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IBM, Compaq, Novell invest in Red Hat 79

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-it-requires-a-login dept.
Luca Lizzeri writes "The WSJ reports that IBM, Novell and Compaq are taking equity stakes in Red Hat (subscription required). An excerpt: "Red Hat Software Inc. [snip] said it obtained equity investments from three more computer companies: International Business Machines Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Novell Inc." Pretty please will someone find a link we can read and post it? And guys, don't just post the article contents in the comments- if you guys keep doing that I'm gonna get sued for copyright violation. Update: 03/09 09:33 by CT : Joy! stick sent us a free version of the story.
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IBM, Compaq, Novell invest in Red Hat More

IBM, Compaq, Novell invest in Red Hat

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  • How would you buy them? Most distros are based on free software, you can't buy them. Debian, Slackware, Stampede, to take a few examples, are completely based on free software, so even if you were to "buy"(/assassinate/imprison/whatever) all the people working on them (which would be hard to achieve), they could, and most likely would, live on.
  • Oh, yeah, you're right. And I guess I'd better watch out... I'm sure the Red Hat Inquisition'll be by my house later this afternoon to confiscate my Slackware servers...

    -plonk-
  • Oh, yeah, and I'm wrong because you say I am, with no supporting evidence. That's a lot better than the blindness you accuse me of.

    Look. Red Hat is popular. Red Hat is getting investors. But Red Hat is not the next Microsoft. Red Hat *cannot* be the next Microsoft. Microsoft got where it is by using the power provided to it by having sole control over a popular OS. Red Hat couldn't do the same thing even if they wanted to, because they don't control the OS. No one does, not even Linus. Red Hat doesn't even control their own distribution. If they were to somehow drive all the other distributions out of existence (even the non-profit ones... there's a challenge) anyone who wanted to could build their own new distribution from kernel.org, sunsite, and other places, burn it onto a CD, and sell it to anyone who wants it. They could even, if they wanted, take Red Hat's *own* distribution, keep, remove, or add anything they wanted, and distribute the result. And there'd be nothing Red Hat could do about it, because of this little thing called the GPL...

    As for what the non-geeks think... well, they can think whatever they want. It won't change reality. They can think that NT is stable; it won't stop it from blue-screening once a week. They can think that Intel is the be-all and end-all of processors... it won't stop AMD from stealing their marketshare. And they can think that Red Hat is synonymous with Linux... it won't make my network of Slackware-based boxes go away.
  • Novell, Caldera, and that other recent Linux-newsmaker Willows Software are all heavily invested in (or outright owned) by the Canopy Group, which is owned by the Noorda Family Trust, which is of course Ray Noorda's holding company of sorts.

    And yeah, Novell owns a small stake in SCO. Big enough the make them buy that whole UnixWare-load-of-junk, but not big enough to make them actually do anything useful with it. Of course, the fact that Microsoft's stake in SCO is bigger than Novell's wouldn't have had anything to do with that...
  • Dunno about Compaq, but one of IBM's goals in their "big Linux Announcement" was to make Linux available on the RS/6000, which *is* PowerPC-based. And BTW, I tend to agree, the Alpha and PowerPC processors have been relatively ignored for way too long.
  • Wouldn't worry about it...can always take the code & make a derivative distribution (Mandrake, BeRoLinux have already done this). Or even develop your own distro (even better--natural selection will decide which home-grown distro will take off).

  • IBM = Intel-based PC, PC-DOS (Ininitely better than MS-DOS), OS/2 (Infinitely better than Windows... marketing notwithstanding), etc. out the yin-yang.

    IBM Has been around for over a century. It out-lasted smaller companies (And yes, Microsoft is still a smaller company), and has kept itself in front of the larger ones. It was producing FULL TILT during the depression in the 30's, and it survived just about every market shift since it's inception, without so much as a lost breath.

    It even survived Antitrust Litigation (even if Microsoft DID assist it in that direction).

    In short I would say that if Big Blue is backing Linux this much, it's almost guaranteed that Linux will be the winner in the race against Microsoft, even without Thomas J. Watson (Jr. or Sr.) at the helm.

    --
    Keep working at it... you will either succeed, or become an expert.
  • It cannot be denied that Red Hat has contributed a lot to the Linux community. Red Hat has contributed RPM, a GPLed program, and is now supporting GNOME, also GPLed/LGPLed. Red Hat served as the seed to start other distributions, like Caldera and SUSE, and two new ones recently (Independent Linux and BuroLinux). It is really hard to find another company with this kind of pro-Free Software record. Red Hat probably has the best record of all commercial Linux distributors.

    Hopefully as long as the current leadership stays in charge, Red Hat won't change its ways.
  • I don't mind Redhat "playing the standards
    game" - just as long as the standards are
    open.

    Danny.
  • See the Raleigh News and Observer online [news-observer.com].
  • Well, it is official, the game is over for Red Hat.
    Sure they will make money.
    And for a little while they will think they are something.
    They're not.
    But then again, if they continue to win the distribution wars ( can we say make it more complicated, needlessly) so goes Linux.
    Pity. We have allowed "Everybody but Microsoft" to buy the hope and turn it into a handgun.

    It was nice while it lasted.

    Remember when Microsoft tried to hire Alan Cox ( supposedly, anyway) and many applauded his integrity?

    So, where is Red Hat's integrity now?

    Same place as the town whore.

  • That article quoted me *badly* out of context. The author was asking about why Red Hat had "not signed on to the LSB". I informed him that this was ancient history and that we didn't sign on to the original LSB because it was an implementation and it "didn't exist" and we "weren't 'signing on' to anything that didn't exist". I then went on to say that we have "signed on" to the current LSB committee effort and are working right along side the other vendors on the LSB. We also hope that the LSB becomes something *everyone* can agree on and use and if that happens we will certainly sign up as well.

    Of course, none of *that* got printed.


    --Donnie

  • I disagree (Score:1)

    by dw ( 5168 )
    Last I checked, IBM now ships their desktops with ethernet, and Compaq with a somewhat standard bios. Novell has seen the TCP/IP light. It's unfair to permanently label these companies because of past technologies (innovations?).

    Considering how IBM has supported apache and linux in recent months this makes a lot of since. I think all these companies have a legitimate contribution to make to linux in the comming months and years and I'm expecting alot from IBM this year, I hope they don't let me down...

    - dw
  • Imagine Microsoft turning their website into a portal where one of the most prominent links is to a "news" site where clueless nitwits post all kinds of flaming ridicule against them, that is contradicted by all available evidence. Red Hat has already shown an acceptance of Linux diversity and a willingness to accept critisism, deserved or otherwise, that puts the lie to any claims of them as a monopolist. They have earned a steady customer in me.
  • I was wondering about all this - redhat now has
    sold minority equity stakes to 5 massive companies
    (intel, netscape, oracle, ibm and compaq)...
    how many minorities does it take to become
    majority? does this worry anyone?
  • Obviously this is true! Look how much money these
    companies have donated to Debian.
    Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
  • Then the programs would have to be good enough and difficult enough to produce that they could not be duplicated by others. They would have to do it without using GPL'ed code. Furthermore, there is no example I can think of in which they have done *anything* like this.

    BTW, that reminds me. Anyone know anything of the history/status of Caldera's Netware for Linux? How did it happen? Is it open-source?
  • They have close ties with Caldera, since Caldera was started by former Novell employees, and is funded by Ray Noorda. This has made it possible for Caldera to produce "Netware for Linux". I don't know if Novell is actually invested in them, although you would think Novell would choose Caldera over RedHat.

    Novell is invested in SCO, a company that is being slaughtered by Linux.
  • If IBM invented most of what was surrounding PCs, then we'd be using the MCA bus. Most specific PC technogy was developed by Intel.

    Or are you referring to the technology in general? In which case you may have a point.

    IBM's problem was they had the Microsoft mentality in the old days. They wanted to do things IBM's way, even though the rest of the industry didn't.

    Examples: EBCDIC, Token Ring, 3970/3980 tape cartridges (as opposed to DLTs)
  • Visa is a nonprofit organization. Tough to fathom, but it's true. It's owned and funded by a big organization of banks. They basically use it as infrastructure through which they compete, yet they all reap benefits. Note that this same conglomeration owns MasterCard, hence, you only see Visa commercials targetting American Express (independant company, afaik).
    I see Redhat becoming the operating system equivalent of Visa. The conglomerate of hardware manufacturers, will use linux via Redhat as a playing field to compete against each other.
    - Brian Chrisman

  • In response to your questions:

    • The repeater limit is still 3.
    • Host limitations are mostly a thing of the past with UTP (since you only get 1 host per segment). If you were referring to # hosts per collision domain, I don't know what the previous number was, but most modern "managed" 10/100/1000 E-net hubs can handle at least 2048 MAC addresses (i've seen some at 8192). It's primarily a function of the amount of RAM dedicated to the on-board ASIC.
    • Packet loss is still a problem in a shared environment.

    Essentially what pulls E-net ahead of TR is switching. Switching aleviates all the above problems with Ethernet - unlimited number of cascaded switches, no colision problem, # hosts based only on available switch RAM.

    Token-ring technology is indeed nice for high-load environments: FDDI is much preferable in my server rooms to FastEthernet (until maybe I see a _working_ Gigabit Enet solution). In a large-scale user environment, though, switched 10Mbps ethernet performs better than 16Mb TokenRing. And the cost is far less these days...

  • Saying Token Ring is slow seems to me like you're comparing the line speeds between, most likely, Ethernet. Don't forget that TR holds it's line speed even under heavy conditions and does not have the sever restrictions on number of hosts/distance to repeater that Ethernet has.

    With 100Mbit and GigaBit Ethernet, ENet takes the speed lead (for years 16Mbit TR was still faster, by the numbers not just tech, than 10Mbit ENet...which I would pit against 4Mbit TR in a 5000+ workstation environment).

    Unfortunately, I have not followed the progression of the new Ethernet technologies. Can anyone tell me if the repeater and number of host limitations have been reduced or eliminated? Also, has packet-loss for high volume ENet networks been brought to the same reliability that TR has (something I failed to mention above)?

    Jesse Tilly

  • Novell? (Score:1)

    by sjvn ( 11568 )
    No investment, but they have worked closely with Caldera on integrating Netware into Linux.

    Steven
    Senior Technology Editor
    Sm@rt Reseller
  • Bad: More news stories saying that Red Hat invented Linux.

    Would you care to cite a single news story that claims Redhat invented Linux? And quit that bad-mouthing Redhat thing at once. Redhat has done, is doing and will continue doing a lot of good for GNU/Linux/free software in general. Much more than nay other distribution has, so far.

  • I'm running a 16mbit/sec Token Ring here using all GNU/Linux and OS/2. The 17,000 byte frame size is very nice--I almost always get a transfer speed of 2 megabytes/sec with TCP. Token Ring equipment is also cheap: I can get eight ports on a hub for $15 (remember, Token Ring's architecture obviates the need for switching—you can run Token Ring at 99% usage and still get 100% packet reliability), a PCI card for $20, an ISA card for $10, and a Microchannel card for $2.

    I should also mention that Token Ring takes the cake in terms of QoS: I have an (ancient) copy of IBM's Resource Reservation System, and it does *quite* nicely streaming a dozen 150kbyte/sec at the same time on the same ring (not that I ever do that).

  • Remember that Redhat *CANNOT* take GNU/Linux and make it nonfree. It just can't happen. As to commercial control, one could just as well argue that GNU exercises control over Redhat—after all, Gnome is for all intents and purposes a GNU project even though a great deal of the development was done by Redhat.

    The GPL avoids the BSD/X11 (well, X10 had it to <grin>) problem where greedy companies grab the source, add their logos to the startup screens, and resell it (while at the same time making it incompatible with the original distribution).

    It can't happen with Linux, and never will. It should also be noted that a very large part of the community seems to be uniting behind Debian—much of the Slackware crowd (may ``Bob's'' name endure forever) seems to be migrating to Debian (such as myself). Redhat is quickly becoming a very uncool distribution for the hacker crowd.

    Well, time to get back to hacking XGRADD, and happy Kernel 2.2.3 release to everyone.
    Joshua

  • I really don't even know where to start with this kind of paranoid ranting. What reason is there for me to believe that Red Hat of all distros will start creating non-GPL software? They have recently dropped some of their value-added products that used to ship with Red Hat (BRU2000, Metro-X) so that their distro will include no non-free software. In contrast, both Caldera and SuSE happily ship propriatary software with their distributions (Star Office, Netscape web server, KDE, etc.), with Caldera also selling much closed source commercial software with per user licensing fees. The anti-Red Hat types seem to be suffering from a knee-jerk reaction to any company that grows. The real threat is from distros like Caldera that have very well developed reseller channels and are targeting the corporate market as well. Basically, I hear lots of speculation about Red Hat becoming another Microsoft, but it seems to be only speculation. If you look at the actions of companies like Caldera, you can see a company that is targeting a very similar market to the one Red Hat is after, and is actually engaging in all the practices you claim to be worried about. As to what they develop to, Red Hat has financed development of only GPL'd software, how about the others?
  • where are you getting the cards so cheap, and what brand are they??

    the place i work for is buying Madge cards for $200 each. I didn't think you could get token ring at an affordable price.
  • http://www.redhat.com/corp/press/current_invest.ht ml

  • what do you mean, "anyone remember it?"?

    They're right here. [corelcomputer.com]

    And I've never had any problem with WP. The incident to which you refer (I believe) is about the CorelCentral program. It was not ready for release when they shipped WP8, so they included a coupon for a free copy after it was released. This is unlike MS, who shipped Outlook 97 in its current sorry alpha/beta state.

    Mike
    --

  • If Novell really took an equity stake in Red Hat, that means a very deep line has been drawn in the sand between Caldera and Red Hat. For Linux' sake, I hope Caldera and Red Hat merge.

    Caldera + Red Hat = Strongly unified commercial oriented Linux

    Caldera vs. Red Hat = Bitter fighting and extreme fragmentation of the Linux market. Just what Microsoft wants to see...
  • http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2222 361,00.html

    enjoy.
  • They think (not unreasonably) that Red Hat is the best investment. I understand the logic behind *working* with multiple distributions, and I applaud IBM for doing that. But when you're making an equity investment you want to do it with the company that will get you the best return for your money. At this point in time, that company is probably Red Hat.

    Maybe, if several distro companies decide to go public, someone could set up a Linux mutual fund.
  • IBM(r) = Token Ring
    Novel(r) = Netware
    Compaq(r) = Bios in the mbr
    I don't care for those products.. Why would I want something develope by them together.. It would be like buying a linux distro from AST(r).
  • Ok.. I know.. The IBM thing was a bit harsh.. I know they have done alot in the computer industry, but token ring was a good idea, but it's still slow.. (I should know, they use it here..blech) Well I guess IBM can help alot, since they did make AIX (if i'm not mistaken)
  • I'm talking about time sharing..
  • Good: Red Hat can hire some more folks full time to crunch bugs in GNOME and other projects.
    Bad: More news stories saying that Red Hat invented Linux. Worse yet, more vendors dying to install an "official" copy of RH Linux, jacking up the cost, rather than just installing a free copy of it. Why would I POSSIBLY want to pay for an installation manual and installation support when it's ALREADY INSTALLED?!? These people just don't get it. RH has always said that they'll get their revenue from support when things have taken off, but they're becoming just another software company. . .
    Future: Obviously a lot of shakeout in the market, but we'll continue to see more distros like BeroLinux and Linux Mandrake that build on Red Hat. Of course let's not forget that Corel's distrobution will shake things up a lot once they come in. Red Hat on all the servers, Corel on all the desktops? I don't think it'll be quite that stark, althogh I do think that KDE 2.0 (which I think we can assume Corel will use, although they're technically 'evaluating' GNOME too) will be REALLY good. Check out QT 2.0, on which it'll be based. Much slicker, plus support for the mouse wheel. Or don't. GNOME's buggy, but I do like the way gmc and gtk+ look.
    -JZ

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