Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
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Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#2(2014)
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#3Reading his post makes me feel for Docker. :(
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#4The article argues that Red Hat's business model was selling a "slightly better version of Linux".
IMO they were rather in the business of being a professional scapegoat. Someone to blame when that scary open source thing goes wrong.
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#5The article touts the business model as the underlying failure of Open Source. However I think this is missing the forest for the trees. If you add up all the value that Open Source delivered by giving millions, yes, let's go for millions, of developers access to high quality tools that previously were only available as expensive, proprietary products then clearly the model has been a runaway success. The only lament would appear to be that the value was not captured by a single corporation.
I think the pendulum is now swinging back to the pre-PC days of large corporations, centralized control of technologies where only groups with large resources can participate. However that will only be a temporary phase until the next generation of mammals are able to come up with the tools to create competition once more and the whole cycle will repeat.
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#6I think this is a great article with a provocative title. I don't know whether there will ever be another Red Hat or not, it's a meaningless question. But if you want to build a business on open source, this is a critical article to read because Red Hat's model is a hard way to do it and there are other models out there.
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#7> Red Hat is a fantastic company, and a pioneer in successfully commercializing open source. However, beyond Red Hat the effort has largely been a failure from a business standpoint.
SUSE started around a year before RedHat, in 1992. Sure, we haven't had the same success and growth, but I would disagree that RedHat pioneered the model. I wouldn't even argue SUSE pioneered it (arguably it was Cygnus in 1989 -- though it was eventually acquired by RedHat in 2000). And even earlier you could argue that RMS pioneered it with his distribution of GNU Emacs in the early 80s (which had a description of the business model as the final chapter in the manual).
[I work at SUSE and am obviously biased, but it is a little bit annoying that people always ignore that we still exist...]
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#8> Red Hat is a fantastic company, and a pioneer in successfully commercializing open source. However, beyond Red Hat the effort has largely been a failure from a business standpoint. SUSE started around a year before RedHat, in 1992. Sure, we haven't had the same success and growth, but I would disagree that RedHat pioneered the model. I wouldn't even argue SUSE pioneered it (arguably it was Cygnus in 1989 -- though…
> it is a little bit annoying that people always ignore that we still exist
Count me among them. I wasn't even aware that the SUSE Linux project was still a thing, let alone one backed by a business.
Marketing might not be a terrible idea at this point in time - the best product in the world won't sell if nobody knows about it.
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#9> Red Hat is a fantastic company, and a pioneer in successfully commercializing open source. However, beyond Red Hat the effort has largely been a failure from a business standpoint. SUSE started around a year before RedHat, in 1992. Sure, we haven't had the same success and growth, but I would disagree that RedHat pioneered the model. I wouldn't even argue SUSE pioneered it (arguably it was Cygnus in 1989 -- though…
I think you're being a bit over-sensitive. They said a pioneer, which does not preclude other pioneers. Also, what's the bar for "successfully" commercializing open source? In a world where anything less than a unicorn is considered failure - and bear in mind the OP is from a promoter of that ethos - Suse's trajectory might not qualify. Even if it did, it would be one of the few exceptions to the general rule that commercializing open source largely has been a failure. Open source as a development method is alive and well, but as a business in its own right not so much.
P.S. Eight years at Red Hat, ending a year and a half ago. Glad not to be under IBM's inept thumb as my erstwhile colleagues soon will be.
Re: Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat: The Economics of Open Source (2014)
#10The article argues that Red Hat's business model was selling a "slightly better version of Linux". IMO they were rather in the business of being a professional scapegoat. Someone to blame when that scary open source thing goes wrong.
That's how they were used at my last employer. Yes, their OpenShift platform is very good, and they have a lot of good products in their ecosystem, but the biggest value they provided was a vendor to blame if things went south.
Maybe Red Hat and IBM aren't as different as we like to think.