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linux.conf.au Red Hat shows the way
linux.conf.au Red Hat shows the way | Red Hat shows the way |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 29 February 2008 | |
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Red Hat is a complex entity. It walks a very thin tightrope and does so very successfully. Recent occurrences tend to highlight why Red Hat, of all the companies that set out to make a business based on free and open software, has succeeded beyond anybody's wildest dreams. No matter what beef people have with Red Hat - and I do occasionally have good reason to give them a serve - one cannot deny that they have held steadfast to the open source model. Even the fact that someone removes all the trademarks from their distribution and makes it available free hasn't led to a single complaint from the company. In many ways, Red Hat does resemble your average American technology company. I was sharply reminded of this when I sat down recently to have a chat with the company's principal consultant in Australia, Richard Keech . I had intended to ask him a few things about Red Hat but then he mentioned that company policy dictated that he needed to have a PR minder listen in. The old starchy ways do exist in some form within the company. But looking at Red Hat's reaction to the recent Microsoft announcement about interoperability, it is easy to see that the North Carolina-based company is not a one-dimensional firm. Few companies would react to a statement from the biggest and most powerful proprietary software company - and one which is actively trying to steal its lunch - with anything resembling these words: "Red Hat regards this most recent announcement with a healthy dose of skepticism (sic)." Responses to the announcement from Microsoft have ranged from the positive to middle of the road to negative. I would put Red Hat's response in the last category - and also categorise it as the right one. The person who holds the post of Red Hat's general counsel has always been one who has the correct balance of cynicism and optimism and Michael Cunningham, who has posted the response, is no exception. (Mark Webbink, who was general counsel from 2000 until he retired in August last year, was as unlike an attorney as possible, and always had a wonderful turn of phrase to describe even the most grim situation.) Red Hat's response correctly demonstrates the fact that with open source you can't be half pregnant. (Many companies, Sun Microsystems among them, have tried this approach unsuccessfully in the past). Cunningham has advanced three points which Microsoft should satisfy before it can be taken seriously when it talks about open source: commitments to open source, to interoperability with open source and to competition on a level playing field. |
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