RedHat discontinuing RHL:
I think that RedHat, knowingly or not, handled their PR very badly with this one.
With Fedora, RedHat had now moved to community driven development model – one of the greatest successes of the open source movement. They have contributed a commercial product base [aka RHL] to the project, apart from providing technical and manpower resources. Hopefully, this would achieve what Debian couldn't [last update to the stable release on 16th December, 2002].
RedHat should be thanked for this, not condemned.
There is going to be pressure on RedHat to make Fedora work. They can't have a highly visible project like this go bad – it would reflect poorly on “Linux” itself and thus their own enterprise product base would be in jeopardy. They have built their entire credibility on the RHL product line - imagine what would happen to that if Fedora bums out.
Remember, while RHL has been discontinued, the customers haven't been left in a lurch...Fedora offers an upgrade path to RHL.
RedHat CEO saying "You should buy Windows":
I couldn't agree more. I am not going to recommend running Linux to my aunt...imagine the hoops uncle would have to go through to get a video player to work when he want's to see porn.
Matthew Szulik's comments have to be taken in perspective. He is not saying that Linux is not meant for desktops - in fact he says that it is an excellent option for enterprise desktops.
And people with a appetite for technology can use Linux very effectivelt as a desktop. But, is not for the average home user - not yet.
Novell's acquisition of Suse:
This, if anything, confirms the viability of Linux in the enterprise. Novell would be able to help Linux penetrate into a wider market. Linux penetration would continue to increase as it was, and Novell would simply add it's roster of enterprise customers to this base, making even more people look at Linux.
Because of the various other networking/office/collaboration software that Novell makes, they might be able to offer a comprehensive Linux based alternative to the Microsoft platform.
For very long, one of very thin criticisms for Linux has been it has no support – the only support you can is from college kids on mailing lists. Novell is now committing it's support infrastructure to Linux.
Also, this would make Novell compete with RedHat in the Enterprise Linux space. And we all know that healthy competition makes everyone better.
Regards, Varun Varma --------------------------------------- Mindframe Software & Services Pvt. Ltd. http://www.mindsw.com ---------------------------------------
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