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Take Microsoft's Linux money, says Red Hat
omputer Business Online ^ | 19th February 2007 | By Matthew Aslett

Posted on 02/19/2007 7:15:23 AM PST by N3WBI3

Red Hat Inc's CEO has said the company is encouraging customers to adopt Microsoft Corp's offer of support vouchers for Novell's Inc's rival Linux operating system in order to get the issue over with.

Microsoft announced in November 2006 that it would distribute 70,000 Linux support certificates a year for five years, at the cost of $240m as part of an interoperability and patent deal with Novell.

Speaking at the Merrill Lynch internet, software and services conference, Red Hat's CEO, Matthew Szulik, dismissed the impact that deal has had on Raleigh North Carolina-based Red Hat's business.

"I think that there has been a strong amount of external communication by Microsoft and Novell on this topic," he said. "We certainly expect that there will be those cases where customers will consume those coupons. We're certainly encouraging one or two customers to consume all of them, let's get this over with."

Microsoft and Novell have certainly been vocal about the customers they have encouraged to adopt the vouchers, announcing that Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, AIG Technologies, and most recently Wal-Mart, have signed on the dotted line.

In January the company's said that "35,000 new certificates for three-year priority support subscriptions to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server have been activated" since November last year.

Microsoft has committed to pay Novell for the certificates regardless of whether customers buy them, but Szulik suggested Red Hat is happy to see customers take Microsoft's money.

He also maintained that the company's own customers were not swayed by offers of apparently free support. "When you think about the amount of workload that's being placed on these technologies... free doesn't cut it," he said. "We're finding a more informed buyer; we're finding a more strategic buyer."

Szulik also dismissed Oracle Corp's attempt to under-cut it on Linux support on similar grounds, insisting that customers were unlikely to be convinced by cost savings that are a small percentage of their overall software spend.

"You look at the total cost of the stack," he said. "The purchase of an operating system and the support that comes with that is such a small percentage of the total cost, somebody who's getting ready to spend $19,000 on a database... that would likely be the higher price for discounting and concession.

"I don't think that customers want to boast about saving $5 a server if on December 24, if you're an online retailer, your systems fall over and collapse and you don't have the competency to support that," he added.

In October 2006 Oracle announced plans to support the Red Hat Enterprise Linux code base under its Unbreakable Linux 2.0 program, charging at least half the price of equivalent Red Hat support packages.

The program has not proved popular, however. In December Oracle's president Chuck Phillips said Unbreakable Linux was downloaded 9,000 times in the first 30 days. In comparison Red Hat's non-commercial Fedora Core 6 had an average of 12,500 installations per day in its first month.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: linux; opensource; redhat
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To: Echo Talon
ish... talk about DRM... they have DRM built into their HARDWARE! LOL!

Actually, it's the software that's DRM'd to identify their hardware. Otherwise, it puts no restrictions on you. Anyway, nice lineup, all white, silver and black like you prefer, and at very good prices for what you get.

61 posted on 02/20/2007 11:00:02 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: Echo Talon
"I usually just stick with the solid white, black or silver cases"

Normally that's how I would be, but since this was my first home made box I wanted it to be uber L33711 hahaha!

62 posted on 02/20/2007 2:10:30 PM PST by KoRn
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To: antiRepublicrat
It's just the facts.

BS. It's actually just typical anti-MS bashing from you, topped off with another hyperlink to some foreign website. What's funny though is that you have to use Windows every day yourself to pay the bills.

63 posted on 02/20/2007 4:51:22 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: antiRepublicrat
There you go, every one of their computers fits your design sensibilities.

Which one do you have? None of the above, apparently since you never answer.

64 posted on 02/20/2007 4:58:49 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
It's actually just typical anti-MS bashing from you, topped off with another hyperlink to some foreign website.

Yeah, those facts are just so tough to deal with, so you'll attribute it to the nastiness of the evil nation of New Zealand.

65 posted on 02/20/2007 8:26:26 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat

Too bad your favored foreign freeware can't even have HDCP encoders/decoders that run natively at all due to licensing incompatibility.


66 posted on 02/20/2007 8:38:18 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
Too bad your favored foreign freeware can't even have HDCP encoders/decoders that run natively at all due to licensing incompatibility.

Forget the licenses. HDCP requires that you lose control over your system, and such a concept is anathema to completely open source software.

67 posted on 02/20/2007 8:46:02 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
HDCP requires that you lose control over your system, and such a concept is anathema to completely open source software.

Lose control? LOL it's a feature and content source pure open source systems won't even have an option to access.

68 posted on 02/20/2007 8:58:25 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
Lose control?

Yes. Your computer saying, "Sorry, you can't use the digital-out on your high-end sound card right now because some third-party company doesn't think you should be able to" is losing control. Your computer saying "I'm going to downgrade the quality of the HD video you just bought because your brand-new $2,000 'HD Ready' monitor doesn't support our DRM exactly the way some third-party company wants it to" is losing control.

LOL it's a feature

Normally, "features" improve the operation of your computer, not degrade it.

69 posted on 02/21/2007 5:59:36 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
Normally, "features" improve the operation of your computer, not degrade it.

Whatever, in this case it's a feature you won't be getting on pure FOSS Linux systems, at least not legally.

70 posted on 02/21/2007 10:13:06 AM PST by Golden Eagle
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