The Differences Between Red Hat and Novell

Tiberius_Fel writes "A former Novell employee has done a comparison at InfoWorld, reflecting on the business practices of Red Hat and Novell. They focus on such areas as customers, culture, and partners." From the article: "Red Hat has a hard-charging, take-no-prisoners approach to the market. If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear ... This has led the growing open source ecosystem to Novell, which is partner-centric and easy-going almost to a fault. Ron Hovsepian is changing this, and Novell is starting to become much more choosy about opportunities (customer and partnering) that come its way."

Re:Because

[tob]

You get a new version of Windows every 5 or so years,

I count at least 10 in about 25 years (dos/win3/win95/win98/winMe/NT3/NT4/W2k/XP/2k3), leaving out many early and minor versions.

Regards,
Tob

Re:For profits are like that

[Paul Jakma]

I can't find any definition of the word "company" which wouldn't imply that its aim is not profit;

Actually, no such aim is implied by "company" at all.

The general aims of a company are defined in its articles of incorporation and typically expanded on in its memorandum of association, including whether or not it intends to operate for profit (generally a company doesn't restrict itself from making a profit, unless explicitely noted). Companies whose aims do not include profits often can avail of tax relief, and possibly other forms of relief.

That companies typically exist to make profits does not mean all companies do, nor that the definition of company implies for-profit.

Matt Asay (article author) will speak at SCALE 4x

[irabinovitch]

Matt Asay [socallinuxexpo.org] the author of this article will speak at SCALE 4x [socallnuxexpo.org] this year. SCALE will be held in Los Angeles on Feb 11-12, 2006.

I ordered from Red Hat once

[Anonymous Coward]

I ordered from Red Hat once recently, and it was my worse
buying experience ever. I sincerely hope they go broke
so that I won't have to order from them again.

Everything was so Red Hat-centric... They started by
ignoring the order completely because there was no e-mail
address in it (instead of contacting the person who
originated the order by other means... they had a delivery
address, but they chose not to use it).

When someone from my company woke them up because they hadn't
sent a bill for the order, they asked me to call them.
I called them repetitively, and each time, "I would receive
my activation key by e-mail within two days".
Each time they either did nothing or contacted someone from my
company who had ordered from them before
as if he was their contact for my company (he wasn't. He had
just ordered a distribution before, just like I was trying
to do. He rightly ignored their e-mails).

They had a complicated system with logins, account
numbers, email addresses, each of which meant something
different. Sure, their system probably made a lot of sense
*for them*.

I just needed a cardboard box with some CDs
inside, it took six months to get it, and I didn't even
get that. I got a password to access the iso files and I
had to burn them myself to CDs. That's what you get
for USD 200...

I really hope they would disappear, then I wouldn't
have to get another distribution from them "because that's
what our customers use".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I ordered from Red Hat once

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not order from one of their resellers instead, if you only want the cardboard box and the plastic discs?

Re:The second comment in the blog has it right

[maxwell demon]

RedHat has more global write maintainers than any other company but that is because they started working on GCC before any of them.

I'd say it is because they bought Cygnus, a company which had entirely specialized on gcc support.

Re:Enterprise environments

[maxwell demon]

Indeed, originally it was S.u.S.E. (note the dots). It was an abbreviation for "Software- und System-Entwicklung" which is German for "software and system development".

Re:For profits are like that

[pD-brane]

"for-profit company" is a tautology.

Even though your point is clear, this is a pleonasm, not a tautology.

Re:Because

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

You actually make the Grandfather's point for him.

win3-win95-win98-winME was a separate product line to NT3-NT4-W2K-XP-2K3. Lumping them in together is like lumping MS Office and MS Works together.

I still don't buy the 5 years claim though,
Win 1.0 came out in 1985 (did anyone notice?)
Win 2.0 was in 1987 (ditto)
Win 3.0 1990
Win 3.1 in 1992
Win 3.11 in 1993
Win95, 98 and ME - well, guess.
I would *not* call 3.1 a minor release, and 3.11 was only minor if you did not need any form of networking.

NT3.1 was in 1993
NT3.5 in 94
NT4 in 96 (my work PC was upgraded away from this in February AT LAST :-( )
W2K in 2000 (doh)
XP in 2001
not sure I'd count Server 2003, but what the hell.

There are 5-year gaps there, but that is because the MS had noticed that business users are more than reluctant to upgrade. At my previous job, they upgraded from NT4 to W2K in 2002 for some arcane reason. At both places there was a complete hardware + software rollout involved.

Re:For profits are like that

[wolf31o2]

The Gentoo Foundation is a not-for-profit company. We are not a charity. Donations to Gentoo cannot be written off. Our goals have nothing to do with making money and everything to do with making software.