After flirting with tech from 1989 onwards, Sam Varghese began to experiment with Linux in 1998. A couple of years later, he began using the Debian distribution as a single-boot system for his personal use. From that point onwards his interest grew and he has since written widely about free and open source software, with a great deal of his writings based on his own experiences, rather than anecdotal evidence. Open Sauce will focus on a genre of software that is present everywhere but rarely acknowledged; a genre that has little eye-candy but does most of the heavy lifting; a genre that is designed and written by people whose accomplishments are only occasionally recognised. Above all this blog will follow the KISS principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Red Hat: time to come into the 21st century

by Sam Varghese

Friday, 26 October 2007

Page 1 of 2 ! Just yesterday morning I was admiring the features of Fedora Core 5 on an iBook at the home of a man who is in many ways my Linux guru. He has the distribution running on various computers all made by Apple and I was quite impressed with what the developers have managed to achieve. It crossed my mind that Red Hat does indeed know how to put out a good Linux distribution, no matter whether it be a community effort or one for the enterprise. By the evening, I was left wishing that they would put half as much effort as has gone into Fedora into their dealings with the media. A few days back I was invited to join a phone-in for a "Red Hat Asia Pacific media and analyst conference call." I've been on several such calls over the years - some company officials talk for a while and then the assorted media hacks pose what questions they have. But this call, which took place shortly after my encounter with Fedora Core 5, was different. The gent who welcomed one and all, one Colin Lee who appeared to be in Singapore - that's where Red Hat has its Asia-Pacific headquarters - ended his little speech by saying that no questions would be taken. Instead, media people listening in were asked to send in questions by email to the representatives in their respective countries. Lee was kind enough to promise to reply to the queries within a week! That's right, seven days. These days very little happens in any connected corner of the globe without it appearing on some news website or the other within a few minutes of its occurrence. And here we had this gent telling media people from a number of Asian countries - he mentioned India, Malaysia, China, the Philippines and Australia among others - that this media call would be run in the manner that the old Soviet Union used to handle the media. I had half a mind to get off the phone and take a nap. But then the idea for an article such as the one you are reading now began to crystallise. And so I decided to listen right till the end. Matthew Szulik, the chief executive of Red Hat, and Charlie Peters, the chief financial officer, both based in North Carolina, spoke briefly. Neither executive appeared to have a prepared text - one can't blame them for being uninterested as it was nearly midnight in Raleigh, North Carolina, by then. They shuffled the talk back and forth and then, to my relief, finished having their say. Then Gary Nasser, the chief of Asia Pacific operations, gave his bit of spiel. There was nothing of substance, just bizspeak with some facts and figures, which are only too well-known, being repeated. He made mention of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as though it was a recent release; the boxed set came out in March 2007. (Red Hat even sent me one by mistake two days ago - they were supposed to send a copy of the Global Desktop and botched it up. Who would want to review software seven months after its release?) << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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