Re: [tlug] RE: getting back on track [ was RE: introductions ]

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 10:09:53AM +0900, Brett Robson wrote:

>Until you get to version 9. There seems to be very few packages that go
>to double digit versions. Count the number of version 10s you see, they
>are very rare and you can be sure they are from "serious" suppliers.

Slackware is at 10, I think (OK, they are serious) and Mandrake has a 
10 coming up (clowns) and SuSE should have a 10 at some point (serious).
Of course, those are whole distros, but your point is well-taken: not
much has been around long enough to have a version 10, and those that
have are generally legit: they have nine previous major releases to get
to 10.

>I think this will be RHs death nell. VMS then Unix became popular

It may well be.  Red Hat got where it is by being everywhere and
pushing the state of the Linux art on ease of installation, etc.
They did a lot of good, and contributed back (and are contributing back)
a lot to the community. However, there is no question that RH took a
mindshare hit when they decided to abandon the free (as in beer) version
of RH entirely and replace it with Fedora, which will always be kind of
a hacker's Linux, I suspect.  People who don't want to hack around with
their distro but just want to use it to get work done will mostly steer
clear of Fedora.  People who need to buy RH Enterprise Linux for corporate
means will do so.  However, it was being freely available for free that
got RH into a lot of companies in the first place.  In companies that
are no considering Linux, that is no longer a possibility.

Since any company that is looking at Linux is looking at TCO as one of
the motivators for change, coming around to management and saying "We
should try Linux, but by the way, it's going to cost about as much
up-front as Windows costs" isn't going to make the doors swing wide
for Red Hat.  They'll swing wider for something that is free, unless of
course the goal is something like running Oracle.  Then you are basically
locked into RH Enterprise at least if you want support from Oracle.
Since support is a big deal for most Oracle customers, that will go
without saying and RH will get the nod.

That leaves the smaller outfits and the Linux-curious out of the 
Red Hat picture, though.  It's a calculated risk on RH's part.
They figure, I think, that they will risk the mindshare loss at the
low end since they make little or no money there anyway, and count on
their partnerships with companies like Oracle to allow them to retain
their high-end marketshare, where they do make money.  It's a risk, but
a fairly well thought-out one.  Red Hat may find itself in a niche,
albeit a fairly broad and profitable niche - enterprise Linux - and is
willing to take the risk of reduced overall mindshare and marketshare.
Will it be their death?  Probably not, but it will, I think, result in
a significant lessening of  Red Hat's overall stature in the Linux world.
They were so ubiquitous that it was quite common to see people write that
they were running "Linux 7.2" when what they meant was Red Hat 7.2.
We'll see a lot less of that.  I already see less of that.  Or at least,
it's not RH-specific.  Other newbie-oriented distros get their
version number substituted there.

Still, RH needs to watch out.  A lot of the people they lost early on
when they announced this EOL plan and the end of free Red Hat were
sysadmins and other IT professionals.  Those are people you want to have
using your product.  If I were them, I'd be handing out free or very cheap
copies of RH Entreprise products to universities all over the place and
also giving free versions of it to sysadmins and the like to try out.
The rules would be no support and no redistribution, I would suppose, but
that would be enough to help them retain mindshare.

Jonathan
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