Conversion to Linux

[Jeffrey Watts]

Red Hat started out making their money selling the software in a shrink
wrapped box with manuals.  However, that business model became progressively
obsolete with the growth of the Internet and CD burners.  They also found
that folks like Mandrake would just take their work and undercut them on
publishing deals (like Macmillian - they didn't even bother to remove some
of the Red Hat branding).

Red Hat gradually moved their business from one of selling CDs to one of
selling support.  However, they found they were spending an inordinate
amount of time and money supporting a desktop OS that wasn't generating very
much support revenue.  They decided to create an enterprise OS called RHEL
that they would extensively support and market to companies, and create a
desktop community OS project called Fedora.

Red Hat didn't do a good job with the Fedora spin-off, and most of that had
to do with the way they announced it - it seemed to the community that
Fedora was being abandoned by Red Hat.  In reality it wasn't true, and by
Fedora 3 the distribution really had taken off.  Fedora's going very strong
right now, and is innovating.

Jeffrey.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:04 PM, Ty Unes <riverty at kc.rr.com> wrote:

> I may be incorrect on this but, I have always thought that RedHat started
> their business to sell support for Linux, not necessarily their version of
> Linux. RedHat started with only one distribution, freely downloadable, and
> built their business on selling "official support" for that distribution.
>
> At the time, I was running Slackware servers and will admit that I didn't
> really follow the reasoning behind Redhat's split into Fedora and RHEL. My
> guess was, without really following along, that RedHat decided to garner the
> cool system administration tools that made their distribution "enterprise
> ready" for themselves, and release and support Fedora freely onward.
>
> If this is true, then I don't see why CentOS is in the wrong and/or hurting
> RHEL. Cent is not selling support for their distribution. Although, I've
> been to their website and read a bit. It IS kinda quirky how they refer to
> RedHat as "a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor." Almost like
> they feel like they are stealing.
>
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-- 

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
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