What makes us Red Hat • Hacker News Board

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#11

Post by djaychela » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

infodroid wrote: post #8

m348e912 wrote: post #4

Red Hat was primary reason it took me a lot longer to adopt Linux than it should have. Headbanging experiences with dependency hell and things not working as expected left me extremely discouraged. It wasn't until I dabbled a little with Solaris 7 and finally found Slackware that I realized that Linux could "just work". IMO Red Hat's success was primarily based on the critical mass of support behind it, not because i…

Have you considered the possibility that your poor experience with Red Hat was due to the fact you were new to Linux? Encountering dependency hell is usually a sign that you don't know what you're doing. Red Hat "just works" and has always enjoyed the reputation of being the most bulletproof distro if you could afford it.

What timeframe are you talking about? I remember it didn't "just work" for me when I first started experimenting with it (V4.2, IIRC). Yes, I was new, but it wasn't the easy-install experience that it now is, for sure.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#12

Post by LordKano » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

m348e912 wrote: post #4

Red Hat was primary reason it took me a lot longer to adopt Linux than it should have. Headbanging experiences with dependency hell and things not working as expected left me extremely discouraged. It wasn't until I dabbled a little with Solaris 7 and finally found Slackware that I realized that Linux could "just work". IMO Red Hat's success was primarily based on the critical mass of support behind it, not because i…

Dependency hell is why I became a Mandrake and later a Mandriva user. URPMI was groundbreaking.

I didn't give up Mandriva until near the end, when I jumped ship to Ubuntu.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#13

Post by yeukhon » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

rrdharan wrote: post #6

schoen wrote: post #3

More than 15 years ago, I worked for a Linux services company that competed with Red Hat. We sometimes saw them or were invited to see them rather negatively (as the competition), and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!). Time has shown that Red Hat really knows what they're doing, on many different levels, and they're the most success…

> they're the most successful free software business in history. Aren't they also the only successful free software business in history? Asking seriously, since I am not aware of any other examples. And I suppose it depends on your definitions of success, of course.

> Aren't they also the only successful free software business in history?

Are you sure you meant "open source software" not free software?

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#14

Post by dhbx9 » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

m348e912 wrote: post #4

Red Hat was primary reason it took me a lot longer to adopt Linux than it should have. Headbanging experiences with dependency hell and things not working as expected left me extremely discouraged. It wasn't until I dabbled a little with Solaris 7 and finally found Slackware that I realized that Linux could "just work". IMO Red Hat's success was primarily based on the critical mass of support behind it, not because i…

IMO the distro that actually made me realize that after some good configuring Linux can just work is Gentoo. After Portage no package manager was ever good enough for me.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#15

Post by dragonquest » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #9

rrdharan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're the most successful free software business in history. Aren't they also the only successful free software business in history? Asking seriously, since I am not aware of any other examples. And I suppose it depends on your definitions of success, of course.

Canonical (Ubuntu), and SUSE as well.

Surely, not SuSe. Novell didn't really handle that well.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#16

Post by callahad » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

rrdharan wrote: post #6

schoen wrote: post #3

More than 15 years ago, I worked for a Linux services company that competed with Red Hat. We sometimes saw them or were invited to see them rather negatively (as the competition), and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!). Time has shown that Red Hat really knows what they're doing, on many different levels, and they're the most success…

> they're the most successful free software business in history. Aren't they also the only successful free software business in history? Asking seriously, since I am not aware of any other examples. And I suppose it depends on your definitions of success, of course.

Firefox, WordPress, Drupal, and Wikipedia may also fit your definition.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#17

Post by tekklloneer » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

rrdharan wrote: post #6

schoen wrote: post #3

More than 15 years ago, I worked for a Linux services company that competed with Red Hat. We sometimes saw them or were invited to see them rather negatively (as the competition), and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!). Time has shown that Red Hat really knows what they're doing, on many different levels, and they're the most success…

> they're the most successful free software business in history. Aren't they also the only successful free software business in history? Asking seriously, since I am not aware of any other examples. And I suppose it depends on your definitions of success, of course.

There's a ton of them. Many of them are smaller players consisting of core developers providing feature additions for money, or support contracts, or selling an "enterprise" wrapper/hosted.

scala, mail servers come to mind quickly

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#18

Post by outworlder » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #3

More than 15 years ago, I worked for a Linux services company that competed with Red Hat. We sometimes saw them or were invited to see them rather negatively (as the competition), and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!). Time has shown that Red Hat really knows what they're doing, on many different levels, and they're the most success…

> ...and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!).

Now that's a great ad agency.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#19

Post by outworlder » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #3

More than 15 years ago, I worked for a Linux services company that competed with Red Hat. We sometimes saw them or were invited to see them rather negatively (as the competition), and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!). Time has shown that Red Hat really knows what they're doing, on many different levels, and they're the most success…

> ...and I particularly remember that an ad agency that wanted our business once shipped us a box containing a burnt red hat (!).

Now that's a great ad agency.

Re: What makes us Red Hat

#20

Post by davidw » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

tekklloneer wrote: post #17

rrdharan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're the most successful free software business in history. Aren't they also the only successful free software business in history? Asking seriously, since I am not aware of any other examples. And I suppose it depends on your definitions of success, of course.

There's a ton of them. Many of them are smaller players consisting of core developers providing feature additions for money, or support contracts, or selling an "enterprise" wrapper/hosted. scala, mail servers come to mind quickly

It's really difficult from a business point of view.

To have a business, you have to have something scarce to sell people - it could be simply your time, but that's difficult to scale. For most companies it's some kind of product, but open source products are inherently not scarce.

So to succeed, you have to have a source of scarcity in there somewhere, and that's not always easy, on top of the fact that no startup is ever easy.