Red Hat Gets New CEO 65
xjamie writes "Red Hat has more changes under their hat. CNet is running a story saying Matthew Szulik will replace Bob Young as Red Hat's CEO." So we went and bothered Bob at the LinuxToday booth. The deal is that he is going to be the Chairman, and focus more on the Open Source aspects of the business, and Matthew is gonna be more concerned with the next quarter's bottom line.
Funny... (Score:1)
Good for the Community (Score:1)
With business issues,
Matthew
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It's about time... (Score:1)
A balanced move (Score:5)
On the one hand, they have a real need to grow their revenues. They're a public company now, and as such are beholden to their shareholders to maximize the company's value. Bringing in a "suit" is, sadly, the only real way to do it.
On the other hand, keeping Young as chairman shows that they are in fact sticking to their roots, at least for the foreseeable future. He's consistently spoken about the fact that RH is all about Open Source (no flames from the purists, please!), and the moves made ever since the IPO have reinforced that notion.
All told, RHAT is behaving exactly the way a public open-source company shoul.
Question... (Score:3)
Re:Bob Young? (Score:1)
Ouch. Vicious character assasination.
My apologies for the off-topic humor...
Hmmm (Score:1)
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changes... (Score:2)
Re:Question... (Score:2)
If Redhat had decided that they were going to be more idealist rather than materialist, then they wouldn't have had their multi-billion dollar IPO. You really can't have your cake and eat it too.
So long as Linux is Linux, why would anyone really care about Redhat that much. As long as their delivering a good product they'll do good. If they start slipping (or slip even more as the word sometimes seems to be around here) there's no difficulty in taking your business elsewhere...
Alpha and maybe PPC support? (Score:2)
more visible support on the Alpha platform.
Maybe then even onto the PPC platform (but
I'm happy with LinuxPPC and YellowDog!).
I'm concerned that the website hardly mentions
the Alpha. For a while the press releases
have always had an implicit x86 support in them.
The ftp sites have lagged behind in the Alpha
support areas.
Or is this a case where Alpha users need to band
together more?
edko
Going for the Brass Ring...? (Score:2)
Re:linux torvalz eats donkey dick (Score:1)
Almost Cried. (Score:4)
So, is he going to play nice? He used to be Red Hat's President.
Joseph Elwell.
Re:changes... (Score:1)
"We want to keep as many of those people as we c" (Score:3)
In other words, don't be surprised to see the first big layoffs in the Linux world. Hundreds of CS students who worked like mad for 4 years to get this far and it's all over in one single swipe of the pen. They'll join last week's 300 layoffs at Avid and last month's 3000 layoffs at SGI. Thank god I don't work for Cygnus.
$30 distros (Score:2)
http://stor e.redhat.com/commerce/store.cgi?page=/more_rhl_sta ndard.html [redhat.com]
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Re:Alpha and maybe PPC support? (Score:3)
I find it very interesting that Redhat hasn't entered the PPC arena yet. I mean it wouldn't hurt them from the company standpoint. They could do it by either by bying LinuxPPC or another similar company, or starting to port Redhat themselves.
It would make them more revenues than the Alpha port. I'm not saying that they should drop Alpha (to make it clearer, I would never want the Alpha version to be dropped) but it would be a bigger market. Imagine many people who have a spare Mac at home suddenly trying Linux because there is this big Linux distro that's told about in the press and the news.
I'm not criticising LinuxPPC or the other existing powerpc linux distributions either, I'm merely just saying that it would be really nice if Redhat would support that platform too. It wouldn't hurt the Linux community, but it would definately help "pushing" Linux on Macs. I find it sad that the whole Linux thingie in the press is focusing on x86, and something like this could change that for the better.
They have no reason to lay off anybody (Score:2)
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Misgivings (Score:3)
In the first place, Szulik said in March that he wouldn't want to see the LSB being used by other Linux vendors with less market share to catch up with Red Hat. With him now firmly installed in the driver's seat, it now seems unlikely that Red Hat will be making any concessions towards compatibility standards for Linux, and as an inevitable consequence there will be no change in the trend towards distribution-specific software releases. That's fine if you're a Red Hat user, of course.
In the second place everybody knows that these days corporate control rests with the CEO; the position of chairman is often little more than a sinecure. Moving Young (and his Open-Source outlook along with him) into this figurehead position necessarily makes him rather peripheral to the daily decision-making process.
However before he departs for his higher plane of existence as chairman, he leaves us with a warning, referring to their current policy of acquisition: "We intend to scale this business as quickly as we can to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us".
First comes gcc maintainers Cygnus - a done deal by all accounts - and next, perhaps, Linuxcare - their primary competitor in the support market. And plenty of money available thereafter, no doubt, for further shopping sprees.
Marvellous. Now Red Hat is swallowing up all who come before them. Hmmm...now where have we seen this strategy employed before?
I remember seeing a little while ago a piece of satire predicting that a couple of decades into the new millennium, Red Hat are the subject of an Anti-Trust investigation, with a much-reduced Microsoft among the plaintiffs. It was just internet humour and it did seem funny at the time. But it's beginning to look like prophecy now. Are we about to replace one tyrant with another?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:A balanced move (Score:1)
I welcome the opportunities that Bob now has open to him, such as furthering the widespread acceptance of Linux as a Micro$oft competitor, and a viable business and personal OS that is ready for the "big-time".
Red Hat is clearly becoming the commercial front runner as far as hardware and service partnerships go, therefore they need a businessman to help organize their finances, customer relationships, and VAR partnerships.
So, IMO Red Hat is making a great, timely move to snatch the reins from other Linux vendors and get our favorite OS into the hands of the masses, while keeping the focus on new code development!
Right On!
Re:Going for the Brass Ring...? (Score:2)
Re:Good for the Community (Score:1)
I highly disagree with this statement - not only can you simply download it yourself, I've never had a problem installing it.. and no, I didn't use Gnome.
What? Someone is daring to use another distro? Fool!!!! Don't you know the big guys ain't gonna support your distro?
Do we have a bunch of newbies that are totally clueless on what to do be totally lost in something they *might* have understanding in? Is it not in the best interest of Linux, as a general operating system, to gain exposure, and be known as "easy" to use as Windows?
Yes, it is a fact that not many distributions are supported by companies, but still.. they can't worry about all 20 some odd distro's, simply because it's not cost effective. The truth of it is, until distributions begin mingling with each other a lot more effectively, there will be nothing released except for the main distribution - which happens to be RedHat.
This is really good for the community, let's just make sure they all use RedHat. If they don't, duh, they are losers. Good that RedHat is only giving RedHat-specific courses. Linux == RedHat, let's not forget it. The others should disappear. Don't you agree with me?
Actually no, I don't agree with you. Once again, we need a friendly distribution that helps aid in the understanding of Linux to new users, not confuse, frustrate, and generally piss-off newbies trying to use it. As for the courses content, what the hell else do you expect them to cover? RedHat is their company, therefore don't you think they should support their software? I think so - and I'm sure there's marketing specialists that would agree with me, and state that anything else would simply be pathetic.
Get me -1 quick! I know you have RHAT shares, protect your investment!
Actually, I enjoy your difference of opinion because it makes my respect for RedHat grow even more from where it was. I've run RedHat on two seperate occasions, and although it wasn't my cup of tea, I didn't have any problems with it.
And lastly, no, I don't have any RedHat shares.
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Re:Misgivings (Score:2)
Szulik said in March that he wouldn't want to see the LSB being used by other Linux vendors with less market share to catch up with Red Hat.
Without seen the context, he may mean he intends to support LSB to take away that issue as a selling point for his competitors. If I was a developer and looked at RedHat (non LSB) and everyone else (LSB) I would be tempted to support LSB first. The open nature of Linux makes embrace and extend difficult. Redhat has some serious competition (Corel Suse Turbo Debian Slack) that will be very difficult or impossible to buy out. If these all go LSB, who is going to buy a non LSB RedHat? Not me.
Now Red Hat is swallowing up all who come before them. Hmmm...now where have we seen this strategy employed before?
ALL? Hyperbole for conversational effect, I presume.
One acquisition does not a monopoly make. Cygnus is not a Redhat competitor, rather what they have accomplished is vertical integration.
There is a threat that gcc is now maintained by a for-profit company - oops Cygnus was for profit too, so I guess that hasn't changed. The only issue here is whether RedHat's policies will be any different from Cygnus's.
Keep your mind open in the meantime.
You cannot have a free software momopoly (Score:2)
I agree with you, but we're losing the larger picture.
How can you have a monopoly on free software? That's like trying to have a monopoly on sunlight. You cannot do it. In order to have a monopoly, Red Hat would have to buy up every developer of every program in all of their products. That covers the entire globe, and countless countries. Even assuming all of them would be willing to do it.
Even then, what does Red Hat have? A bunch of people, that is all. The source code is still open. It cannot be locked up by any company. If Red Hat goes wrong, anyone can pick up the pieces and move on.
The power of free software is that it will always be free.
Re:A balanced move (Score:1)
but we all loved RH 6 months ago? im confused? or maybe there's a minor contingent here that are simply hateful of success?
what exactly do you want? linux to become the worlds greatest OS but still remain solely in the bedrooms of the "elite"?
Microsoft, (hey, will you think im cool if i say Micro$oft instead?) got dominant market share. you hate them. Redhat, through their own merits gained a dominant market share and now you hate them? what gives?
Re:$30 distros, taking away "air supply" (Score:2)
It IS the Microsoft business plan, and it worked really well. There is a KEY different. If LSB takes off, even without Redhat support, then supporting Linux requires making your code work in TWO environments that are largely similar.
While Redhat may become the new Microsoft, free software makes it surprisingly MORE difficult to embrace and extend. Proprietary extensions would be interesting, but open source purists could include any missing libraries in their distributions of software, and it would be easy to write PURE opensource software that would run on the proprietary Linux versions...
As far as Corel... don't be shocked to see Redhat buy Corel, hostile or otherwise. Even with Corel's stock runup, their capitalization of $600m would be an easy buy for Redhat.
Redhat can also buy up to 10%-15% without notifying the SEC, that should be enough to get a board seat, and possibly enough to launch a takeover attempt. It would be interesting, because making Wordperfect Office for Linux proprietary to Redhat would insure that businesses that are using Linux on desktops would have to use Redhat.
With a cheap Linux, a vendor that wants to make a better GNU platform would have trouble being profitable. This platform would only appeal to geeks (who download, not buy the OS), and makes it difficult to compete. By makings the OS free (cost wise), it moves the competition to applications that are specific to your distribution...
I think that we are about to see a fork in the platform... Redhat is going to make a play to be a proprietary Linux. We'll see what this does to the community.
Alex
Smart move. (Score:1)
im kinda uninformed but ok... (Score:1)
Re:Misgivings (Score:1)
Is there a single piece of distribution-specific software in existence?
I don't mean something that says "for Red Hat Linux" on the box, I mean something which will not work with Suse, Caldera, Turbolinux or Debian. I haven't heard of a single product like this, and I am curious to know if others have.
Re:A balanced move(slightly off-topic) (Score:1)
As for the "elite" angle..I know I'm not superior or inferior to anyone just because of the skills/knowledge I have, it's how I get by in the "real world", although my coworkers may at times seem totally clueless, they've got their speciality, they've got their way of getting by in the world and if Windows does the job for them at work and at home, so be it..it works for them and Linux/*nix works for me.
I'm just glad to have the chance to use a *nix-like OS at home, it's probably enhanced my skills and knowledge more than just sticking to DOS/Win ever would have, and indeed, without GNU/Linux/the BSD's and the Free Software paradigm as a whole, where would we, the geeks, the nerds, the code jockeys be..
My point? ("Um, I don't have one.." j/k) Don't worry about OS wars, who's "on top" according to sales, that's never meant anything (at least not to me)..instead, find and go with what you like, laugh off your inevitable mistakes but be sure to learn from them, too..there's almost always something new to be discovered from a *nix and sometimes even Windows..I think it's in the doing, not the arguing.
Peace, (sorry for ranting a bit)
Re:im kinda uninformed but ok... (Score:1)
Szulik is credited with managing Red Hat's IPO.
Re:Misgivings (Score:2)
Red Hat doesn't "own" anybody, or any part of Linux. The kernel is still controlled ultimately by Linus Torvalds. Alan Cox and others merely are developers employed by Red Hat. If they decide to go closed source, and Alan and others stay with RedHat, well I am sure the Linux community would miss them, but I don't think that would be the end of anything except my use of Red Hat's distributions.
If Red Hat wants to fork off and close any part of GNU/Linux we still have the GPL versions. The development system can be drawn back to the open source community at any time. It was only very recently that ecgs became the 'official' gcc, and if I am not mistaken the non-egcs version is still being used to compile the kernel.
Red Hat could bring Linux to its knees if it wanted, or at least it could make life very difficult for the rest of the distro companies by pulling an Aladdin (restricting the newest
versions of GCC to itself, leaving the older dregs to the FSF a la ghostscript).
Exactly what is to prevent the free software community from further taking whatever version of gcc is the latest GPL version, and working from there? From what I understand the problem with ghostscript arose because the author retained copyright rather than turning it over to the FSF like most of the other FSF software because he planned to do commercial licensing from the beginning. Since the FSF owns the gcc copyright I really don't think there is a problem along those lines.
And you guys put them there. Thanks!
Who exactly are 'you guys?'.
All I have heard along this line of reasoning is speculation as to what may happen. I am very reluctant to criticize anyone on the basis that they MAY do something bad in the future, especially when everything the have done in the past has been good. The bogeyman of 'Suits' as you say doesn't hold up to any kind of real examination. The amount of stock that has been sold to the public is not a problem; the original founders still own the majority of the company, and their attitude towards open source has been very good.