Red Hat: Open source is our focus (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

ZDNet interviews Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik on UnitedLinux. " But my perspective on this whole UnitedLinux activity is that it takes an awful lot of capital to build a successful global franchise to support ISVs like Oracle and Veritas and TIBCO and the main enterprise ISVs. Certainly the Dell, the Compaq and HP announcement that we just made yesterday--it requires an awful lot of time and attention and capital. And so therefore it's hard for me to see how these four Linux vendors--the hybrid approach that they seem to be consolidating into--is going to be able to succeed with the demanding requirements of the customer and the support that's required to compete on a global basis."

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Red Hat: Open source is our focus (ZDNet)

Posted Jun 27, 2002 20:10 UTC (Thu) by erat (guest, #21) [Link] (1 responses)

Here's why UL makes sense: All that engineering time assembling the bits that make up the base system (which is where ISVs dwell, where problems occur, where the most attention is placed, etc.) and all the money that gets put into staffing that effort year after year will now be shared by a consortium of Linux vendors, each of which is getting the full benefit of the designed/integrated base system at a fraction of what it probably costs Matt to produce the same bits for his distros. Because all of the UL systems -- regardless of the vendor -- will be built on the same base, support will be much more predictable and will be easier for all involved. I would guess that some kind of central UL support knowledge base would be contributed to by all of the UL vendors, but that's just a wish. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Regardless, four or more vendors sharing the loss that Linux distro production always incurs is much better than each one of them doing the exact same work with similarly sized (and expensive) engineering staffs.

Red Hat: Open source is our focus (ZDNet)

Posted Jun 28, 2002 0:09 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

I don't understand why you think that the UnitedLinux arrangements will save costs. Don't forget that Red Hat's R and D talent pool exceeds that of all the UnitedLinux companies put together. If you dispute this, just count the number of employees working on critical components of the OS, like the kernel, the C library, the compiler, Gnome, and KDE. Red Hat has the most, SuSE is second and the rest are far behind. Why do you think it's more efficient to work as four companies that do some things together and some separately, than as one company?

Now, if Caldera can trick SuSE into doing all the heavy lifting for them, they could win out (the UnitedLinux plan appears to call for SuSE to do the bulk of the development work). But what's in it for SuSE? If some of the companies wind up feeling that they are getting less benefit than others, the deal may fall apart. Actual corporate mergers would make more sense. Why four companies?