[NTLUG:Discuss] AN APOLOGY to NTLUG...

[Thomas Cameron]

On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 15:10 -0600, David Mandala wrote: 
> Sorry, I was involved in the early efforts to have a single community 
> standard. A single community standard would have been far more valuable 
> to the Linux communitly in general. 

Such efforts have failed.  SAIR and LPI are non-starters.

> RedHat chose to dilute the effort to 
> make cash, 

They charge for certification.  So does everyone else who offers
certification.  Red Hat is a publicly traded company, with a
responsibility to their employees, customers and share holders to be
profitable.  I am *so* sick of the Red Hat bashing.  It always seems to
come at whomever is the most successful - someone always crawls out of
the woodwork to put them down.  

Let me guess, somewhere in your rant, you will pull out the tired old
"Red Hat is the Microsoft of the Linux world" thing right?

> slow adoption of other flavors of Linux 

Horse feathers.  Red Hat is the #1 commercial contributor back to the
Linux kernel.  Everything that Red Hat does with external software is
contributed back to the upstream project.  *Nothing* is shipped in Red
Hat Enterprise Linux which is not accepted in the upstream project.  How
does that slow adoption?  How does giving away their engineering work
for all others to use slow anything?  Get your facts straight.

> and to enrich their 
> own pockets. 

See my comments above about Red Hat the publicly traded company.  

News flash:  The United States of America is a capitalist country.  Red
Hat does an amazing job of contributing back to the community while
still pursuing commercial success.  And guess what?  Without that
commercial success, they would not be able to pay all those fine folks
who contribute back to the community.  Quit spreading disinformation,
OK?

> They offer an over priced product

You get what you pay for.  If you want a supported, enterprise-class
Linux distro, it is going to either cost you to hire programmers and
sysadmins to build it, or to buy it from a vendor like Red Hat.

Tell you what - you come up with a distro which is certified by over 800
ISVs (http://www.redhat.com/promo/ready/), is well documented
(http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/), has a massive support
infrastructure behind it including consulting and training.  Let me know
how much it costs you, OK?

>  that does not reflect the 
> community 

This is just plain wrong.  As I've said, Red Hat contributes more back
to the community than any other commercial entity out there.

> and actively undermines a single community based standard.

More hogwash.  Have a look at
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1860715,00.asp for more details.
Red Hat supports the LSB, and RHEL is either LSB compliant or in process
of being compliant
(http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/rhel/details/limits/).

> To say less is simply incorrect. I don't work for RedHat, nor would I 
> ever consider it unless RedHat stops trying to become the Microsoft of 
> Linux. 

I knew it.  I am so sick of this codswallop.  The "Microsoft of Linux"
spew is just so ridiculous.  Does Microsoft have a 100% open source
version of their operating system that the give away for free?  Does
Microsoft buy commercial products (Cluster Suite, Global Filesystem,
Directory Server to name a few) and immediately turn around and release
them as Open Source products?  Does Microsoft encourage community
contribution to its OS?

How exactly is Red Hat like Microsoft, except that it is commercially
successful?

> There is room for all distro's and plenty of cash to be made by 
> all. 

Yup.  Red Hat recognizes that.  Embraces it.  See
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid39_gci957370,00.html for Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik's statements about Red Hat's contributions to the community and how Red Hat welcomes competition.  Unlike Microsoft.

> It is however important to bring to the forefront Linux is Linux is 
> Linux. RedHat is simply a distribution of Linux, they are not the 
> standard of Linux simply one of the larger distro's.

Red Hat does not seek to set any standards, at least not without
community involvement.  Red Hat absolutely engages in standards
building, but only in community forums and committees.

> RedHat has a long history of fighting against a community certification 
> standard and the Linux Standard Base (LSB). 

Um, wrong.  Red Hat supports the LSB.  See
http://www.businessworldindia.com/feb0204/news05.asp for a comment by
Matthew Szulik in support of the LSB.  See
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-03-23-002-09-PS for
a quote from the head of the LSB project: "Daniel Quinlan, chairman of
the LSB's steering committee, said he believes Red Hat fully supports
the effort."

There are serious problems with the LSB.  It is not perfect.  But Red
Hat is working with the community because it's the right thing to do.
You'll find that this is a common sentiment at Red Hat.

> It's not in their interest, 
> if they can convince the world that they are the "standard" in 
> certification and the "standard Linux" they can lock in more businesses.

Well, I'm not about to say that as a commercial enterprise Red Hat
doesn't want more business.  It just so happens that they have the best
certification program out there.  It also happens that Red Hat is used
in the vast majority of enterprise Linux deployments (depending on your
source, around 90%).  It is perfectly accurate to say that they are the
most commonly used enterprise Linux, so it might be said that Red Hat is
the de facto standard for Linux in the enterprise.  But Red Hat works
with the community to build de jure standards.  Red Hat does not
nefariously enforce its will on the universe.

> To not recognise these issues when talking about RedHat is to do a 
> disservice to certifications and to the LSB standard efforts.

Your arguments are factually incorrect.  Red Hat has built a very
valuable certification program, and supports the LSB.

Instead of rhetoric and false claims, please come back with some facts.

Cheers,
Thomas

DISCLAIMER:  The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone.  They
do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer.