I somehow feel canonical/ubuntu should be valued more, at least not too far from Redhat, they have decent software, probably just need a "better" CEO/CFO to monetize what it has so far.
Meanwhile that will drive many freemium users back to Debian when revenue becomes the priority, as what Redhat did in the past.
I don't know how bad it is, however I use Ubuntu on my desktop daily for free and I appreciate that, I don't see Redhat provides that though(ever since Redhat dumped Desktop users after Redhat 8/9 release many years back).
Fedora would be great if they did periodic LTS releases -- and it wouldn't really take much effort, as they sort of do this now by basing a given version of RHEL off a given Fedora release. So the work that goes into keeping RHEL 7 up to date could be applied to Fedora 19 without too much hassle.
Hmmmm, there is Fedora, which is Red Hat's kind of equivalent, and also CentOS. Guessing you're already aware of those and they don't work as well for you?
When RH started 'server' was the focus and became the revenue generator. Workstation was the area they expanded into, in my opinion.
When Ubuntu started the focus was on the 'desktop' (meaning general users). And Cloud became the big server-side change that drove growth - meaning developer-centric technologies and cloud delivery.
For those reasons, both companies / communities tend to have a different DNA.
agreed, but not sure if Red Hats embrace&extend is any better - all corporate entities seeking too much influence/power in the oss ecosystem should be carefully watched
Canonical is more ham fisted, but RH seem more and more insidious.
If you look at some of the more controversial maintainers of various Linux related projects, they are on RH payroll (but you have to dig a big to learn that, as quite often they are presented as individuals).
This means that communication and coordination between them can happen across corporate channels rather than public ones, and only reach public channels after they have started applying the patches.
Look at cgroups for example. Initial development was done by two guys out of Google. But now its maintainer is on RH payroll. And he has upped and decided that it needs to be reworked to have one user space manager.
And who else but another RH employee has such a manager ready and waiting? While a third party project has to scramble to catch up with the changes.
Ulrich Drepper, Lennart Poettering, Kay Sievers, ...
Back in high school, I used to look up to RedHat. Having attended NC State (RedHat HQ was on campus when I attended), it was my dream job to work on open source software at RedHat. But now, I hate RedHat. They have too much control and influence over the Linux ecosystem, and aren't exactly acting in everyone's best interests. I strongly dislike the direction Linux has been heading in for the last few years, and RedHat is largely (though not single-handedly) responsible for that.
SUSE is also another company in this space, and I believe we are incredibly focused on being a part of the OpenSUSE community. And we also have decent software, almost all of which is under free licenses. :D
Red Hat is focused on contributing to all its upstream communities, and their software is also generally very good, open, and almost exclusively libre.
Actually, since Red Hat is a public company, its "market cap" valuation is actually at $13.28 billion. The article merely claims says Red Hat has made $2 billion in revenue. That being said, the company does seems overvalued (P/E ratio is 70.62).
It has a positive EPS of 1.03, which is another point in its favor (it means it's actually turning a profit).
A guarantee that somebody is responsible for the software in some way. Aka "support". It's not [just] tech support, it's providing provenance for things.
Enterprise goes mad for that stuff. It also happens to be Microsoft's core business model.
A good way to understand RH is to think of the savings they provide to a CTO. With a RH stack you can have storage, core OS, Java and virtualization - so they provide all of the key pieces of architecture an enterprise needs. Fundamentally, the business model is that all their bits work with other enterprise vendors - if you're an enterprise CTO then you have SAP, and Oracle and Windows ... so interoperability is key.
They're a really strong engineering outfit that's been consistent in pushing FOSS forward! But as importantly, they understand the challenges Fortune 500 customers have - and those aren't free!
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 46.7 ms ] threadMeanwhile that will drive many freemium users back to Debian when revenue becomes the priority, as what Redhat did in the past.
Very few in the Open Source Community would cry if they were to disappear.
Can discuss privately though, if it's relevant to you and you're not employed/contracted/related to Canonical.
When RH started 'server' was the focus and became the revenue generator. Workstation was the area they expanded into, in my opinion.
When Ubuntu started the focus was on the 'desktop' (meaning general users). And Cloud became the big server-side change that drove growth - meaning developer-centric technologies and cloud delivery.
For those reasons, both companies / communities tend to have a different DNA.
If you look at some of the more controversial maintainers of various Linux related projects, they are on RH payroll (but you have to dig a big to learn that, as quite often they are presented as individuals).
This means that communication and coordination between them can happen across corporate channels rather than public ones, and only reach public channels after they have started applying the patches.
Look at cgroups for example. Initial development was done by two guys out of Google. But now its maintainer is on RH payroll. And he has upped and decided that it needs to be reworked to have one user space manager.
And who else but another RH employee has such a manager ready and waiting? While a third party project has to scramble to catch up with the changes.
Back in high school, I used to look up to RedHat. Having attended NC State (RedHat HQ was on campus when I attended), it was my dream job to work on open source software at RedHat. But now, I hate RedHat. They have too much control and influence over the Linux ecosystem, and aren't exactly acting in everyone's best interests. I strongly dislike the direction Linux has been heading in for the last few years, and RedHat is largely (though not single-handedly) responsible for that.
It has a positive EPS of 1.03, which is another point in its favor (it means it's actually turning a profit).
Source: http://fortune.com/company/rht/
Call me naive (after all, I'm just an engineer), but I am shocked that they are managing to sell something that's free.
Enterprise goes mad for that stuff. It also happens to be Microsoft's core business model.
They're a really strong engineering outfit that's been consistent in pushing FOSS forward! But as importantly, they understand the challenges Fortune 500 customers have - and those aren't free!