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Pasdar
November 7th, 2009, 11:24 AM
Since Canonical is pushing into the domain of Red Hat, and since Red Hat is one of the major contributors to Linux. What effect do you think it will have (for everyone) if Canonical actually manages to really cut into Red Hat revenues?

XubuRoxMySox
November 7th, 2009, 12:00 PM
Competition is good for every industry and every market! End-users hugely benefit from having companies compete to produce the better product. God bless all the competitors!

-Robin

Naiki Muliaina
November 7th, 2009, 12:07 PM
Competition is good for every industry and every market! End-users hugely benefit from having companies compete to produce the better product. God bless all the competitors!

-Robin


QFT, competition is awesome! Competition breeds development / evolution.

IMHO its also good Windows 7 is good or more currently successful (or more so than Vista anyways), gives everyone else wanting market share to produce something to trump it.

xtremesupremacy3
November 7th, 2009, 05:42 PM
Haha Windows 7 is better than Vista?
Well I should hope so, even Bill Gates has said that Vista was the worst OS they ever released so it can't be worse

Simian Man
November 7th, 2009, 05:52 PM
According to wikipedia:

Red Hat
----------
Revenue: $652.57 million
Emplyees: 2800


Canonical
----------
Revenue: $30 million
Emplyees: 200+


So at the moment they are not really even in the same league. Red Hat's real competition is IBM, Novell, Sun, Oracle and Microsoft.

If in some fantasy world, Canonical did put Red Hat out of prominence, it would actually be devastating for Linux. Rather than have work get done for free on the kernel, X, Gnome, Pulseaudio and other important things, we'd see improvements in Ubuntu's own stuff that is either proprietary (Ubuntu One, Landscape, etc.) or things that are either not essential or not all that useful to the larger Linux community (SoftwareStore, Notifactions etc.).

RiceMonster
November 7th, 2009, 05:58 PM
if in some fantasy world, canonical did put red hat out of prominence, it would actually be devastating for linux. Rather than have work get done for free on the kernel, x, gnome, pulseaudio and other important things, we'd see improvements in ubuntu's own stuff that is either proprietary (ubuntu one, landscape, etc.) or things that are either not essential or not all that useful to the larger linux community (softwarestore, notifactions etc.).

+1

Regenweald
November 7th, 2009, 06:11 PM
According to wikipedia:

Red Hat
----------
Revenue: $652.57 million
Emplyees: 2800


Canonical
----------
Revenue: $30 million
Emplyees: 200+


So at the moment they are not really even in the same league. Red Hat's real competition is IBM, Novell, Sun, Oracle and Microsoft.

If in some fantasy world, Canonical did put Red Hat out of prominence, it would actually be devastating for Linux. Rather than have work get done for free on the kernel, X, Gnome, Pulseaudio and other important things, we'd see improvements in Ubuntu's own stuff that is either proprietary (Ubuntu One, Landscape, etc.) or things that are either not essential or not all that useful to the larger Linux community (SoftwareStore, Notifactions etc.).

That is a petty and biased assumption to make. With 2800 employees and a primary cash cow server product, Canonical would probably be in the exact same position as Red Hat, whereby the tech they invest in would primarily be those that would further enhance their enterprise product.

You point out that canonical has 1/14 the resources of red hat then bitch that their contributions to upstream are not enough. Laughable.

YeOK
November 7th, 2009, 07:23 PM
That is a petty and biased assumption to make. With 2800 employees and a primary cash cow server product, Canonical would probably be in the exact same position as Red Hat, whereby the tech they invest in would primarily be those that would further enhance their enterprise product.

You point out that canonical has 1/14 the resources of red hat then bitch that their contributions to upstream are not enough. Laughable.

I agree with Simian Man, its hard to say for sure what Canonical puts back but one place we can look is the Linux Kernel, Canonical don't even rank in the top 30.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27089/1090/
http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_keynote.html

Xbehave
November 7th, 2009, 07:50 PM
Since Canonical is pushing into the domain of Red Hat, and since Red Hat is one of the major contributors to Linux. What effect do you think it will have (for everyone) if Canonical actually manages to really cut into Red Hat revenues?
Canonical is looking to spread Desktop Linux, Red Hat is looking to spread enterprises Linux, while there is overlap it's not a zero sum game as both will take/lose users that would otherwise not be using Linux. I don't think they are competing much and where they do compete Linux/FOSS wins anyway.

JDShu
November 7th, 2009, 09:54 PM
canonical is looking to spread desktop linux, red hat is looking to spread enterprises linux, while there is overlap it's not a zero sum game as both will take/lose users that would otherwise not be using linux. I don't think they are competing much and where they do compete linux/foss wins anyway.

+1

Simian Man
November 7th, 2009, 10:30 PM
That is a petty and biased assumption to make. With 2800 employees and a primary cash cow server product, Canonical would probably be in the exact same position as Red Hat, whereby the tech they invest in would primarily be those that would further enhance their enterprise product.

You point out that canonical has 1/14 the resources of red hat then bitch that their contributions to upstream are not enough. Laughable.

That's true, if Canonical was the size of Red Hat, they would likely make more contributions to other upstream products. However even being much smaller now, they still have more products that are either proprietary or specific to Ubuntu. What I'm "bitching" about is the high ratio of such products that Canonical invests in.

Red Hat on the other hand releases all of their code as open source, even their enterprise software like JBoss, and almost always work upstream so their work will help all of Linux.

mivo
November 7th, 2009, 10:51 PM
That is a petty and biased assumption to mak.e

No, it's not. Canonical is barely contributing anything to the (technical) Linux scene. They take far, far more than they give, and that has been an issue and concern among Linux developers for years now. It is one of the reasons why there is resentment against Ubuntu and Canonical.

Read up a bit on it.

szymon_g
November 8th, 2009, 12:45 AM
No, it's not. Canonical is barely contributing anything to the (technical) Linux scene. They take far, far more than they give, and that has been an issue and concern among Linux developers for years now. It is one of the reasons why there is resentment against Ubuntu and Canonical.

Read up a bit on it.

what were the numbers? canonical contributed sort of 0.2% of gcc/kernel/binutils/alsa, when redhat contributed ca 40%? or am i wrong?

Grant A.
November 8th, 2009, 01:10 AM
To be honest, Canonical has the upper hand. Since software patents are non-existent in Britain, Canonical doesn't have to pay a hefty legal department to deal with patent trolls.

forrestcupp
November 8th, 2009, 01:24 AM
If that actually happened, it would show the weakness of mixing FOSS with business. You can't have equal competitors who share all their secrets and expect everybody to win. That's why the real money makers have proprietary stuff, so they can actually have an edge on their competitors.

You can make money with FOSS, but you can't make money on FOSS.

Regenweald
November 8th, 2009, 01:40 AM
No, it's not. Canonical is barely contributing anything to the (technical) Linux scene. They take far, far more than they give, and that has been an issue and concern among Linux developers for years now. It is one of the reasons why there is resentment against Ubuntu and Canonical.

Read up a bit on it.

Yes, they 'take' a bunch of upstream packages, bundle them together in a contiguous desktop package, proprietary packages needed by some users for a smooth experience can be installed with a click, FOSS alternatives (nouveau etc.) are easily available. They then make it available to the masses for free. The pain, the horror.

JDShu
November 8th, 2009, 01:44 AM
If that actually happened, it would show the weakness of mixing FOSS with business. You can't have equal competitors who share all their secrets and expect everybody to win. That's why the real money makers have proprietary stuff, so they can actually have an edge on their competitors.

You can make money with FOSS, but you can't make money on FOSS.

I disagree. If you had equal competitors who shared all their secrets, then they would be competing with their services. The player with the best services wins.

I guess your point is more to do with incentives to innovate and create new products. I think that is where FOSS comes in though... the point is that the innovators can be anybody - and people have different incentives to innovate besides money.

Regenweald
November 8th, 2009, 01:53 AM
That's true, if Canonical was the size of Red Hat, they would likely make more contributions to other upstream products. However even being much smaller now, they still have more products that are either proprietary or specific to Ubuntu. What I'm "bitching" about is the high ratio of such products that Canonical invests in.

Red Hat on the other hand releases all of their code as open source, even their enterprise software like JBoss, and almost always work upstream so their work will help all of Linux.

I see your point, but see mine: RHEL is an enterprise product, dependent primarily on Kernel technologies, so it is obviously in Red Hat's best interest to invest heavily in the Kernel. True, Fedora is a high class desktop, but it is also a valuable testing ground for RHEL, hence it's bleeding edge. Canonical is trying to bring the Linux desktop to the masses and such is their emphasis, on desktop technologies and the polish and finish that the sometimes fragmented GNU desktop desperately needs. With 200 employees that is not an easy task, so how many dedicated kernel hackers could they possibly have ?

irishbreakfast
November 8th, 2009, 01:57 AM
I am obliged to say that there are situations where competition is not useful. There are some things that are natural monopolies. For example, the provision of water makes is best done by a single organization. Also, I would include subways as well.

And that doesn't even touch on the place of competition in academia.

TyTiger
November 8th, 2009, 02:03 AM
I think people are starting to forget, its not all about who's better, its more about preference. the purpose of verity is the freedom of choice, and at the end of the day it doesn't matter who's got the biggest cut or who supplies the best software, its about what the end user prefers as an individual and what best suites their needs.
People in the music/media industry tend to use Mac's because of the nice verity of good powerful software available for that platform and maybe technical reasons involving hardware too.

People in the office environment again depending on the enterprise can use all kinda of platforms, Until the last few years most of them used Windows, and the Office Suite that came with it. Mostly they didn't have allot of choice when that decision was parsed.

People at home tend to use whatever is given to them Or~ what they mostly prefer or find most appealing to them for whatever reasons.

Since Ubuntu and other Linux bistro's are offing the same services for free as supposed to proprietary choices offered by other companies its really up to the end user/company to decide what he/she/they want to use in the way of software, and what's best for their budget and requirements.

I personally prefer free stuff, I like Ubuntu because i have peace of mind over its security and stability, its free too so i don't have to pay out to own it legally so i sleep better at night knowing nobody is after me for piracy and i like the community where i can get involved in its development and help others etc. other people may like it for the same reasons, some may be extremists and worship it like an anti Microsoft religion. personally i dislike Microsoft for moral reasons but that's not filly why i use Ubuntu, but because i prefer how it works and how its my choice.

if you want to look at from a neutral stand point, becoming bigger and better than all the others just makes you the very thing your 'aiming to defeat'. and i think that's why Linus T. is starting to resent large chunks of the community, because its becoming just that.

JDShu
November 8th, 2009, 02:21 AM
I am obliged to say that there are situations where competition is not useful. There are some things that are natural monopolies. For example, the provision of water makes is best done by a single organization. Also, I would include subways as well.

And that doesn't even touch on the place of competition in academia.

The only way that this is relevant is if you are implying that operating systems market would benefit from a monopoly.

snowpine
November 8th, 2009, 02:24 AM
The only way that this is relevant is if you are implying that operating systems market would benefit from a monopoly.

Hasn't it, historically? ;)

JDShu
November 8th, 2009, 05:58 AM
Hasn't it, historically? ;)

That depends on if you think that we benefited from Microsoft's monopoly :P

Jimleko211
November 8th, 2009, 06:45 AM
Well, to be honest, the monopoly has made PCs into a household product. Because of the things that made them into a monopoly, it put computers into "every home" and brought us to present day. Does that meant that Microsoft should always have it? No, if there's a better product with the better marketing, then Microsoft should be defeated.

But let's not forget that Microsoft has a monopoly for a reason, beside shoddy business tactics.

JDShu
November 8th, 2009, 07:00 AM
Well, to be honest, the monopoly has made PCs into a household product. Because of the things that made them into a monopoly, it put computers into "every home" and brought us to present day. Does that meant that Microsoft should always have it?

You are assuming that having Microsoft Windows on all the PCs was the reason that they became a household product. (For the sake of argument, we assume it became a household product in the 1990s, when IBM/Windows beat out Apple.) In any case, I think that falling cost of ownership for PCs was the reason, and that Windows was not a major reason for this.


No, if there's a better product with the better marketing, then Microsoft should be defeated.

In a world where barriers to entry do not exist.


But let's not forget that Microsoft has a monopoly for a reason, beside shoddy business tactics.

Shoddy tactics? They were pure genius. Gates had amazing business acumen ;)

papangul
November 8th, 2009, 07:03 AM
I hope both Canonical and Redhat flourish and create their own niche markets and followings. Like it is said that 'linux is about choice' it can be said that 'linux is about variety' also. Here a Canonical is needed as much a Redhat is needed (or a Novell or even a Google).

Xbehave
November 8th, 2009, 07:10 AM
Well, to be honest, the monopoly has made PCs into a household product.
Debatable, I think it had more to do with the clone wars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pc_clone)

Because of the things that made them into a monopoly,
They had the best IBM-compatible OS when the clones took off.


But let's not forget that Microsoft has a monopoly for a reason, beside shoddy business tactics.
Erm they were already using shoddy business tactics back then:

They had sold IBM a non-exclusive license to code they had bought (DOS), because they were hoping IBM clones would succeed (they were right but its still pretty scummy to stab your contractor in the back)
Produced a crappy os/2 while under contract, yet made windows NT (os/3) a much easier to use os.


microsoft were using shoddy business tactics from the start.