Red Hat: Industry Leader

Red Hat: Industry Leader

Everyone seems to be picking on Red Hat lately (which is how I interpret this announcement). To me this means Red Hat is and industry leader and is winning. Since Red Hat seems to go along more with my views of free software I think this is a good thing.

The truth is Most of the (prior) closed-source companies just don't get it. I don't know why it's hard for it to sink in. Given that Red Hat started off as an open source company they are slower to lose "focus" if that's the right word.

Closed source companies (Novell, Oracle, etc.) come in, embrace Linux and open source, but they want to see resultfs fast (i.e. $$$) and when they don't see things going in their favor (either because they don't spend the time, effort, or just don't "get it") then they look for a way out.

Novell has invested a lot in open source (Ximian, SuSe) and have, in my opinion, dropped the ball. They did the same with Unix. I always thought that Novell was the last company in the world I would want to see go open source because whatever they do seems doomed to failure.

This announcement does not demonstrate that open source has failed Novell, but rather that Novell has failed open source. Or am I reading to much into things?