Questions for Red Hat Co-Founder? 32
ConceptDog asks: "Co-Founder and current Director of Red Hat, Bob Young, is going to be conducting a presentation at my school. In addition to his presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Considering that my school is rather small (less than 3000 students at my campus), there is a good chance that I might be able to ask a question of Mr. Young. So I'd really like the Slashdot community's help in coming up with a good question to ask. If I get an answer, I'll post what it is, here."
A small omission (Score:3, Informative)
my question (Score:1, Funny)
(I'll let an asking student in the blank)
What Would You Do Different and More (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you think of the emmese popularity of Gentoo?
What's Linux's greatest failing, how do you intend to fix it?
How hard is it to get your product bundled with PCs (like from Dell, who does sell RH, IIRC)?
What do you think of the Athlon 64?
Can Superman beat the Flash? (*woot monorail*)
OK, so that last one is a little irrelevent, but I was just watching the Simpsons and I couldn't help it.
Re:What Would You Do Different and More (Score:2)
not impressed, unless (Score:2)
"Blue...no, green! AHHHHHHHH!"
Red Hat's Future/ SMBs (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of us don't need "support" in the sense of calling someone to help me do something. We are the support. Any company with in-house sysadmins that are competent is in the same position.
What is of some value is errata and security backports and patches. That's what my company pays a good deal of money to Red Hat for several RHN seats for the standard Red Hat Linux. We can afford to have lots of servers, because the seats are a reasonable price.
RHEL is not an option. My company is not going to pay $350 per year per server, and be subject to an EULA that is as bad as Microsoft's, that gives Red Hat the right to audit us for license compliance, to make sure we purchased support seats for every server/desktop, just to get security errata, something every other operating system (including most other Linux distros) give for free.
Our other option is to consolidate servers, which presents technical compromises, and reduces the value of running Linux in the first place. One of the key benefits to free software is that we were free to pop it on a server without the license hassle, and fear of audit. If that server became a permanant addition, we could buy another seat for it.
So it looks like we will be slowly moving to Debian on all Red Hat servers. After April, we'll have no reason to subscribe to RHN any longer. I really didn't want to do this. I really like a lot of things Red Hat has done. They have been a big help to the open source community, and with the Fedora project, it looks like they will continue to support the community. I admire them for that.
Red Hat has just left people like me, who work for and consult for small to medium businesses, with no other viable options.
Red Hat has made a liar out of me when I told consulting clients and my employer that a Red Hat 7.3 server would not need to be upgraded for at least a couple years. I do resent that also.
Microsoft doesn't even treat their customers quite this bad. They at least have an EOL cycle that works for businesses, and don't stop providing security updates suddenly on a OS versions that are less than 2 years old with a huge install bases. TCO for Red Hat just shot through the roof.
It's a testament to the value of open source, that I can drop in a replacement from Debian with very few issues. At least free software still beats the pants off MS, even if RH can't anymore.
What are Red Hat's plans here? Why is Red Hat leaving small to medium businesses with so few option?
Re:Red Hat's Future/ SMBs (Score:2)
That being said, have you tried the Ximian Connector? It will keep your Red Hat servers up to date without you haing to pay Red Hat exorbitant amounts of $$$.
Re:Red Hat's Future/ SMBs (Score:1)
RHEL EULA vs GPL (Score:1)
Bob, could you... (Score:3, Funny)
Open to the public? (Score:1)
Any chance that non seneca college students can attend??? I live in the area and wouldnt mind attending. Do you have any more details.
Much appreciated.
Re:Open to the public? (Score:2)
Re:Open to the public? (Score:2, Insightful)
See here for details including where it's happening, etc: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.li
Re:Open to the public? (Score:1)
It's at 3:15 PM, Oct. 8th, Room 1206 Stephen E. Quinlan building (The one that actually says Seneca on it).
When and how .. (Score:1)
What types of alliances will Red Hat be making to bring Red Hat to a PC sold in Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc ?
How has the move to Fedora Linux aided your work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ?
What changes shall we (the Linux community) expect in the near and long term from Red Hat?
Thanks much!
Andrew Schott
Oh! I know! (Score:1, Funny)
Marketing question (Score:1)
Personal story... (Score:4, Funny)
No, really. It's a hilarious story. I used to work at Red Hat and he told it at a company gathering.
new horizons? (Score:1)
Dear Bob:
I was in Boston at the time and missed a chance to meet you at your talk at Brookhaven Lab in New York, a year or two before the Red Hat IPO. Now RedHat seems to be well on its way to be what Wall Street identifies with as a dominant Linux company. This took about four years to accomplish, which is pretty impressive in the grand scheme of things. A lot has changed since then. If you were now in your late twenties or early thirties and wanting to bootstrap a long-term business, what would you b
Say Bob... (Score:2)
Ask Bob Young if he likes football. (Score:1)
* Bob Young [mcmaster.ca], founder of Red Hat [redhat.com] and Lulu.com [lulu.com] buys Canadian football team the Hamilton Ticats [tigercats.on.ca].
* Ticats playbook submitted to SourceForge [sourceforge.net] for development. Fans of the Canadian Football League [www.cfl.ca] are invited to submit revisions.
* Initially puzzled by open source [netc.org] strategy, other CFL teams begin using the plays.
* Ticats [tigercats.on.ca] adopt open-channel Wi-Fi for communications between coaches and quarterbacks using new helmet developed under the GPL, k
Re:Ask Bob Young if he likes football. (Score:1)