Sun's COO Pretends Linux Belongs To Red Hat 391
An anonymous reader writes "Ever mindful of minting phrases likely to spread virally through the Net, reports JDJ, Jonathan Schwartz's blogging gifts were used Friday to assert that "it's increasingly evident the OS wars are down to three - Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux." The article comes up with a new angle on one of the most-talked about members of the tech-exec digerati, saying of Schwartz: "He's the Winston Churchill of technology - he mobilizes the English language at least once a week, and sends it into battle against Sun's rivals." But Churchill would never have tried to pull a fast one by disingenuously describing Linux as "Red Hat's Linux" - the community will upbraid him, for certain. Churchill Schmurchill, Schwartz is a technology mischief-maker not a technology statesmen."
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't RTFA, but when referring to the various Linux-based operating systems, it's not uncommon to refer to them as "Red Hat's Linux" or "Slackware Linux", etc.
It's just a convenient way of specifying a particular operating system with certain conventions and features. Maybe if you spent a little less time reading blogs and submitting stories to Slashdot and a little more time doing... oh... I don't know... something with Linux... you'd know that.
What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-inclusive possessive pronoun.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac OS X? (Score:5, Insightful)
"With the release of Mac OS X, Apple became the largest vendor of Unix in the world" [computerworld.com]
More... [google.com]
[1] Please, whether or not Mac OS X is or isn't "UNIX" or "Unix" or "UN*X" or "UNIX-based" or "UNIX-like" or "not UNIX", etc., etc., etc., is the subject of another discussion, and really derails the essential, widely accepted concept (by normal, sane people, anyway) that Mac OS X is "UNIX"-based.
Sun Selling Windows server too (Score:1, Insightful)
I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Grammatical ambiguity (Score:4, Insightful)
"Red Hat's Linux" could be parsed as:
"Linux, which belongs to Red Hat"
or
"That Linux which belongs to Red Hat"
In this case the latter is accurate and is probably what was meant.
---
Side note -- another way to express the second choice is:
"The Linux that belongs to Red Hat"
By adding the article, you clearly indicate that you refer to one of many linuxes. To me, this control of definite/indefinite and countable/uncountable is one of the strongest and most unusual features of English -- although other European languages have it to some degree.
Market Share (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm you may want to reread that (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps he meant something else (Score:5, Insightful)
"it's increasingly evident the OS wars are down to three - Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux."
Did it occur to anyone, that perhaps he just believes the Red Hat distro to be the only distro of any real threat to Windows, and Solaris (of course, doesn't mean he's correct). Why is that statement taken as him attributing the Linux kernel to Red Hat?
Semantic niggling (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft Windows, Sun's Solaris, and Red Hat's Linux
It appears people may be reading too much into this. To my eyes it looks like a listing of commercial OSs along with their vendors: Windows from Microsoft, Solaris from Sun, and Linux from Red Hat. Yes, there are other commercial Linux distros. Yes, there are a lot of other Linux distros, period. The question is this: how many of these are viable contenders in the market[s] shared by Solaris and Windows? And of those, how many are as easily recognized as Red Hat?
The statement above just clarifies that Red Hat's Linux is the particular distro under consideration. I don't believe it is a plot to assign ownership of all things Linux to Red Hat.
Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Has everyone forgotten that Sun produces their own Linux distribution, Java Desktop System?
It seems rather clear to me that he is referring to the Linux distribution created by Red Hat.
Re:Stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, I would make the argument that "Red Hat" is not as well known as "Linux" noawadays, so appending "Red Hat's" to it is worthless.
No it doesn't (Score:2, Insightful)
It could be taken that way...But did anyone for a second stopped and thought that that just means that redhut is considered as the only major player that is worth considering, the biggest most commercial distribution?
That statement doesn't immediately mean that redhut owns linux. They just own hajority of the of the linux market share.
Re:he's right though (Score:2, Insightful)
if something goes wrong then basically you need support, you need someone take liability and fix the problem. with windows that organisation is MS, with solaris it is sun, and hey at the moment, most of the time, with linux, it's red hat.
Get off the blog train. (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone says that blogs are the news of the future, the new wave in journalism. However, one idiot who wasn't trained in English usage--unlike trained journalists--makes some mistake like this, and it is taken up by the "blogsphere" and repeated.
Sure, blogs are the news source of the future, but only because the general level of intellegence of North American is falling at an alarming rate. Case in point, this slashdot sumbission.
Re:Umm you may want to reread that (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps he meant something else (Score:5, Insightful)
It amazes me to no end what passes as "news" these days on Slashdot. One person misinterpreting something automatically becomes news, and not just any old news, "OMFG the sky is falling" news.
Of all the distros out there, Redhat easily holds the market share on the corporate end. It makes sense to bundle Red Hat in a corporate statement than Slackware or Debian. Sure, they're fine distros, but when it comes to market share in the corporate world, it's hard to deny that Redhat has the biggest piece of the pie.
At any rate, the sky is not falling, and Sun's COO is NOT implying that Redhat owns linux.
Re:Mac OS X? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe, though, it's a non-US thing. You have to remember that apple outside of the states is at best a sales and aupport franchise. Jobs and co don't care about europe, and consequently europe doesn't care about apple the way the states seem to.
Phil
Re:Down to three? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's funny, I was thinking the list should at least contain 4, if not 5.
AIX and HP-UX are here to stay. If you look at RISC Unix sales, you'll realise that the market is still contains 3 significant market segments.
Sun is trying to position its OS in the commodity space, aka equivalent to Linux and Windows. Take a look at their renewed interest of Solaris on x86. However, in my experience, companies make choices regarding a) discount commodity computing, or b) enterprise/robust computing. You buy Solaris servers for different reasons than why you buy a Linux or Wintel server.
People are reacting to this market-speak in the wrong way...they're preceiving it as an attack on Linux, but only in regards to ownership of linux (waaahh!!! its not just Redhat!!!). His commentary is more finely tuned... he's trying to bring Solaris down-market to make $ on volume. The pitch will be "Why buy Linux with that convoluted vendor stategy and ownership problems? Get the stability of unix at discount pricing on Operton!!!".
Re:Market Share (Score:5, Insightful)
What are my choices? Oracle on reliable hardware is a huge market for Sun, so that's obviously one choice. Which Linux would I pick? Probably RedHat to get their support offering. Oh, and yea, I could always go the Microsoft way.
I don't know, Jonathan's comment doesn't seem that bizzare to me.
Re:he's right though (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, it's just a blog, for cryin' out loud. If Sun officially made such a statement it's another thing.
For all you know, it's just the way he writes - people often use colloquialisms in informal writings, such as Blogs. Doesn't mean a thing.
Remember the time he and HP had a problem [boingboing.net]?
Re:Stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think a person named "The Mad Poster" has the right to tell people they spend too much time on slashdot.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Since Red Hat is the most prominent Linux-based operating system, it is, in fact, perfectly legitimate to compare "Red Hat's Operating System" to "Microsoft's Operating System" and "Sun's Operating System".
Comparing "Linux" to "Windows" would not make sense since "Linux" is a kernel and "Windows" is an operating system. That's like saying "The Chevy 454 Engine is better than the Dodge Charger". It doesn't make sense to compare a base component to an entire finished product.
Re:Could be worse... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, Linux is useful for things but it's still quite young and toyish, especially when compared to the likes of OpenVMS, Tru64 *sigh* and yes, even Solaris.
Churchill... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
I vaguely remember reading that Red Hat was the biggest commercial Linux vendor, but that wasn't what rankled with me:
JS is talking about Operating System wars, so by rights he should have specified Linux (generic).
Had he been talking about enterprise-level vendors (or similar), then yes, Microsoft, Sun and Red Hat would all have been viable examples.
This is a pretty pedantic (and perhaps pointless-seeming) point (confusing "Red Hat's distro" with "Linux as a phenomenon"), but as I recall JS does have a history of using exactly this kind of subtle tactic to erect straw men that he can then (defensibly) burn to the ground.
Re:Mac OS X? (Score:3, Insightful)
So I think Jonathan's statement is probably right.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Could be worse... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is amazing the way that people take a contextually accurate statement, and skew it to blow something out of proportion.
The community will upbrade the dipshit submitter (Score:3, Insightful)
"Red Hat's" Linux simply distinguished it from "Suse's Linux", Mandrake's", etc, etc. The only implication is that Schwartz sees RH as the most important brand/distro or whatever, according to his commercial criteria, which may be debateable, but hardly insulting to "the community".
Why didn't the submitter link to the actual blog, instead of someone else selectively quoting from it? Schwartz's blog is here [sun.com]:
And he followed it up with an explanation [sun.com]How about the fucking submitter, or editor, RTFA before wasting everyone's time with a beatup like this?
Re:Semantic niggling (Score:1, Insightful)
Reading the wrong way (Score:5, Insightful)
All that he's asserting is that it's Red Hat's flavor stands the best chance of taking marketshare.
That's actually MORE tech-savvy than just saying the L word like everyone else. When you read the quote, think in terms of the COO and marketshare, not in terms of Richard Stallman.
(puts on fire resistant suit)
Churchill Was A Politician (Score:3, Insightful)
> fast one by disingenuously describing Linux as
> "Red Hat's Linux"
Of course he would have had he thought he could get away with it. A statesman is just a dead politician.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The reference isn't to say that Red Hat is the owner/maker of Linux, but more of a distinction in the plethora of linux options, as Red Hat stands out as the main company who is selling an O/S package, that uses the Linux kernel to Enterprises.
As a result, MS, Sun and RH would be looked at as competiting for the same or similar enterprise markets. That's where I see the reference of "Red Hat's Linux"
Also when someone is talking about enterprises and OSes, distros like Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, and others will not come to mind because of the lack of support the way someone who works for an enterprise would expect. A company would want something like a server contract where they can pick up a phone with the company who makes the product, and not necessarily have to dig through a list of consultants found on a simple listing provided on the OS's website. That's not to say the consultants are no good in anyway, but you have to think they way someone who works for an enterprise would.
If I order a product from Microsoft, Sun, or Red Hat, they offer support with that product. I go to Debian, I don't get that directly from Debian.
As for it being an OS war, it IS. Ultimately, you would have to pick a distro to install, and for many, it will be Red Hat. Remember it's not the company people are only picking, it's the product they sell as well.
As for Apple being an option in this, it has a small market share compared to the others. You won't find "many" setups with Apple being used for enterprise server applications (I know there are few, so don't attack me you Mac zealots). Apple is not competiting in the enterprise areas as much as the other three.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
He clearly is talking about enterprise-level vendors, not about operating systems per se. If you want to take his statement out of context and nitpick the precise formulation, fine, but "Sun's COO Pretends Linux Belongs To Red Hat" is a far bigger mischaracterization than what Schwartz said.
Oh come on! (Score:2, Insightful)
He seems to be doing a good job of it too as people keep reporting what's on his blog on various news sites
Schwartz is keeping up the company's marketing blitz on Red hat, as they were (and probably still are) losing sales to RHEL. This is a Solaris Vs RHEL thing not a Solaris Vs Linux thing.
Re:Mac OS X? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with this argument is that only a small percentage of Mac systems are used in the "Unix Market" (where Sun and RedHat live). [For the sake of argument, define Unix Market as application servers, financial systems, high-end RDBMS, web hosting, engineering workstations, etc.]
The vast majority of Mac systems are still in Apple's traditional markets of creative and home desktops where the users run Mac programs and may not even be aware that there's Unix buried down there. Only lately has their been a slight uptick of Apple Unix users (in academia, biotech, clusters)
So you can play your meanigless numbers game, but for the most part Apple is not in serious compeition for Sun and RedHat. When their salesmen show up, they are bidding against each other (and Novell, IBM, etc) and almost never Apple.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Arguing about whether an OS is a narrow (referring to, for example, Linux, SunOS and NT) or broad (referring to, for example, Red Hat Linux, Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows) is just a game of semantics, and beside the point: Schwartz was referring to three comparable systems, and was broadly correct, although I think SuSE LINUX (I don't know why they insist on spelling it in all capitals) is still in the game.
If Linux vendors like Red Hat apply their own changes to the kernels they distribute (differentiating them from the baseline Linux releases), each is clearly a different system from the others (like different versions of UNIX, but with the changes shared). Even if the kernels are identical, the variations in software layered above arguably differentiate the systems enough to view them as separate. Either way, from a user perspective, Red Hat Linux and Gentoo Linux, for example, seem less alike in many respects than FreeBSD and OpenBSD (which are unarguably different systems, but both based on 4.4BSD, with a lot of code sharing).
Re:Stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux is comparable to the UNIX Operating System, not the UNIX System, but, following UNIX tradition, most people refer to both the OS proper and the entire system as simply 'Linux', even if, techically, only the former is. The ugliness of the GNU name (both to the eyes and the ears) may be part of the reason most people don't call it GNU, but it is also, arguably, a valid choice, since GNU is more analogous to the UNIX System than Linux is.
In contrast to Linux, the open-source BSD derivatives continue the UNIX duality of being both full systems and operating systems. They have borrowed some important tools from GNU (replacing various BSD UNIX tools that were removed for copyright reasons), but have always been distinct systems from GNU itself.