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."

For profits are like that

[Saven Marek]

> 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

Like every other company out there that is a for-profit. try getting freebies from anyone else or get them to do work for you that isnt going to earn them money. by by see the door.

well

[know1]

"If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear"
they make that sound like a bad thing, there aren't many for profit organisations that are any different i would imagine.

The second comment in the blog has it right

[ReformedExCon]

Redhat is where it is because it is the company that employs the people who write Linux, most notably Alan Cox. There is a lot of code in the Linux kernel and periphery that simply wouldn't be there if Redhat wasn't around to pay these programmers to put it in there.

So if we consider the authors of the source as the ultimate support channel, then Redhat will always filter its way to the top. Throw in the existing momentum behind the platform, both on the "child" distros side and the business side, and you've got an unstoppable (for now) juggernaut. Want embedded Linux? Montavista's got a custom RedHat Linux for you. Want some esoteric hardware supported? Redhat's gone through the trouble to port a driver for you.

It's so far ahead of every other commercial distribution that it's not even funny.

Is it ahead/better than non-commercial distros like Debian? No, probably not. But they aren't really competing against each other.

If you're not making them money, you're not going

[melted]

>> If you're not making them money, you're not going to get their ear

Hmm, maybe it's time to invest in RHAT.

Re:For profits are like that

[Ithika]

I'm fed up and sick to the back teeth of reading the words "for-profit" and "company" in the same sentence, especially when they are used to (attempt to) justify antisocial business practices.

I can't find any definition of the word "company" which wouldn't imply that its aim is not profit; that would be a "charity". Thus, "for-profit company" is a tautology.

Why does being in business mean someone's ethics have to be flung out the window? My work does the occasional freebie for local community projects, we do discounts for charities and the like. Being in business does not imply being an arse.

Because character matters

[systems]

Many people have replied saying that it's okay or normal for a for profit organization to care about money the way Red-Hat is accused to be doing.

I have never dealt with Red-Hat in that way, so I won't judge Red-Hat.
But speaking in general, no it is not okay.
Organizations are members of our society, globla orgnizations are members of the global community.

The same way, its not okay for a person to only care about money, it's not okay for an organization to be all about money.
Being NICE, is a good reputation, treating your smallest client the same as the biggest, is NICE, and we should encourage all organizations to do it, because that way we will be living in a NICE society

I can elaborate on this for ever, but for most people I think the point is clear the worst thing that happens to some organization is when they become bigger than their clients, and start to treat them as inferior entities

"IBM in Linux distro love-in"

[Quirk]

The Reg has a Dec 15th article [theregister.co.uk] commenting on IBM's... "elevating the pair to IBM's Strategic Alliance program, its highest tier partner status. The move is designed to make it easier for firms to acquire Linux-based systems by integrating and streamlined sales, distribution and service channels between the hardware vendor (IBM) and its two principal open source software partners, Red Hat and Novell."

The Red Hat/Novell heavyweight competition benefits everyone.

Re:The world changes

[ReformedExCon]

I suppose it depends on the type of customer you are. If you are someone who wants to put RedHat on your company's servers, they'll be happy to set you up with a support contract. But if you are someone who wants RedHat to port a driver for some esoteric piece of hardware, you've got to have a long-term viability (Texas Instruments = Good, Joe's Silicon Shack = Bad). And of course, if you want them to port those drivers, they aren't going to do it for free.

It's not so much an anti-customer mindset than a focused business mindset. Work on partnerships that are meaningful, work with customers with a strong track record, and cash up front.

Re:Because

[kfg]

And for what's good for one customer being good for another: market research, market research, market research.

That's funny, my experience is that market research always ends up telling me to get fucking lost, because I'm interested in buying solid technology for a fair price, not chrome, tailfins or squids with tits on 'em at porno rates.

KFG

Ecosystem.

[bubulubugoth]

Partners are needed for having a good sustainable bussines ecosystem.

There is the need of a supply chain. And Novell has a much more longer experience than Redhat, it also has a long standing user base around the world, there still are a lot of novell 486/3.11/4.0 running, 5 to 10 users, and not wanting to go with Microsoft.

Novell and SuSe, also spend lots of money at developing OSS, ximian, mono, X, drivers, kernel patches, kde and gnome stuff, also redhat.

And even more... SuSe born in germany, and it has a huge user base at europe, Redhat has born at U.S.A. and there is a LOT of countries, that doesnt want to be working with U.S.A. enforsable companies... so there is the reason why, at Linux there will be very, very, very hard to have a "single vender Enterprise distribution"...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sounds like a big loss of creativity to me

[EMIce]

This is just a delicate way of saying that Novell has vested too much in R&D. So sacrifice R&D to follow technologies that are already showning wide adoption. Novell has taken the lead in introducing now popular technologies like directory services, but has had trouble keeping marketshare. Why is that? Did R&D prevent prevent Novell's customers from getting something their competitors had? What is that exactly?

It sounds to me like Novell is going the way of HP, but I hope they continue to make R&D enough of a priority.

the difference...

[l3v1]

...between RedHat and Novell is that they are two separate companies. That means they are not the same. They are two, not one. They are run by different people. With different views on lots of issues. With different products. Yes, they have something in common, they have linux-based OSes to sell. Apart from that, I can't see anything else they would have in common. What's such an article good for, then ? Well, in any case, it's better than another dupe, I guess.

Re:The second comment in the blog has it right

[PimpBot]

Is it ahead/better than non-commercial distros like Debian? No, probably not.

This line rubs me the wrong way. The reason why folks choose commercial distros like RedHat or Suse is because they are better for what people need -- they provide a supported, easier to configure setup which allows them to solve whatever problem they or their organization have with a minimum of fuss. Distriubtions like Debian/Ubuntu/Gentoo/etc. are useful for the tweakers of the world (and yes, given enough gumption could be used to replace RHEL/SES), but they're not ready out of the proverbial box.

Am I missing something here? Is there some other reason why Debian et al is better?

Novell's a lot more than just a distro though...

[aapold]

When all of their administration tools (Zenworks in particular), it makes for a fantastic management environment. Their linux stuff isn't quite up to par with their windows desktop integration yet, but it is getting there. These things are much more useful in a corporate environmnet.

Re:Enterprise environments

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say 10.0 I assume you're referring to base SuSE and not Enterprise Server; which is still at 9. (Minor nit: Novell's branding SuSE Linux v SuSE Enterprise Linux is not very clear.)

I'd say that Gov't acceptance of SuSE isn't bad, primarily because of EAL cert. and IBM's influence.

As for educational/University saturation: I think that Novell's sales force (University sales team in particular) is partially at fault. I'm an University customer and I needed to purchase 100+ SLES HPC licenses this summer and had to deal with four salespeople, none who knew anything about SuSE. I had to download Novell's inventory price sheet so I could quote the exact SKUs for them to have any idea what I was talking about. In the end, I purchased my licenses through my hardware vendor instead.

Re:Because character matters

[scronline]

Well said. I've recently done an accounting of my business and I've found that I've donated over $50k this year to non-profits and to small businesses that needed a hand. While it's true that a company's main goals is to make money, being a part of the community also creates longevity. I own a small company that's been around for 15 years in a small town. I wouldn't still be around if I didn't make our presence known and make absolutely sure that we were seen in a positive light. So while that $50k is a large sum to me it's also an investment in my community for them to continue to use us for their services and hardware.

Besides, one of my favorite sayings is "I'm in this to make a living, not make a killing".