On the local front, Max McLaren, Red Hat's managing director for Australia and New Zealand, said the company was in discussions with HP about pre-loaded desktop machines and expected to have something more to say about deployments within the next six months.

Asked whether Novell would not have an advantage over Red Hat when it came to inter-operability with Windows, Crenshaw said his view of inter-operability was that it came from adherence to open standards. "We have seen nothing tangible yet emerge from the deal," he said, referring to the agreement which Novell signed with Microsoft in November last year.

RHEL 5 comes about two years after the last release, in keeping with Red Hat's timetable of making major releases every 18 to 24 months. While the RHEL server is the focus of the release, the desktop side offers a low-cost alternative, starting at $US80 per seat.

While the improvements to its business offerings - the company also announced a Red Hat exchange which would offer software, both open source and proprietary, from its partners - took centrestage, Red Hat's fortunes will continue to rest on the fact that it still remains very much an open source company. "We will support third party proprietary software which our customers want obviously," said Crenshaw. " But we remain committed to open source."

Which in the end is the one big plus that the company has in today's marketplace. You can't buy good karma, you can only earn it. Let's hope Red Hat stays that way.

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