alan has drawn his and I at least support it. While you and others may not agree with where he decided to draw the line, it is wholly appropriate given his past statements and agreement with Free software. Not where all the M$ zealots now infecting
As time goes by I am more and more impressed by AC for his political views and political statements as much, if not more, for his coding.
I dont understand the hostility here. (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL/TW (The TimeWarner part is very important, this isn't your daddy's AOL anymore, where elitest-non-AOL-attitude might be the primary driving force in Alan's decision) is not just any old large company.
As I mentioned in another post (a reply, actually), if the company considering buying AOL was Microsoft, nobody would bat an eyelash about Alan Cox saying this stuff. Well guess what? AOL/TimeWarner is just as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft. Not only are they wanting to control computer use as much as Microsoft does (just doing a poorer job of it), but they want to control virtually everything you do! Do you have any idea how much of everything you see at the movies or on TV or on the web is eventually controlled by AOL? In many ways they are much more powerful than Microsoft has ever been.
AOL/TW (again, TW being important) is directly involved in much of the backassward technology & lawmaking that Slashdotters decry every day: DMCA, copyrighted CDs, SDMI...
If you REALLY disagree with those laws and the very idea of huge media conglomerations controlling everything we see, how could you possibly suggest someone should just shut up and be happy working for AOL/TimeWarner?
I'm one of the people who often attack Linux users and programmers for their stupid elitest attitudes, but in this case I say bravo, Alan.
AOL are NOT interested in Linux!! (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL will not be happy to have competing version of Linux and they will do what is needed to "standardise" Linux after they have bought it.
And that will be their attitude - they will not act as if they've bought just one distro. Think about why they want to buy RH. They know that, to the extent that the public know about Linux at all, they think of RH (at least in the US). So they are, in the eyes of the general public, buying Linux. For god's sake, how many posts have there been on /. over the years complaining about people equating RH and Linux!?
With this approach, what do you think AOL's attitude to SuSe and Mandrake will be - a spirit of healthy competition? Does they sound like AOL/TW to you?
AOL's one worry in the world is losing the content control war to MS. They will want, and try to make, one, standardised, non-MS, copy-regulated, platform for their content and that is why they want Linux - because they can't have Windows. Standardised means not letting "little guys" do their own Linux and they will do what it takes to get rid of them.
Do not fall into the Charybdis of AOL just to avoid the Scylla of MS!
TWW
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Lest you think I'm just another lunatic, about 15 of the 20 developers I worked with also left around that time. Of the developers that remained, only one of them was a developer of any quality, and he was big into MS tools.
My point is, working for a faceless conglomerate is one thing. Working for one with significant philosophical differences from your own is another thing entirely.
Re:Whooptie fucking doo (Score:2, Insightful)
AOL/TW == !Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
What a strange assumption I keep reading, that AOL-Time Warner actually have any interest in Red Hat Linux in particualr, or GNU/Linux in general. What advantage would that give them, distributing an OS that actively encourages its users to get a clue and consider alternatives?
What I'd expect to see is for them to buy up a bunch of developers (Red Hat or any other) and set them to work in the bowels of the AOL/TW Death Star producing something based on a Linux kernel, with most of GNU stripped out, no daemons, no package manager, no compiler, a brand new GUI, AOL-only apps with built in copy restrictions and automatic billing (already got your credit card number), and a daemon that hunts down and kills non-AOL approved processes, all for your security and convenience. I expect it to ship branded as "AOL", not "Red Hat" or even "AOL Linux". Possibly "Secure Linux" if they want to resell it as a perfect Son of SSSCA compliant implementation.
Impossible, you say? How much would it cost to develop? Ten million? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred million? A billion dollars? To control the desktop and the distribution and billing of content before Microsoft get in there first with Blackcomb and Homestation, that's pocket change.
They don't need any particular distro to do that, they just need developers. So run Alan, run for the hills, and take as many as you can with you.
Re:Just how OT do you want to be? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the PRINCIPLE, Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact: Alan Cox has serious issues [linuxsecurity.com] with the DMCA, both practical and philosophical.
Fact: AOL/Time-Warner, being an industry leader in the area of movies and such, is a proponent [loc.gov] of the DMCA and other similar laws.
Alan, being a man of principle, probably feels that the merger would be a bad thing becuase of this, and his working in the resulting company would comprimise things that he believes in. Unlike many people in this world (and, it seems, on slashdot), he feels the finding a new job is the proper course of action in this case.
As an aside, the non-Alan consequences of this are interesting - AOL/TW owns RH, in order for RH to play DVDs (which is an important feature of a modern desktop OS) it needs to violate the DMCA, AOL/TW supports the DMCA. So with AOL/TW owns a product that endorses breaking the DMCA, or they give RH (and by that, perhaps all of Linux/x86) a "legal" (if not open) method to play DVDs.
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a legitimate worry, but I'd like to say it's probably not too much of a concern. If M$ or some other megacorp thought they could break the GPL, they would have tried by now. Running "strings" on some of their command line TCP/IP utilities tells us that M$ has no problem using open source code, so if they REALLY wanted to steal GPL'd work, they would have done it by now. Destroying the validity of the GPL through legal precedent would be a big win for them, but if they were going to do it, I think they would have tried by now...
(In fact, I don't even know if all their software is - AFAIK SuSEs Yast is closed source, e.g.
Actually, I'm not sure that RH includes *any* closed source stuff anymore. I think Netscape 4.x might be the only thing, and with RH's next release, that's going to be replaced by Mozilla completely. That's one thing I have to hand to RH - they really are "dedicated" to Open Source.
Re:This could be dumb. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. Perhaps you have not worked with/for AOL/TimeWarner, or any Very Large Corporation (tm)?
..Brent
There is no way on God's green earth that Alan Cox will be put in the position of Project Manager or any position of real power. Therefore, the assertion that he is giving up this imaginary position is untenable.
Only Steve Case and the other executive committee/steering council weenines decide what goes into RedHat and what its primary focus is - Alan has *much* more influence as is. After the merger he will be at best a small fish in a *big* pond.
I would seriously run for the door if i was him - we can use his talents to more productive use than being a lackie for AOL.
RedHat != Linux (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good for him (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, it's possible that AOL might turn RedHat into one giant AOL ad. Just as they've done with ICQ and Netscape, they could coat RedHat in an annoying layer of ads designed to increase their user base.
Oh, I don't think you're going nearly far enough here. AOL is having issues with MS, right? They own the only browser which is really competing with Internet Explorer, and the biggest ISP, with MS trying to horn in on their market share there... why not split away from MS completely?
I know its wishful thinking, in that it would be a tremendous boost for Linux, but what if AOL came with a whole operating system? Maybe they want to compete with MS and just think having a piece of the pie (the pie being Linux) would help?
Would people be willing to pay for an AOL appliance that ran AOL on linux?
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If RedHat was bought, wouldn't that be good? (Score:3, Insightful)
And what cable company has? None that I know of.
*when forced to do the former demanded terms that would be unprofitable for the competition.
*bought their 2 largest compeditors and swallowed them into their dialup service.
Not like any other large ISP out there, no sir (Can we say Netcom/Verio/Earthlink?).
*provide one massive IP block with no way to be able to ban just one user.
This might be shoddy design on their part, but IMO it's just nitpicking
*provide one IM service with little to no security(ICQ).
Don't know much about this one, but I think ICQ has improved quite a lot (although it is in constant beta)
*provide another IM service with no ability to block a user(AIM).
Excuse me? The setting "Allow only people on my buddy list to contact me" isn't good enough? They also have an Allow List if that is more to your liking. I think you mean someone can put you on their buddy list without you knowing. That doesn't keep you from blocking them once they send an IM though (just click block user).
*denied every last security hole and tried to hide the fact that customer creditcards has been compromised.
This ones probably true.
I thought everything we didn't like about MS was the FUD, the embrace, extend, extinguish, the monopolistic, anti-competitive tactics, and the lousy OS (which is actually pretty stable with Win2k and beyond).
If this happens, it's the end... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is my fear, anyway.
Re:It's the PRINCIPLE, Stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Hes got a good job, and is willing to risk it for what he beleives in... How many people do you know would be willing to do that? Very few. People need to get off of his back.
Give me a break... (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate AOL as much as the next person, but for all you Netscape fans out there, if it weren't for AOL, netscape would not be around. (This would actually have been a blessing to those of us developing websites.)
AOL has a lot of money. Who's to say that they won't offer Alan an agreement such as, "We won't interfere or tell you what to do, we'll simply keep paying your bills."
Maybe even give Alan more resources than he currently has to get things done.
I thought linux was suppossed to be for the openminded person who can think past windows. Shouldn't the development be the same way?
Slashdot Editorial Sensationalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Alan implied that if he had any knowledge of any deal in the works, he would have quit already. Rob, your headline reads "Alan Cox to Leave if RH AOL Buyout Happens?" That seems to me like he threatened to leave. He hasn't done that.
It's like what many say (and needs to be said) about Microsoft; now that they're a huge company and monopoly, they shouldn't behave like a startup, screwing people whenever they can. Likewise I don't feel bad about holding the /. editors
to a higher standard now that they're
so successful.
So, anyway, this is all rumour. You guys are all skewering each other over a sensationalised (by our /. editor friends)
rumour.
If I had to argue though, I would argue
against a buyout.
And I could argue for pages
before I even got to any idealogical
reasons.
Evil: Bought the DMCA (Score:2, Insightful)
I think people are taking the evil way out of hand.
Evil:
*Owns Time Warner. Time Warner helped buy the DMCA [opensecrets.org].
Re:Good for him (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, he does have to worry about keeping food on the table. He's much more likely to endanger that objective by staying onboard an AOL assimilated RedHat.
His management needs to know these things as much as they might need to know that they're grievously endangering the security and robustness of their CRM system.
If his management at Redhat is already past the point where they can't tolerate such truth, then perhaps Alan needs to seriously consider moving on anyways.
Management should view Alan as a highly accurate PR barometer.
The SSSCA prevents "fun to just code" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's interesting to see how many geeks really care about this political, idealistic stuff. Isn't it more fun to just code?
The copyright industry wants to take away the existence of machines on which we can "just code" by having the hardware trust an encrypted BIOS, which trusts the kernel, which trusts the apps. At this rate, we're heading toward a future where after SSSCA and Son of SSSCA have passed, all computer systems will be closed systems. (Read More... [gnu.org])
Why are so many people missing the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but who you are getting the financial benefits from does matter. Many slashdotters have sgort memories as is evidenced by the fact that one day a story on how evil the MPAA is being by pursuing the SSSCA and the DMCA can run and the next day a movie review gushing about the latest overpriced, overhyped crap from George Lucas or one of his cronies is run.
AOL Time Warner is directly responsible (via lobbying) for laws that restrict the freedom of their customers to utilize the products they have bought in a means which is generally considered to be fair (the DMCA). They are responsible for cops breaking into a teenage hacker's home (Jon Johansen's) and treating him like a criminal for writing a program that would make viewing DVDs under Linux easier. They are responsible for proposing laws that would force all electronics and computers to ship with copy protection (the SSSCA).
Given the fact that the actions of the Time Warner branch of AOL/TW are orthogonal to the beliefs of anyone involved in Free Software I am stunned that people on Slashdot can question Alan Cox's decision. I guess that the adage "be careful when you fight monsters lest you become one yourself" applies in this case with regards to Slashdotters looking for a way to defeat MSFT by any means necessary.
Re:nice words words Alan, (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they are a necessity. Without them, you turn into the kind of guy who wakes up at age 55 realizing that his entire life has been a pointless waste of time.
I think it's great to have them, and I certainly have some strong beliefs of my own, but if it came down to a choice between a matter of principle and providing for my daughter, I'd toss the principle out the window without batting an eye. My responsibility to her outweighs my hatred of The Man, just as my dad's responsibility to me outweighed his desire to be an artist.
Umm, you do realize you have just stated an ideal here, don't you? Your ideal is "taking care of my family is more important than whether or not I agree with my employer". This is actually a restricted subset of a very important ideal: responsibility for one's family is more important than all but the most serious (read: life-threatening) personal concerns. This ideal, this principle, is one of the things that keeps human society stable and functional over the long term.
You haven't tossed out your principles, you've just changed the priority of them.
Before my daughter was born I would have been right there with you, but I've learned a lot since then. Self respect is a great thing to have, but next to your responsibility to your progeny it's about as important as the color of your socks. There are much bigger and better things in life than the small amount of self respect gained from sacrificing yourself and your family on the alter of idealism.
Taking responsibility for care of your family is one of the things that should earn you self-respect. However, it is often possible to balance your ideals; you have to feed your family, but there's more than one employer out there, so you might not have to work for a scuzzball. For sure Alan Cox should have no trouble getting a job whenever he wants!
Looking for a new job is a risk, depending on your resume and the level of unemployment in your sector. How much of a risk you are willing to take depends on what you are risking--when you've got a family to support, you're risking not just yourself, but them, so it is right to be more cautious. However... it's funny how the world works, but jobs that require you to seriously compromise your ethics are frequently not good jobs to have from the point-of-view of supporting a family. Think about it, and you'll see what I mean.
Re:Good for him (Score:3, Insightful)
What I hear from CNN people is that the top level execs are terrified of Fox News. For some reason they believe that Fox is beating them because of the rightwing bias in all their reporting. In fact the reason CNN is loosing the cable news battle is obvious if you are a viewer, they don't do news, they do soap operas. Over last summer CNN became the Gary Condit channel. CNN had saturation coverage day after day even though nothing new had come out, the world had already decided that Condit probably didn't do it but has been exposed as a hypocrite, a liar and a fool and thus not fit for re-election. Before Condit we got the Florida recount (which actually was a compelling news story for a change), but also the Monica Lewisnsky saga, Jon Bennet Ramsey, all the way back to the O.J. Simpson saga. The idea seems to be that if there is no blockbuster story that will drive the ratings, go out there and manufacture one.
This weekend I tuned in for reliable sources, only to find that it had been switched for a half hour 'documentary' to PR 'Black Hawk Down' in a theatre near you. The problem with the 'synergy' idea is that each time you use a news organization to plug your own products you loose credibility. Murdoch is much cleverer in that regard, he does not often shill for his own products in his quality newspapers, he does in his tabloids.
In the early days of the Internet boom, Time-Warner did try to sabotage the Internet with their cyberporn smear. The background to that story is that Time-Warner were trying to kill the Internet because they still believed that their Interactive TV model with centralized control would win. But shortly after Time-Warner switched tracks and decided the Internet was what they had been about all the time.
AOL Time-Warner does not appear to be quite as clueless on the DMCA and the Hollings bill. In fact it appears that Hollings is off in a world of his own along with a bunch of lobyists who are trying to make policy for their clients rather than present and purchase it in the legislature.
I don't personaly see much of a fit between Time Warner and Red Hat. The idea is probably that they are somehow going to compete against Microsoft in the computer market, just as Microsoft is competing against Time Warner in the content market. The Video Game market now execeeds the film market, Microsoft is a major distributor in games software and owns the X-Box platform.
What I suspect and fear the buyout might be about is AOL Time Warner getting Microsoft paranoia. It is never a good idea when a company stops thining about how it will make money for itself and instead concentrates on blocking a competitor.
Re:nice words words Alan, (Score:3, Insightful)
So the main difference between you and Alan is that you both draw the line regarding what you will do for money in a different place. You draw it at spying for an enemy state. He draws it at working for a corporation that he believes to be unethical. It comes down to a matter of opinion, about which reasonable people could disagree. I see nothing wrong with his decision at all.