Here are excerpts from a recent one-on-one interview with Red Hat CEO Matt Szulik.
Red Hat CEO Szulik on business, SCO, and other topics
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Two questions from the article
Novell: Is it hurting sales or confusing the landscape?
How likely is it that Novell can hurt sales?
I have recently migration tested the latest releases of both Red Hat and SuSE and I’d have to say that unless Novell makes some drastic changes to the overall quality and timeliness of SuSE and it’s accompanying software, they are going to have a hard time overtaking anybody.
I ran into a problem with SuSE in both the i386 and amd_64 platform releases where the installer would fail with a message that it couldn’t find any packages to install. Also, on the machines that it would work on, I found that many of the packages were quite old. This may not matter most of the time, but for things like GAIM, old versions are a digital doorstop since they can’t communicate on some of the more ubiquitous chat services; which are used frequently throughout the office.
Durring out tests, Red Hat didn’t demonstate any crippling behavior and its accompanying software was up-to-date, so Red Hat is what was deployed.
I used to work for Novell, and they do a lot of things right. Hopefully they can bang SuSE into shape for the next release.
Like RH as a company, love Fedora as a distribution.
Right awn.
Also like Novell as a company, especially the direction they’re going in.
I also agree that SuSE is very rough around the edges, as a desktop anyhow.
I purchased SuSE 9.1 and found it to be slow, inconsistant, a little buggy (apps not system), and least importantly but still relevant – unattractive.
I’m back to using fedora core 2 in my home office, couldn’t be happier.
Right AWN!
Well I bought SuSe 9.1 pro a few weeks ago and I could not be happier with it. Sure it took some time getting everything the way I want, but now I’ve done that.
People should learn to focus on their own product for once instead of bashing others. Saying ‘Product X is bad’ does not automatically mean your product is good, eh?
The thing to realise here is the target audience of this interview. It may have appeared on OSDN, but the people Szulik was talking to here are financial/business people, not engineers. It may seem obvious but I thought I’d point it out anyway – people like Szulik are in the positions they are because they know how to talk to many different people.
Notice the basic technical/factual errors in the interview, “Spark” vs “SPARC”, public domain vs GPL, and so on. None of that matters to the people the interview was for, instead, what matters are things like the revenue generated by the subscription/services model, the competitive outlook and the seemingly ethereal talk of “process modelling”, “ecosystems” etc. This is all meaningful and concrete to management.
Now go and read an interview the Szulik has done for technical readers. Totally different language, no factual errors: the guy knows what he’s doing – that’s why he’s running Red Hat and that’s why Red Hat are doing well.
Q:What’s your take on Debian, and is it gaining strength now that it’s moved to a revenue/subscription model?
A: …
Cold day in hell?
RHAT’s stock has been going ape-shit as of late. It hit $28.00 a share last week. And as the article pointed out they’re only making $12-$13 a share. People are expecting big things from Red Hat and I’m not sure they can follow through.
As long as I have lots of money, I could care less about any IT stock or who is number one or any of that. I’d like to thank RH for their support of the Fedora project.
I agree that Red Hat’s stock is somewhat overvalued at the moment. But since factoring in future expectations is so common in stock price these days it’s not at an level I would call conserning. It’s a lot harder to for example try to explain why SUN has the market cap it has today other than by reading history.
Red Hat’s finances are solid and they’re making profit and expanding, there’s at the moment all the reason to be hopefull. The new kid on the block Novell is just now revving up their offerings and it remains to see how they pull it off. Novell’s introduction to the market as a whole hasn’t had a large impact on RHAT so far. Remeber that Red Hat still a significantly larger company than Novell even after Novell’s recent acquisitions.
I don’t mean to offend anybody. This is not a distro fight (at least not for me, I mostly use Debian and Slackware).
Sure it took some time getting everything the way I want, but now I’ve done that.
That’s the point. Anybody can download any distro and work to make it the way they want, but corporations don’t want to do that. They want to install and have it perfect (or a close approximation thereof) the first time.
If Novell wants to compete, they are going to have to clean up SuSE’s problems and make sure the apps are up to date when they ship.
Anyway, this is an article about Red Hat, and in my opinion, Red Hat is doing things pretty well from a corporate standpoint.
As long as they stay 100% free software and release the code so Debian can also use it I am happy, and thankful.
“What is your view about Intel versus AMD 64-bit processors?
*snip*…The issue of Intel versus AMD ultimately goes back to the distribution partner; if companies like Hewlett-Packard, for example, can be successful with the AMD parts, then AMD will benefit. Another issue for AMD will be dealing with Darth Vader in Redmond and Jabba the Hutt in Santa Clara. ”
LOL
foo
I worked at Intel once upon a long time ago. It may have just been a corporate legend, but I recall being in a meeting where they discussed a file that Microsoft ships with Windows, but that Intel either creates or adds a bunch of code too. The file was called msvcrt.dll.
The discussion was regarding optimizing this file to either work better with Intel chips than on AMD chips, or barring that, at least stomp on AMD’s performance a little.
Just a little trivia from my past.
Redhat performed the bait and switch on users who bought Redhat 9 then wanted to buy another version. If MS did this the outcry would be so loud it would never go away. But since it is Linux it is ok to rip people off and drop support on a product less a year old.
This guy talks bad about MS everytime he speaks, he has nothing positive to say about anything but how MS is evil.
Another scam artist and crook.
“Redhat performed the bait and switch on users who bought Redhat 9 then wanted to buy another version. If MS did this the outcry would be so loud it would never go away. But since it is Linux it is ok to rip people off and drop support on a product less a year old.
”
redhat provided free support for every redhat linux product include redhat linux 9 and extended support for 7.3 and 8 till december last year.
redhat doesnt have to provide free support for its free product for more than one year as it said earlier. if you want support you could have bought it progeny. if you want updated packages you could have downloaded it from fedoralegacy.org but you decide to troll. good work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux
redhat linux 9 was released on march 31 2003. support was stopped for redhat linux 9 on apr 30 2004. if you know to count thats more than one year.
fedoralegacy.org provides updates packages if you want and it works flawlessly
My point was proven, so if a user paid $150-200 for Professional workstation Redhat (9) version and support for only a year! Good grief, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that is EXPENSIVE.
The money was wasted, hence the product is NOT supported anylonger. The you are going to tell me to use Fedora which is BETA software full of bugs and problems.
No thanks, for $100 or less you can get XP Pro OEM, and have everything you need. There are free online virus scans, free firewalls-built in, and free office suites. So how is linux cheaper when you are left in the cold with bait and switch?
Also, the Redhat up2date for Linux is horrible at best even in Fedora which needs a fly swatter for all the bugs in it.
Plus, you can’t even play an mp3 in linux, a movie (DVD), or any other multi-media because it is crippled. Don’t even say you can download it because if you have phoneline internet forget it. The flawed theorys of linux are just that flawed with communist thinking which always backfires in the end. Just like the USSR and the rest, the system of the USA is the longest lasting Constitution in the world.
“No thanks, for $100 or less you can get XP Pro OEM”
>>>>
MS doesn’t support OEM versions and MS is full of bugs and security holes too. Free online virus scanners have regularly very bad detection rates in tests.
For me personally and for the things I work on Linux is much cheaper than XP because I have less interruptions and problems (the license for XP is a non-issue here, but my working time is not).
then we can sort out muppets like len smith who posts rubbish like this;
“The flawed theorys of linux are just that flawed with communist thinking which always backfires in the end. Just like the USSR and the rest, the system of the USA is the longest lasting Constitution in the world. ”
he is even too chicken to post his email address because he knows he will be flamed out of existence
btw lenny – greece has the oldest constitution