Negative People Upset Me
by T. Colin Dodd
Comedian Daniel Lyons crushed morale here at Red Hat last week with this post. It was ugly, people were bumming. They quit in droves. (I only stayed because I got a better office and joined a support group that meets where the ping pong table used to be. I’m a survivor.)
Red Hat, the single company freetards always point to when they want to prove that open source can make money, has turned into an inept cluster[NAUGHTYWORD], with nothing but bluster and bravado and a deluded belief that they’re actually a thorn in Microsoft’s paw. Bottom line: they’re the new Borland. They’re 15 years old and have been publicly traded since 1999 and last year they did all of $400 million a year in sales. Microsoft does more than $1 billion a week. That’s right. Red Hat’s entire fiscal year is a good three days for Microsoft. Last quarter the Borg added $2.6 billion in revenues — that’s six entire Red Hats. In a quarter.
There’s another measure of the hugeness of Microsoft Lyons can add to his schtick: The $1.3 billion fine imposed on Microsoft by the EU for its legendary anti-competitive practices is worth almost three Red Hats.
Good for them.
February 28th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
A $1.3 billion fine for a $1 billion/week company? Wow! Gee-whiz! MS declared bankruptcy yet? Gates could pay that with pocket change. That fine didn’t make the evening news AFAIK. Why would MS care about a $1.3 billion fine? It’s not nearly enough to force them to discontinue their anti-competitive practices. Red Hat will do OK. But they will never catch MS; probably won’t even catch Apple.
March 1st, 2008 at 4:36 am
I’m worried that people have felt the need to leave RedHat because of this. The thing is, that despite not having the best market share you probably have by far the best product. Surely RedHat employees should be working because they have something good - not to destroy MS. As it is, RedHat is growing - I hear the French education system recently bought RedHat, in Europe, as far as I know, Linux is beginning to move - certainly in the UK it’s becoming more noticeable. In other words, don’t give up purely because of one blog!
“First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they win”? Or did you not really mean that?
March 1st, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Andrew, relax.
I was being sarcastic. No one (to speak of) is quitting, in fact, we’re hiring. Maybe some have moved on to bigger things, but the ethos at Red Hat really isn’t about world domination.
I think any comparison between us and M$ it’s a silly comparison, and just shows what an utter dumbass Dan Lyons is.
I was being sarcastic.
Not to worry, we’re doing fine.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Almost all of Microsoft’s profit comes from two products: Windows and Office. But open source products that do exactly the same things are available for free now. This is not really a good position for Microsoft to be in. Microsoft’s continues to make huge profits by reason of inertia - and couple billion users is a huge amount of inertia.
But it won’t last forever, primarily because too many parties have an interest in preventing a single company controlling source code that can be manipulated to lock them out. New applications for software are going open source. So some day - 10 years, 20 years, maybe 30 - the entire world will be using open source and the business model will be providing the required service. It’s happening and accelerating (most rapidly in the third world), and you’d have to be blind not to see it.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I could be wrong, and i hope i’m not, years of working with open source solutions, i’m of the impression that RedHat isn’t in it for the money, after all wheres the logic in money. Surely RedHat like much of the open world believe in openness, and spreading freedom though openness. But we are unfortunately in the commercial world that we let evolve, so in the interim money is needed, and Red Hat have what they need, to continue as a gong concern.
right article this time my apologies
May 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Some people can just be so mean.