Top Linux seller Red Hat will unveil today a new phase in its plan to profit from a premium product, introducing a new lower-priced version of its Advanced Server software, along with a new brand name.
Red Hat Readies Low-End Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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This is a good idea for Red Hat. By making a new version for smaller customers they have a chance to sell more. Were they also saying that Advanced Server is going to have binary compatibility will all software certified on the platform for future releases?
Zend did something like this.
http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-smallbiz.php
If you are a business that does less than $250,000 in business each year you can get their software at a substantial discount.
Now Red Hat needs to make a version targeted and sold to home users. I know they have their personal edition, but even that’sstill aimed at personal desktops in the work place.
if this version will run on up to 2-way systems only, means if it contains a crippled version of the linuxkernel (or another kind of restriction), this is imo the beginning of a very unfortunate licensingpolicy taken over from classical “closedsource”-vendors like microsoft-what’s next-a per-seat licence?!
afaik the enterprise-servers of either redhat or unitedlinux contain (nearly) nothing proprietary, means you can yourself built an exact copy of those products.
of course i understand that you pay for the support, the certification from 3rd-party-vendors like oracle etc. and that the commercial distributions need to make money in order to survive, but imo the answer can’t be the artificial crippling of linux and/or licensing per cpu/seat, but a more flexible supportpolicy etc. and if they aren’t able to sell enough of their advanced server, they should simply lower the prices of it in general, really.
imo it will be very interesting to see in the future how the commercial vendors of linux will manage to satiesfie both their shareholders and the community (s priciples), means making money without pi**ing off the contributors of open source.
I think that for now RedHat isn’t going to target the home market. That is fine with me. Mandrake is still a good option for less experienced Linux users and Libranet may become a good solid option. There are plenty of others too, but I’ve never tried them…
Personally I hope that RedHat doesn’t release a personal desktop for a while. If they did we might be heading to the same trap we ran into with Microsoft. (One ring to rule them all).
I think Linux is great because it’s so much more versatile. Now we don’t have to have one company dominating everything. There are plenty of options available to us.
Your not really paying for the software, your paying for the support. I don’t see it as an artificial crippling, because they aren’t stopping you from running the software on the system you want to. However, they are only going to support what they feel they are being compensated properly for.
However, they are only going to support what they feel they are being compensated properly for.
A very valid point – they are a business after all, and through the provision of support for $ they are making money. I don’t understand why people have a problem with companies making money from OSS?
Why is that?
By Eugenia Loli-Queru, submitted by John De Vries – Posted on 2003-03-12 16:52:28
I know that Eugenia didn’t write the article, but it really looks like. It’s confussing and I think should be more clear for new people coming to this place.
The poor guy that wrote the article is Stephen Shankland.
Shouldn’t it be “By Stephen Shankland, submited by John DeVries and edited by Eugenia Loli-Queru” ?
My 2 cents
i’m not at all against companies making money with oss, but my point ist _how_ they are doing it.
i think in general that the relationship between business and the principles of the open-source-movement is difficult, and imo this problem can become a serious challenge for linux.
to outline the problems i see in detail would take a lenghty post, but because i’m not an expert at all in opensource nor a “member” of the community, just an interested user of linux, i think i’m not “qualified” or entitled to do it.
just wanted to express my concerns, though, that this move could be the first step of the big distr. adopting the policy of closed-source vendors, which i, as a linuxuser, wouldn’t like.
just wanted to express my concerns, though, that this move could be the first step of the big distr. adopting the policy of closed-source vendors, which i, as a linuxuser, wouldn’t like.
How so? They are charging for support. The more you pay, the more support you get. Per-processor support is a damn good idea – the more processors, the more support costs. Doesn’t mean you can’t compile, package, and run the applications yourself, or even copy applications that come with RHAS onto another machine and run it there – you just don’t get support.
I really like this idea.
Red Hat is moving in the right direction…
I don’t understand why people have a problem with companies making money from OSS?
Because people don’t get it. HP makes a whole lot of money from my company every year for support on products like Apache, samba, webmin, and a whole slew of other free software. Yes, I can compile them myself, and also support them myself, but this is a company and we need someone to blame if something goes wrong.
if this version will run on up to 2-way systems only, means if it contains a crippled version of the linuxkernel (or another kind of restriction),
As their policy on the enterprise line is “we build and you get what you pay” and most folks and pointy-haired guys aren’t even interested if they can tweak the kernel, restriction is boss stupidity 🙂
Red Hat may be the new Microsoft.
that’s exactly the problem (for me).;-)
now good or bad…?
Dohnert, have you read any of the comments? They make many valid points!
Microsoft is closed-source (they don’t share their code and can do anything they want with it). They have a very restrictive licensing scheme.
Redhat on the other hand provides a damn good distribution (bloated, but damn good) and keeps getting better. You can even download all its products in source and in iso format. You can purchase a boxed set which contains cds full of software (and possibly a meaty manual). They don’t stop you from using it how you like… very flexible. They are now attempting to make money off support… why not, there is and has been a very big demand for it.
They are doing nothing wrong. In fact, I would recommend buying their stock… I sure plan to!!
Red Hat may be the new Microsoft.
You know, that can’t happen. Unless they rewrite major parts of the distro and make those parts closed-source. And I doubt anyone would be so stupid. You pay money to get customer support – you can still download the distro for free. Am currently running Gentoo with Gnome 2.2 and the Bluecurve theme for both Metacity and GTK2. This theme was created by Redhat but they were kind enough to share it with the rest of the world. So they are not all that bad
GPL will keep Linux vendors from becoming new Microsofts.
Why is Red Hat charging for support based on X number of processors a bad thing? All the money that you don’t pay for licenses you could use to pay for support.
Also, why must everyone think that any linux company (ie Redhat) will ever be able to be as dominant as Microsoft? Here is a situation: RedHat is on every OEM computer in the world, RedHat has OEMs pay a fee to support those machines and all of a sudden RedHat has the majority of the OS market. If someone were to take the source code or support, make one or both better, and charge less for it, nothing would stop OEMs from switching. Why? Because unlike the current situation, all the programs that ran on the market leaders’ OS would run on the new companies OS, and there would be a lot less risk.
Sorry, I didn’t mean everyone, I mean the many people who think companies like Red Hat being successful is a problem.
Some of the previous posters are correct, you can get redhats source code and make a better redhat.
Which brings me to the question that I have seen in the comments section of other Redhat articles. If compiled for i386 is a problem, why not get the source code and compile it for i686?
Why would Redhat be the new MS? Becos, they are barely managing to survive and make money? Most linux companies are going down, I suppose those of you who are worried want the same fate for RedHat?
I do not argue the payment for support in general by the distro companies, nor by RedHat in specific. However, I think RedHat has gone too far by restricting its update procedure. Having to flip active systems in the RedHat Network in order to be able to download bug fixes and security patches is a pain. Now with having to fill out surveys, it is too much wasted effort. I would not have a problem paying if they actually worked on updating to new major releases of products (e.g. Pan) instead of almost getting you there, then leaving you to fend for yourself.
However, these policies have caused me to turn away from RedHat as a distro, and look to either SuSE or Mandrake to fill my needs.
What if 99.9% of a “new” Microsoft’s products were GPLed or LGPLed? What if a “new” Microsft gave away their software for free and only expected you to pay for commercial quality support? What if a “new” Microsft made billions every year and kept hiring more and more coders to create more “free” software? What if a “new” Microsoft was responsible for getting all kinds of third party software companies to write software for Linux and getting Linux certified with all of the various processes that keep up from using Linux for certain things?
Would this really be a bad thing?