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There are many companies that are growing on free software without contributing to it much, however I would hesitate to add Red Hat to that category. First of
by piokoch 6y ago
There are many companies that are growing on free software without contributing to it much, however I would hesitate to add Red Hat to that category.
First of all they were one of the first Linux distro (I remember installing 4.2 at home) with Debian and Slackware. At those times making Linux distro was a highly unprofitable business. Companies did not care about Linux at all. Windows, Sparx, AIX, IBM mainframes, etc. everywhere.
Yet Red Hat people had a vision that Linux could be a thing in the real World and I would say, they deserve a premium for all those hungry years.
Second, Red Hat is one of the largest corporate contributors to Linux kernel. I bet that, for instance, Amazon AWS is making way more money on Linux and open software than Red Hat, yet their contribution is not particularly significant.
I am not surprised that Red Hat is not supporting financially something that is a rip-off of their software. A legal rip-off obviously and Red Hat is not suing or spreading FUD about such initiatives, but I don't see any reason why they should financially back them.
- macksd 6y agoUnder no circumstances did anyone force Red Hat to financially back CentOS, nor did I say they didn't deserve a premium. In fact I said the opposite.
- raesene9 6y agoI'd say that the original investors in Red Hat have had their premium for all the hungry years, selling the business to IBM for $34 billion !
- phkahler 6y agoSure, but IBM is going to want something for their $34B. Presumably they had a plan for getting that return prior to the purchase. Obviously it's not going according to plan now - they had a plan for CentOS and instead it has been destroyed. If I were IBM, I'd be taking a step back to understand things better before screwing things up more, because there is obviously a disconnect. I think the IBM Redhat purchase could have been a very good thing if handled properly. CentOS was actually a feature of RHEL in a way, but no more.
- toyg 6y ago> making Linux distro was a highly unprofitable business. Actually, for a period,in the dot-boom years, Linux distributions took plenty of investor money. Caldera, anyone? RedHat was "just" one of the few to figure out ways to survive the end of that wave.