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Red Hat Software Businesses

Red Hat Portal Picking up Steam 68

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
NoWhere Man noted a story on CNet that that talks about Red Hat and their plans to Create a full blown Linux Portal. They note the fact that RH has job openings in San Fran, as well as the trivia that they recently hired 20 (!) people from Atomic Vision. They note that RH will be competing more directly with VAs Linux.com, and of course, yours truly.
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Red Hat Portal Picking up Steam More

Red Hat Portal Picking up Steam

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  • Idiot and troll.

    Just to clarify for people who might read this and believe that something has changed, Slashdot has always been a Linux joint.

    If anyone else remembers Chips nd Dips, it was almost all Linux or geek society related (but not other OS-related).

    Idiot and troll.
  • I would certainly classify it as news as well -- it's not a place to come looking for Linux information or help (Ask /. notwithstanding, since it's not for newbie or FAQ's).

    /. seems to me to offer decent coverage of other operating systems, but it in no has ever included as many articles on any operating system other than Linux as much as Linux (even Windows, and that rarely positively). It's never even really been much for intelligent posts about other operating systems -- a year ago, I was getting flamed on /. for posting pro-OS/2 comments, and topical/interesting OS/2 submissions passed over.

    That said, there's still always been plenty of articles and comments about other operating systems; Mac OS X, BeOS, Amiga, QNX, OS/2, even Windows 2000.

    Perhaps our perceptions of the old times are different. . . (although I've been around longer, I think -- nyah nyah! :)
  • Linux started to get really 'hot' around that time, and talking about hot stuff is what a news site is all about...
    I don't know that that really applies, since /. has always included articles that interested the editors (or more than anything that interested CmdrTaco, or that one of the other editors would think would interest CmdrTaco, etc.). For instance, Enlightenment coverage went way down when CmdrTaco stopped using Enlightenment; Window Maker coverage went down when Window Maker became significantly more stable, etc.

    And OS/2 has been the subject of at least one poll, if I remember correctly; and yes, lots of comments and never enough clever ones. Which is why I've been pro-moderation in this forum (that and I trust CmdrTaco & friends to do a good job with their moderation system).

    I've been reading /. since it was Chips and Dip and CmdrTaco was working on eClock. A good way to check age is to look at user numbers (as reported by http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=user info&nick= [slashdot.org] -- I've got a few thousand on you.

    For once I'm not being elitist, though -- I know people that still haven't gotten a /. account, and they've been reading it as long as I have. If they were to suddenly decide to make a named post, they would get an account in the tens of thousands, and no one would know they'd followed it (and made numerous AC posts) before.

    I'm just trying to say that maybe /. hasn't changed that much since it started :)
  • Slashboxes. Selection of articles you want to see based on subject and author. Moderation.

    Slashdot is a portal, duh. Or rather, it can be used as a portal, a looking glass, into the Linux community. If you go to straight-up slashdot.org not logged in, it's just a news site).

    So, it's a BBS, a news site, a portal, a forum for writers to try ideas on for size.

    The amazing thing is that it does almost all of it right.

  • Re:./ (Score:1)

    by Proteus ( 1926 )
    Hate to pick this out of a crowd of comments like it, but it's a good example of something that really annoys me here.

    That really did not need to be pointed out, not to mention that it isn't quite accurate (two different connotations is not neccessarily redundant). Basically, while it isn't flamebait, it is a rather useless and picky comment.

    I'm sure you've made your share of grammatical errors, so don't correct grammar/spelling unless it is necessary in order to clarify a comment.

    Posted by the Proteus

  • > You mean freeware

    No, free software or open source.

    Freeware can apply to any free of charge software including binary only software. Internet Explorer is freeware but it's not free software (free in both senses) or open source.
    --
  • I disagree with you here.
    While being a Linux user, when I first discovered Slashdot (a whhiiiillle ago), I created its bookmark in the "News" directory, not "Linux" directory, 'cause it was a place where you could talk of any OS, as long as what you had to say was reasonable (and on topic).
    The place changed a lot since then, and I miss the "o' time" :(
  • /. seems to me to offer decent coverage of other operating systems, but it in no has ever included as many articles on any operating system other than Linux as much as Linux (even Windows, and that rarely positively).
    Sure, but can it be blamed for that ? Linux started to get really 'hot' around that time, and talking about hot stuff is what a news site is all about...

    It's never even really been much for intelligent posts about other operating systems
    A year ago, I was getting flamed on /. for posting pro-OS/2 comments, and topical/interesting OS/2 submissions passed over.
    OS/2 looks somewhat special, as I must admit I don't remember seeing lots of articles about OS/2 on Slashdot. I can't say for sure why (subject of the next poll ? :) ).

    That said, there's still always been plenty of articles and comments about other operating systems; Mac OS X, BeOS, Amiga, QNX, OS/2, even Windows 2000.
    For short, lots of comments, but few clever ones ? :)

    Perhaps our perceptions of the old times are different. . . (although I've been around longer, I think -- nyah nyah! :)
    (Some digging later...) The bookmark is dated April 8th, 1998, but I could find an access to Slashdot in my Squid access log dated from the January 27th, 1998... So it looks like it took me three months to get tired of typing "http://slashdot.org" every time ;)
    Since the domain name has been registered the October 5th, 1997, those dates look right.

  • Wow! (Score:1)

    by Psiren ( 6145 )
    Oooh oooh oooh! This is just so great! Now, instead of going directly to the web sites I want to look at, I can spend hours waiting for some P.O.S. portal to load instead. What a genius move. Its a wonder someone didn't do this before.
  • Mmm, feel them flames of competition. Mmm, barbeque!

    Serious multigigabuck competition will do fun things for the face of the Linux world. Heck, it'll do fun things for the face of the whole bloody world.

    Lotta things gonna change, lotta people going to be called the {microsoft | Stalin | nazis | RIAA} of {Linux | Open Source | Free Software | Unixen | hackers} first, but we'll get there soon.

    Capitalism is coming to Linux? Hell, Linux is coming to Capitalism!
    --G
  • So it is true then, Slashdot IS a "linux portal" and not a news site for 'cool' geek news anymore?

  • Re:sigh (Score:1)

    by Noke ( 8971 )
    Yes, I'd love to see you flame your manager when he sends you a spreadsheet to update (you know, in the REAL WORLD?).
    Why is it that the "linux way" is to flame anyone who doesn't comform to YOUR out-of-date e-mail client? There is a place for e-mail attachments, believe it or not.
  • "Red Hat plans to create a full-fledged Linux news service as part of its effort to increase market appeal and potential profitability."
    .... And that is exactly why it won't work. Change the motives. Every hire Red Hat is getting so the product can get closer to windows, the farther Red Hat seperates themselves from the Linux culture.

    Besides, RH's portal is just plain DOG UGLY.
  • Wow. RedHat really is getting ambitious. I am through with them. I swear I'm going debian with my next distro.

    Why is RedHat doing this? Competing with Slashdot? Competing with Linux.com? ...why? Isn't the Linux community about cooperating and building tools and such that complement eachother?

    Why are we now competing? Well heck I think I'll go code a new GPL scripting language... oh no wait, how about instead, in the true spirit of the Linux community, I'll help an established language like Perl by making modules and CONTRIBUTING and reviewing source code, beta testing, etc. etc.

    RH is doing EVERYTHING they can to become the Microsoft of Linux (granted its not a perfect parallel, but be imaginative). They are distancing themselves from the community and breaking the original spirit by becoming money-hungry competitors instead of contributors. They don't want to HELP Linux, they want to BECOME Linux. Suits. Next we'll see proprietary "RH ONLY!" extensions and file formats. Goodbye RH, hello Debian.
    ----- if ($anyone_cares) {print "Just Another Perl Newbie"}
  • I don't like RHAT at all anymore. I'm not trying to get others to hate them, but I am just pointing out that they are distancing themselves from the Linux community, and are totally ruining their image as part of the FS/OS movement (in reference to the afore-mentioned quasi-proprietary RHAT linux stuff). And they are on the road to splintering Linux the way the big boys did Unix.

    BTW, I am not overly fond of Canadians... but do we really need to kill them? Some of them are quite nice! Well, the German ones. Sometimes.
    ----- if ($anyone_cares) {print "Just Another Perl Newbie"}
  • I'd say that a "portal" site is designed to encourage people to make it the default that your browser starts up with.

    Netscape.com was the first real "portal", because most people left the default as it was shipped. Then Netscape invented their "Net-Center" concept, and all of a sudden yahoo.com became the number one web site, as users fled from that grossly over-complicated monstrosity.

    No one seems to have learned this lesson, however, and web "designers" the world over think that they're going to get lots more eyeballs if their page takes ten minutes to load on a slow modem.

    Redhat's site went from bad to worse on their last re-design. I don't have high hopes for the next one.

    (The feature that they *really* need is a searchable archive of the redhat mailing lists. This has been busted for years.)

  • As long as we're on the topic of the Redhat portal, here's a subject I think is interesting. Redhat has been selectively filtering the stories they pass on from slashdot. As I write this, when I look at slashdot, the top story is: "Red Hat IPO Surprise".

    If I look at www.redhat.com [redhat.com], the top story in their Slashdot box is "Be Inc. IPO launched"

    When I click through to redhat's filtered version of slashdot [redhat.com], and compare it to slashdot, I see that there's another missing story also: "Red Hat Portal Picking up Steam"

    I'm sure if you asked them about it, Redhat would tell you "our lawyer's made us do it", and I would *hope* that this filter is going to be dropped after the IPO... but still, things like this make me a little uneasy.

  • Um, I meant to say that the mail archive on the redhat site has been busted for *months*.

    Years?

  • I am a little fuzzy on this as well, although I had thought that a good working definition would have been 'a website that is a collection of links to other informative resources, bundled together with as much original content as is economically possible' with an example being yahoo.com

    However, under that definition, /. would not be defined as a portal.....
  • They lost the tender for linux.com, so now they go away and have a sook and try to make their own.
    Yet another case of NIH syndrome that is so rampant at redhat.com.
  • I don't think that it's quite a bbs yet. It still needs a random section (where someoen could ask any question they want....

    ...like "What did russia have planned during the space race for their landing if anything?"

    just my 2
  • Why would they be competing with /.? You do more
    than linux news (not much more, but more. :-)

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • Not to be too anal, but "cult following of /."
    and "Slashdot is part of our culture" are
    redundant. ;-)

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • I'm so sick of this phrase... "The Microsoft of
    Linux."

    What does that mean anyway?

    Are you saying that RedHat should strive to break
    even? You don't want them to be a successful
    company? Is Microsoft the only successfuly company
    you've ever heard of, or do you just want to
    associate RedHat with an eviiiiiiiiiiil entity?

    Just wait until they've gone public, if you think
    they're trying to be "like Microsoft" now.

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • You're right... what does that have to do with
    my .sig?

    Please don't assume I use/like Windoze just
    because I write a pro-GUI statement. Ever heard
    of BeOS?

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • "the kind of people that are here (people that are mostly already converted to linux, in thought if not in deed)."

    Actually, I don't like Linux, other than it being
    a thorn in Microsoft's side. I've tried it several
    times, but prefer BeOS.

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • Ha hahahahaha... I love it. No doubt you are an
    open source advocate, right?

    Well welcome to the world of Open Source! The
    street goes both ways. Watch your step, folks.

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • Is this what Microsoft means when they say Windows NT is "Enterprise Ready"?

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by Vox ( 32161 )
    There's no way that RH's portal can compete with /. (or any portal with any weblog, as a matter of fact)...they are two different breeds, for starters, and, more important, RH's portal will be (if they are smart enough) focused towards newbies, and not towards the kind of people that are here (people that are mostly already converted to linux, in thought if not in deed). If RH tries to compete with /. they would be stupid.

    Vox

  • With Redhat IPO'ing its no surprise that they are trying to expand as much as possible... I don't mind it too much but I am worried that Redhat is going to become the Microsoft of Linux (although they are much better than that crappy Suse)


  • ./ (Score:1)

    by jcrosby ( 42052 )
    I'm sure RedHat's site will be great, but it's going to be difficult to touch cult followings like /.

    Slashdot is part of our culture!

  • As somebody already pointed out, StarOffice 5.1 has import and export filters for Office '97 and Office 2000 documents, and they are amazingly good. Oh, I wouldn't want to convert a 200 page document with lots of graphics and tables, but, wait... MS Word won't support that kind of a document to begin with. Microsoft says you have to break it down into nice bite-size pieces. That's something you don't have to do with Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux, which also has a nice Word '97 filter. I haven't used ApplixWare, but it adevertises Office '97 compatibility, too. So, where's the problem?

    Please remember that the venerable WordStar once had 96% of the word processing market. Where is it today? A new OS will set new standards. The change is already happening, even in the Windows world. Corel WordPerfect Suite has already recaptured 15% of the office suite market, up from 2% a couple of years ago.

    "The times they are a-achanging", and so are the software standards, thankfully.
  • Arnt Miggy and Nat in San Fran. I hope they dont get to them as well
  • Isn't the Linux community about cooperating and building tools and such that complement eachother?

    Perhaps it is, but Red Hat is a business. And business and capitalism are about making money. And if Red Hat can make money by writing their own stuff, while contributing that stuff back to the community at large, more power to them! They've managed to bridge the gap.

    Why are we now competing?

    Because competition breeds a better product. I suppose we *could* all just sit around and work on one language nice and cooperative-like, but then we'd have exactly one language that we would try to use for everything. Which is very much against the spirit of "use the right tool for the job". A variety of languages, a variety of distros, a variety of applications is beneficial to the linux community. We have more tools to do the job with, as well as having more source available to look at, to learn from, and to use. Or, on the other hand, we could have exactly one distro, one language, and one application with which we would do everything. Whenever we needed new functionality, we'd just tack it on, thus cooperating to build a product. Wait, isn't that what Winxx + MSIE + Office is? One monstrous product that does everything, and in the meantime eats all of my system resources? Hmmm...I thought that was one of the things we were trying to avoid.

    the Microsoft of Linux (granted its not a perfect parallel, but be imaginative).

    I'll grant you this much, you *do* have an active imagination...But please don't use it to make silly claims. Making money != Microsoft. Last I heard, Linux was under an open source/free software type license. Which means that Red Hat will continue to be a contributer to the community as long as they distribute Linux or GNU based software. They may become "money-hungry competitors", but they'll still be contributing.

  • people...you should be ecstatic no matter what linux news makes the headlines.

    any linux news in the news is good news.
    Sensei
  • I keep hearing so much about Web Portals, but still have heard no clear definition about what a portal is supposed to be. All I keep hearing on the news is all these big companies trying to make the latest and best portal site.
  • Is this how you normally behave, or did you leave your brain at home?

    "At least SuSE produces these tools on their own, so it's up to them to choose the license."

    thanks but no thanks... when I INSTALL Linux, I want to INSTALL GNU stuff. I can install non-gnu stuff later. The GPL stuff will remain GPL. RH won't suddenly yank these tools out from under us.

    RH stick to the GPL when they produce tools (although I must admit a lot of the tools such as the control panel, netcfg, tksysv, etc aren't _great_), provide a entry for corporates into the Linux community, etc etc etc

    You refer to their sponsorship of Gnome "Hijacking". How very strange. So if I allow (read: don't deny) the world to contribute to Gnome, and pay a team to do the stuff the rest of the world isn't interested in doing, I'm "Hijacking a project"?

    Gnome wasn't redhat-specific last I checked.


    Stor

  • Linux. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is great news for the shareware operating system Linux. What I want to know is, when is Linus Torvalds going to send me a registered copy? I sent in my $7 three months ago, and I have yet to receive anything, even an email from him.
  • First of all, SlashDot does cover the various *BSD distributions, as well as Solaris news. Also, Windows and BeOS news is mentioned also.

    Keep in mind, there are so many distros of Linux that there is more Linux news to be reported than other OS news.

    Also, all stories are posted from user-submitted stories -- you want to see a story on a non-Linux OS? If it's relevant news, submit it, and if it is indeed relevant, it will probably be posted!

    Posted by the Proteus

  • Linux is the "Java" of 1999. It won't matter much once the hype dies down.

    I hope you're right and Linux is the next Java -- Java has now lost 98.6% of it's hype (yes, I pulled that % out of my butt), however, it is an increasingly relevant technology. I have seen many, many of our customers in the past few months move to thin-client solutions for managing entire manufacturing lines: and all are Java-based.

    If, two years from now, there is no hype and Linux is just accepted as a viable business solution, I will be ecstatic!

    Posted by the Proteus

  • Its not like Redhat is going around buying up companies that have patented the door hinge and buying property rights for everything including the basic logic. I do not see Redhat as a company that has better than half their payroll of marketing, lawyers, and contracting firms out to do more of the same. Not only do they develop and release GPL'd code, they pay and even hire others to do it.

    People who claim Redhat is the next Microsoft are trolling. Redhat does not have any strongarm leverage to kill free code.
  • /sarcsam on

    I mean, what was wrong with fvwm? That bastard Rasterman, why couldn't he just submit some patches, instead of going out and making his own window manager. What's he trying to do, take over the whole window manager world? It's people like him that are going to ruin Linux.

    Same goes for Python. And while we're at it, perl... what was wrong with a simple shell script?

    /sarcasm off

    Sorry, but I just don't buy your arguments. They're making a new "portal" site - great. It'll be another place for new linux folks to go and get information. I don't think that constitutes "going against the community" in any way.

  • Trite (Score:2)

    by crispy ( 14415 )
    It's really amazing how well you can read other people's ideas and regurgitate them. How many hundreds of times have I heard RH being compared to M$? The plain fact it they are trying to be successful. It doesn't matter whether or not they are here to help linux or become linux because the very nature of linux and the GPL prevents that from happening. Any software they write still gets GPL'd. Do you see M$ GPLing their software? no. Why? because they are money hungry bastards. RH believes in the Open Source Movement and they also believe that they can still get rich by supporting it. I wish them all the luck because every piece of software that they write and GPL does indeed help the Linux community! I may decide to switch over to debian because I don't want GNOME or KDE but not because they are now "evil" because they want to turn a profit.

    And Suppose for just a minute that RH succeeds in becoming as succesful as M$. Let's ask ourselves what that would mean. It would mean that RH has created a distribution that my mom could install and use. She won't ever have to learn to compile a kernel or use vi. She will never have to learn about any of the unix command line utilities that I love so much. But she will be able to have an environment that is as easy to use as windows but can run indefinately. Granted this is not the distribution for me but it is ideal for the average computer user. The user that M$ targets. Debian will still be around for us "power users" and RH will never be able to do anything about that. How can any of this be bad for linux?

    Redhat is the only distribution I know of that is trying to compete with Microsoft. Do you have any idea how hard that must be? This tiny little company (big for linux small for the PC industry) has the balls to walk up the the industry leader and try to beat them by distributing (get this...) quality software. It very reminiscent of david and goliath. Luckily for RH they are not actually competing with M$. (Do you think david would have won if he'd tried to fight goliath with a sword?) Instead RH has something under their hat (no pun intended) that M$ can't compete with: Free Software. That's our slingshot! Die M$ Die!!!!
  • Hello, Red Hat, portals suck. They're the hottest thing now though. They're the "push technology" of 1999.

    See, as Red Hat pushes it's IPO the want to look all spiffy for all those investors who are really just PHBs but with more money.

    The sad thing is, rather than say helping an established Linux info sites along, or simply being a clearing house for some of the more established Linux sites (pretty much like they are now) it looks as though they want to duplicate all that effort and with their massive financial backing try to take over the Linux web arena.

    Gosh, how Microsoft of them.

    On top of that, it's going to be at the cost of just the basic Red Het support info that their site offers now.

    Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find real technical info about Microsoft's products on mocrosoft.com or info on Netscape at netscape.com?

    JW
  • I dunno though, going on the number of times that the Enterprise has been taken over by people locking everyone else out of the computer system, I say that they *gotta* be running NT.
  • Don't send them hate e-mail! Just e-mail them the entire contents of your favorite Linux distro.

    Glad to help!

    -buffy

  • Re:... competing? (Score:3)

    by Isaac-Lew ( 623 ) on Tuesday July 20, 1999 @06:10AM (#1794540)
    RH is doing EVERYTHING they can to become the Microsoft of Linux (granted its not a perfect parallel, but be imaginative).

    What source have they closed? What competitors have they bought out or crushed? What FUD have they spread about other distributions?

    They are distancing themselves from the community and breaking the original spirit by becoming money-hungry competitors instead of contributors.

    Nothing wrong with competition (as long as it remains friendly). Red Hat is a business -- one that directly and indirectly supports kernel development and device driver writing. Also, they release their software under the GPL, so that all distros can benefit if they choose (RPM is a major example).

    They don't want to HELP Linux, they want to BECOME Linux. Suits.

    See above. They're building mindshare, but to say that they want to become Linux is a stretch. They have plenty of competition in the commercial distribution area (and plenty more on the way)...some of them based on Red Hat itself.

    Next we'll see proprietary "RH ONLY!" extensions and file formats.

    Ever heard of a little thing called the GPL? If the programs are Open Source, how long would it take for them to be reverse-engineered? Also, that would only be to Red Hat's detriment, as then people would simply switch to another distro, find other sources of support, etc.

    Goodbye RH, hello Debian.

    You do realize that a claim could be made for Debian having lost its soul (by publicly linking itself with Corel, whose FAQ states that despite using Debian as the base for their (Corel's) distro, they're not open-sourcing their products).

  • While I do understand your frustration with RedHat's apparent lack of concern for the interests of the community in decisions like this, I must point out a few things:

    First of all, RedHat has donated resources to projects that help the community. At some level, they do have concern for the progression of the community.

    Secondly, the Open Source or Free Software or whatever movement you happen to support is based as much on competition as on cooperation. How many Web servers are there for linux? I can think of at least three. Why? They each offer something different. Yet they compete. Lack of competition can cause lower quality products -- why add new features or fix bugs when you're the only choice?

    Also, consider this -- why is Microsoft so universally disliked among the Linux/*BSD community? Precicely because there is no competition! That has lead to buggy, unstable, bloated code. Competition, and the freedom to compete, is the very basis of the Free Software and Open Source movements. (and other orgs like them)

    RedHat is a business. Sometimes they will do things that benefit themselves more than the community as a whole. But the publicity and corporate acceptance of Linux that RedHat is responsible for has been, and continues to be, of immeasurable benefit to the cause.

    Just because RedHat makes smart business decisions that don't always jive with the idyllic objectives of the community does not make them evil or 'The Microsoft of Linux'. Last time I checked, RedHat was far from monopoly status.

    (Personally, I use Debian because I find RedHat overly bloated for my taste -- I mention it so that no one thinks I am some kind of religious RedHat supporter. But neither am I a RedHat hater.)

    Posted by the Proteus

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