Red Hat Sales Surge 109
head_dunce writes "Red Hat has reported earnings from its third quarter, and it did quite a bit better than expected. Even with the movement within the business by Oracle and SuSE/Microsoft, Red Hat came out quite a bit ahead. TheStreet.com reports on the company's $29.6 Million dollars windfall, and some of the tough times the company has had in the past year. From the article: 'CFO Charlie Peters said on a conference call with analysts that the company is "cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity."'"
Make up your mind (Score:5, Funny)
Well which one is it?
The weekend is coming and I need to know what to believe!
Re:Make up your mind (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Make up your mind (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless I missed something, the article doesn't break down the figures into server and workstation. It's possble for the surge to have been an even mix, mostly desktop, or -- more likely -- mostly server.
No need to freak out on contradictory reality just yet.
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Re:Make up your mind (Score:4, Informative)
not surprised (Score:5, Funny)
I hear membership is booming. [redhatsociety.com]
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Followed the link, and a nice and informative surprise.
I think my mom will care more about Red Hats from now.
In non-PR terms (Score:1, Flamebait)
Meaning: we clench our teeth, say a prayer, and hope that the Novell/MS deal doesn't bury us, but we'd like our shareholders to believe that it might actually do us good.
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Hardly. Microsoft brings nothing to the table and Novell has been competing against Red Hat for a few years now. And even with Oracles cheaper offering to support Red Hat linux installations there is still a high level of customer loyalty with Red Hat.
"98 of the top 100 Red Hat customers have renewed this year, including 24 of 25 (up for renewal) in Q3. It may be that some customers are fickle, but not Red Hat's core
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"Unfortunately the time I am willing to wait for this agreement to be changed to remedy the GPL violation has passed, and so I must say goodbye."
He starts work for Google in early 2007, and is answering a lot of questions with silence. But his letter is painfully clear. I think we can also expect Samba development to get a real b
Are we still angry with them? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Are we still angry with them? (Score:4, Funny)
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[KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK]
Yes?
Who we hate at the moment? I didn't mean that! I know we've always hated Novel, let me go! I'm a loyal Slashbot, I tell you!
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Anyway for those who are confused here is an easy way to tell who to hate.
"Hate companies and people who do evil shit. It is fair to take the evil shit into context. It's fair to forgive a company who has a long standing tradition of doing good if the one act of evil was due to being fucked with. At the same token when the company or person does something good it's fair to consider all the evil shit they did in the past and not give them a free ride".
You are quite
Re:Are we still angry with them? (Score:5, Insightful)
But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans^W^WRed Hat ever done for us?
Re:Are we still angry with them? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm both angry at them and happy that they exist. I'm angry enough not to use Redhat Linux, because of what they did to the free RedHat scene - turned it into a legion of beta testers. I'm happy about all the money they spend on various open source projects. Of course, RPM is a giant pile of shit that should never have been invented - who is the fuck-ass who thought up using cpio with a fucked up header on it so you have to use dd (or something) before you can even manually unpack the archive? He needs a serious ass-kicking. But that's a digression and something I can forgive them for :)
They've clearly done a lot for linux and OSS in general. It doesn't mean I have to like them. They're not doing any of it out of altruism. They're doing it because it makes good business sense. I'm supporting Ubuntu instead, because they're making actual promises not to change the entire way they do business overnight.
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Why is using redhat users as beta testers bad? Redhat makes its money off of companies and the fanboys get redhat for free, plus they get to take part in development.
However, RPM is wronger than nuns in a tampon commercial.
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But I agree with
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It is you that has a grave misunderstanding of cpio, which is not dd. dd converts data from one format to another and resolves block sizes, and some versions do some other data conversions. That's its job in life. Cpio is an archive format like tar, and there is nothing wrong with it - in fact it was selected because at the time tar did not do as good a job with certain file attribu
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I don't think the format of having a header that can be parsed without extraction is a bad thing, so long as the header provides all the functionality needed, which rpm does not.
On the other hand... (Score:4, Insightful)
...Mark Shuttleworth is making it very clear that Ubuntu is a for profit venture. He could very well start charging money for something soon, and end up ticking off the Open Source world the same way the heroes of a decade ago (Red Hat) tick you off now.
If you want purity of purpose, you'd be best off with Debian, and good luck with it.
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Like support, which they already offer?
Your sig (Score:2)
IT workers should unionize.
Oh sure. Just what we need: a mass of dot-com bubble-era Windows 98 "admins" and VBA "programmers" having the ability to out-vote the minority of skilled techies who actually know what they are doing.
Oh, and it would also make it harder for you when you finally get fed up with the crap and quit to work as an independent consultant, because now your customers can't hire you because they're not allowed to use non-union workers.
And no, this won't solve the problems of insecure software, DRM, patents, sp
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No they don't. The free nv driver doesn't support my QuadroFX's 3d capabilities. I'm reduced to using it in VESA mode, which is not "working" by my standards (providing access only to a tiny slice of the card's capabilities just doesn't do it for me.
I wish you people would stop lying about this. You know the truth. Why do you persist in spreading falsehoods?
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If you think that's the real problem with RPM, you've never looked at the source. I can forgive the screwey and kinda limited file format - but the unmaintainable pile of vomit
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Are you saying you only like altruistic people?
Plenty of people join Red Hat out of love for Free/Open Source Software. Very few people join Red Hat just for a paycheck. There are generally easier jobs that pay more.
I'm supporting Ubuntu instead, because they're making actual promises not to change the entire way they do business overnight.
Promising not to change busine
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Hey, the entire population of Linux users are beta testers!
Except those that run Debian Stable.
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Must be all the Santas (Score:5, Funny)
numbers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it just me, or did they spend almost twice as much on marketing as they did in the same quarter, previous year?
Re:numbers. (Score:4, Informative)
It seems to me that a company concetrating on R&D and marketing is one which is healthy. The (dis)organisation I work for seem to have got that one arse about face!
Don't lump... (Score:2, Insightful)
This might have something to do with (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:This might have something to do with (Score:5, Informative)
I really don't know what you mean about 2.6.9-EL getting in the way. True, it does use mostly 2.6.9 API/ABI, but not strictly (as anyone how tried to compile some external kernel modules, like ieee80211 and ipw2200 have found out), and also contain lots of updates. The only external driver I use is ipw2200, and that only because I wanted monitor mode. And, since I was already recompiling it, I went the upgrade path as well.
Many people see 2.6.9 and think: "OLD!". That is really not the case. Using the latests version on any production server is very dangerous. In any case, "STABLE" beats "NEW" every time in my book.
Lastly, please remember it is 2.6.9-EL, and not 2.6.9. They are very different beasts.
Please read "speaks backport [redhat.com]".
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Anyway, I don't think openSUSE 10.2 sucks as much as you claim it does. It's at least as good
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What makes you think Redhat doesn't have internal infighting?
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Debian *always* is having internal infighting. Always. It's one of the things that slows down their releases a bit, but it's nothing that you shouldn't be expecting after nearly 10 years of it. It doesn't change the fact that what they do release is one of the most stable and easy to administer distros out there.
There are two other major distros that you forgot: Ubuntu and Mandriva. I haven't really been watching Mandriva (ever), but they
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And? Debian has always been having internal infighting.
UNIX (Score:4, Interesting)
Every single site which I know has moved away from Tru64 unix has gone to RHEL or a close derivative of it. Maintaining those systems 5, 10, 15 years into the future is going to deliver a lot of work to RedHat.
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Quite nice (Score:2)
They sound quite pleased.
It's too early to discount Oracle/MS/Novell (Score:5, Interesting)
We are a large enough company to be nearly self-supporting on Linux issues. Thus the RedHat cost per RHEL3/4 Workstation license is out of line for us. The only feature we need of the RedHat server is multiple CPU and memory capability. We don't use GFS or any of the other stuff. So the $1k server cost is WAY out of line. All the RedHat support we sometimes use are the updated RPMS for the distribution. Yet RedHat seems pretty oblivious to this until recently. We have bought more licenses in the last half year than all previous. Many of our data crunching processes are moving from Windows to Linux (Linux is fast and perl/python work better there.) Yet... we are unhappy with the perceived value. We paid RedHat enough last year that we probably should have just hired Linus to come work for us and gone with Fedora or Whitebox.
My point is this. RedHat is too expensive for what you get. Oracle and MS/Novell smell opportunity and have only begun their campaign. When Oracle comes out with their version of Linux, watch RedHat get completely ejected from corporate use as Oracle database servers (the $1000+/yr cash cow licenses for RedHat). When viable alternatives become available, will we evaluate them? Oh yeah.
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And there in lies the key.
Oracle is not viable, their CEO does not support open source and has made it clear that you don't put value into open source because then your competitor has the same value.
Microsoft is not viable, do I really need to go into this one, just read the many press quotes from Microsoft's CEO.
Novell is somewhat viable, but they've been selling SuSE for a few years now and haven't presented much competition for Red Hat. In addition I supsect the M
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It is interesting that in the 10 years Red Hat was doing just that, we hardly broke even. Only when we went Enterprise did we start making money. Having been in the company both before and after RHEL, I know I sleep better knowing that we actual
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Then go here [linuxfromscratch.org] and learn how to create your own system. You can also use such services as this [vuxml.org] and others in order to stay on top of security vulnerabilities. There is also this [infrastructures.org] site which talks about designing network infrastructure.
You'll need to do some homework, and it might seem daunting at first, but the amount of money you could save surely makes this at least worth thinkin
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Another one of the unique abilities of FOSS is the fact that it allows you to rely on the work of others. Rather than screwing around with Linux From Scratch (which is an amusing thing to do once as a hobbyist, not a serious business solution) it's perfectly possible to chose another Linux vendor with a better product pricing model... say Canonical with Ubuntu. If they're more attached to the Red Hat model than they are to decent external support, something like CentOS might be appropriate. There's no need
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Coughing up $300 or so for a box with an XP CD inside it isn't relying on the work of Microsoft?
There's no need for people to be hand-rolling their own distros.
Yeah...that might actually involve self-responsibility and intellectual proactivity, (horrors!) and at all costs, we CAN'T have people exercising either of those, can we?
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I know those two items have intrinsic costs that free software doesn't but still the one common cost they ALL have is time and a lack of someone else to call and blame if something goes wrong.
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Correction...from what it sounds like you are saying, Red Hat is too expensive for what you need. You are buying support, but not using it. You are not using the functionality of the software you are buying. You are getting a hell of a lot...you're just not using it. If you don't need the support, don't pay for it. Seriously, try CentOS. For companies that actually use all of the stuff that Red Hat sells, though, I would say they are getting a prett
"Support" model seems to be a misnomer (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that is only a matter of time until one or several happen:
A) RMS/GNU will complain that Redhat is violating the spirit of the GPL by not providing 100% equal access to free-loaders and then change the GPL
B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts...
C) Redhat will be forced to include some proprietary software that will truly seperate them from the free-loaders...
Either way, the system seems unlikely to generate the kind of revenues needed to pay for massive improvements to the open source components of the linux platform over the long term... without some pretty fundamental shifts at least.
Re:"Support" model seems to be a misnomer (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not new to the business, or even the *nix world. Few years back I was part of a Solaris admin team. Before I joined, they already subscribed to a really expensive SMB server product for Solaris, which charged ungodly amounts monthly for even just a 2 concurrent client access license. I recognized that users were understandably upset over being 200 people who could rarely access their files from their windows boxes unless their department ponied up funds for a commercial nfs client for windows. I suggested samba as a viable alternative, but was denied because they couldn't possibly call for support at the time. I asked if they had ever actually called the vendor for support, and the answer was no, but they perpetually lived in fear of having to, so they paid the exorbitant fee.
It *seems* like they are selling an essentially free product hoping no one will notice, but the customers are mostly damn well aware of the free alternatives, and they make the conscious decision. Liability in a sense of the word is applicable. If IT uses their budget such that they have a couple more servers with money saved from not buying RHEL licenses, no one will notice or give them praise. However, if it hits the fan, even if the technical result ends up the same, if CentOS was installed, the finger pointing stops at the IT dept, if RHEL was installed with support contract in place, IT can redirect the finger to RedHat as not delivering on promises if it comes to that
As to your points:
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Like forbidding CentOS from using the "RedHat" trademarked name even on their homepages ?
Or maybe you mean the many, many times people from RedHat answered questions from CentOS developers and helped them to better understand the redhat way of doing things ?
I'm sorry, don't take this question as an attack, but are you really involved on CentO
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But you see, I gave two examples. One of RedHat "fighting" CentOS, and one of RedHat "helping" CentOS.
As you can see, RedHat was not defending its Linux distribution. It was defending its trademark. If you consider the trademark laws in USA, you will have to agree that RedHat really had no other option.
RedHat knows off, acknowledges and accepts CentOS existance. Sometimes, they even help. As l
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As you can see, RedHat was not defending its Linux distribution. It was defending its trademark. If you consider the trademark laws in USA, you will have to agree that RedHat really had no other option.
Yes, to a point. However, we are using the Red Hat name right now in our comments. This sort of dialog is being forbidden by Red Hat on CentOS' web site as well.
Anyway, I'm glad both exist. RedHat for my gripes proves the viability of the platform as a professional endeavor, and CentOS' existance is a nice check and balance to remind RH what the GPL can mean to them, and, of course, to let users partake of whatever RedHat does achieve.
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Actually, I was not required to go that far, even tho the CentOS people did go to some extra mile.
The main problem was that, on the main (front) page of the site, it was being said that CentOS was a RedHat clone or something like that (I don't recall the exact phrasing). Also, there were referenced to RedHat on the CentOS documentation.
What really c
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They hold all the copyrights, they can license it whatever they want, BSD, even proprietary. But they don't, it's all GPL, because that's what they wish to and are committed to use.
Even with only GPL they could make life for clones much more unbearable if they had any wish to do so. They could use 3a clause and send source on physical media to their customers for example, or they could probably distribute jus
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You're actually more right than you know. When a company like redhat sells supp
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Exactly. For example, we run a system called "Modular Mining" on Redhat enterpris
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If Redhat wanted to make rebuilds harder, they'd release source tarballs instead of source rpms. That would still be 100% GPL compliant. What they're not keen on is trademark dilution, as another poster commented. I don't know that they could really do much more to make rebuilds easier.
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I can't see RMS denouncing Red Hat, for a couple of different reasons. The first is that despite Stallman considering corporations evil, Red Hat still works to bring them into the fold. Corps using Red Hat means corps finding out that Stallman exists, which can in turn at least potentially mean more people which Stallman has influence over. You'll never hear hi
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You clearly do not understand Richard Stallman at all.
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Like every other CentOS user, I would like to call your bluff on that one. Not only that, but RedHat is very receptive, and is even willing to answer questions from the CentOS staff.
If RMS/GNU/FSS decided to complain, I hope they do it to Mandriva, which doesn't provide the source codes to free-loaders, as you call them. They actually don't even answer e-mails wit
CentOS (Score:2)
The rest would be CentOS. I really get tired of expiring updates, and up2date not working unless you pay, and multiple channels for the same product (AS, ES, WS).
CentOS is free, is binary and ABI compatible, and is supported for the full 5 years for free.
Seriously, the CYA / "no one ever got fired for using (Cisco/Microsoft/Redhat)" actually applies to using centos, it doesn't run out and le
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If you've
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You're forgetting that, here at Slashdot, any reasonable expectation of monetary reward for service(s) rendered is pure evil. This isn't reality, it's Slashdot.
Nice but expensive (Score:2)
I wouldn't mind to see some
Um, market manipulation for 2 million (Score:2)
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Although the "spike" brings the price to 22+, the company is not much worse off than when it traded at 30. I really thought L
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Don't believe the headlines from journalists who don't actually follow Red Hat's financial performance. Sales are up massively and profits are down by a small fraction. Last year Red Hat's press release financial reports did not include stock compensation, however, their SEC filings did. If you compare last quarters sales and earnings to the pro forma numbers in the SEC filing for the previous year you find that sales went from $73 million in 2005 to $106 million in 2006, pro forma ear
Just as the more sage predicted... (Score:1)
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People are moving from SuSE (Score:2)
GJC