06.24.09
It’s Red Hat’s Day Again
Summary: Red Hat continues to demonstrate that Free software as a business model most certainly works
RED Hat continues to impress by reporting a climb in profits, whereas Novell’s Community Specialist uses some form humour to steer away from the reality that Novell may already be looking to sell parts of the company [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
Reuters has the details which prove that GNU/Linux is an established and successful path to doing business, provided that it is not done as tastelessly as Novell does it (turning GNU/Linux into part of Microsoft’s platform, .NET, as evidenced in Planet SUSE earlier today).
Software company Red Hat Inc (RHT.N) reported a modest jump in quarterly profit, bucking an industry trend of declining earnings, thanks to a reliable business model through which it books sales over multiple years.
[...]
The company, whose rivals include Novell Inc (NOVL.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), sells upgrades, help-desk support and bug fixes for Linux software. It has weathered the recession better than computer makers and many software companies because Red Hat customers buy its service in subscriptions over the course of several years, giving it a predictable revenue stream.
The axis of evil combined (Novell and Microsoft) is simply unable to hurt Red Hat. That’s what they have intended to achieve for the past two and a half years, without success. █
“One of the questions I’ve always hated answering is how do people make money in open source. And I think that Caldera and Red Hat — and there are a number of other Linux companies going public — basically show that yes, you can actually make money in the open-source area.”
–Linus Torvalds
Sir Sane said,
June 24, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Er…”Axis of Evil”? I’m sorry, but the Nazis were the Axis of Evil. While I appreciate you trying to dumb it down for the audience, Novell and Microsoft are merely companies, which pale in comparison to the horrible empire that Adolf Hitler built. Don’t you ever worry that you’re being just a little bit too alarmist for your own good?
aeshna23 Reply:
June 24th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Everyone recognizes that Microsoft is better than the Nazis. What’s being said is that relative to the viewpoint of boycottnovell, Novell and Microsoft are the evil we fight. Even if you don’t agree with our viewpoint, you can’t deny that we view our fight against Novell and Microsoft as a moral issue in which Novell and Microsoft are evil. That’s just to say, we are sincere.
And to be clear, we do know that there are other evils in the world. We just choose this battle. And before some says X is much more important cause, let me ask them what they done to fight for or against X?
lalala Reply:
June 24th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Who are trying to kid? You people fight anyone that doesn’t agree with you. Anyone that doesn’t agree with Roy 100% is labeled a paid MS shill, and his friend astralknight constantly pastes the same comments against people on Digg & Reddit about them being part of Roy’s made up Microsoft “perception management” team.
Astralknight is only one example, all of Roy’s friends attack anyone that doesn’t agree with BN.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 2:34 am
“Axis of evil” has nothing to do with Nazis, but it doesn’t prevent the usual trolls from turning humour into Godwin’s law.
eet Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 4:22 am
You mean ‘slander’. Nothing to with ‘humour’ – go look it up in a dictionary.
eet Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 4:30 am
…also good to know that you still regard anyone who doesn’t share your paranoia a troll.
Oh, btw, how come you have stopped censoring my comments on your blog? I can now actually post comments without having to go over proxies. Neither do you seem to delete my comments anymore?
Which brings me to the question, why don’t you attach these slanderous signatures to you critics’ comments anymore? I used to have 4 lines of very colourful abuse and slur attached to everyone of my comments automatically – which looked quite funny when I only posted a one-liner! Also, you other critics have ‘lost’ these funny little insulting signatures of yours.
Have you gone soft in your old age or is it only the new blog software preventing you from your old censoring-habits.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 9:47 am
So, you don’t mean to equate Microsoft and Novell with Nazis, just terrorists…? Is that right…?
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 9:51 am
(And I thought “humor” was supposed to be funny…)
Shane Coyle Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 11:58 am
(And I thought “humor” was supposed to be funny…)
Ever since Adam Sandler debuted, they’ve had to relax that requirement.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
The point was that “axis of evil” is used t describe all sorts of things (and neither terrorists nor Nazi). The trolls try to misstate it.
Shane Coyle Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Honestly, I didn’t even read the article before I commented, just saw the comment on the front page and had a witty rejoinder.
Hadn’t even read the conversation till now, I think it’s mostly figurative – once "W." uses a phrase prominently, it’s pretty much been watered down to near-joke already.
Mission Accomplished, for example.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
The trolls try to misstate it.
Yeah, those lousy trolls. Have you ever managed to determine what the going rate for a Microsoft troll is? I’m just curious; I mean, are they paid by the posting, or by the word, or is it an hourly thing, or what?
Look, you’re simply being disingenuous here, Roy. Anyone who looks at this site can see that it’s much more propaganda than “journalism”, and it’s pretty clear that you choose your words quite carefully (e.g. “I don’t know Mark Fink”–in spite of having heard of him, mentioned him, exchanged comments with him, offered to let him edit a web page, etc.)
I’m sure you knew exactly the association most people make with the phrase “axis of evil”, and had that quite firmly in mind. (You’re not a master of subtlety, have I mentioned that…?)
aeshna23 said,
June 25, 2009 at 9:44 am
eet,
The problem is that your comments aren’t insightful. You simply waste our time with ideas that are easily countered. In contrast, I remember one person posting a link to a comparison of Mono and Java that purported to show the superiority of Mono. Or another people posting arguments that it is easier to support project based on Mono.
If you want to be useful as a critic, you need to find the holes in Roy’s argument rather than taking cheap shots. And there are holes in Roy’s arguments, just as there are holes in all human arguments outside of proofs in math. Please think more deeply about the issue here!
Sabayon User Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Let me guess – they were dismissed offhand as astroturfers, right? As “PR agents” and “trolls”. Right? [1]
[1] Unfortunately for your argument here, everyone knows what happens when you take the time to do that.
eet Reply:
June 26th, 2009 at 12:25 am
That is correct. Although Roy’s arguments not only have holes in them but most of the time are so ill-founded that they don’t count as arguments, Roy has developed evading hard, to-the-point discussion into an art-form. I used to dissect Roy’s ‘articles’ bit-by-bit and provre him wrong – and was just branded a ‘shill’ at the end of the day anyhow! Roy simply drew he discussion on and off-topic till nobody following it could remember what it originally was about. And also take in account that Roys puts up loads of crap, errr ‘articles’, every day without researching them. That is his tactics to keep them from being examined too closely.
While you are still busy showing that one article was just a heap of horse-manure, Roy will have put out another ten articles, and hardly anyone will be following the discussion and really see what a sham Roy’s ‘argument’ is.
So I adapted and made my way of answering more efficient.
Roy Schestowitz said,
June 25, 2009 at 12:04 pm
It’s a good thing I didn’t say “dark forces”. I’d be accused of comparing Steve Ballmer to Darth Vader or many other things that go under the same name.
karablak Reply:
June 25th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Ha! You’re just trying to pull our attention away from the fact that this article is about a single phrase and not about Red Ha… oh, right.
JohnD said,
June 27, 2009 at 4:51 pm
“Fast forward to the present, and the Red Hat’s JBoss business is growing faster than Red Hat’s Linux platform business. The numbers seem to show that Red Hat has a killer software combo.”
From this line I’d gather JBoss is doing most of the driving at RH, and not RHEL. I’m guessing they don’t break out how much of the JBoss revenue comes from Windows installs versus Linux installs. Sounds to me like RH is taking a cue from the “Axis” and has started to play “bucket” games. Perhaps the SEC will investigate them next.
The Mad Hatter said,
June 28, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Roy, that was a spelling mistake, wasn’t it? Didn’t you mean:
Assholes of Evil?
Really, I think that’s a far more accurate description.
For those who haven’t done so, get rid of your Microsoft shares now. When the year end report is published in August, the stock is going to nose dive.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
June 28th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
It’s around July 25th and it will be as bad as the last time.
David "Lefty" Schlesinger Reply:
June 28th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The folks who are “digging into the truth” about Microsoft aren’t even clear on when the fiscal year ends.
Neat-o.
The Mad Hatter said,
June 28, 2009 at 4:02 pm
OK guys, settle down. Officially the year end is July 25th. The 10K last year was filed on July 31st, it doesn’t say what time of the day it was filed, but these things are often filed after the close of business so as to not affect the stock prices that day. And of course Microsoft’s offices are on the US West Coast, which means GMT -8, while I’m at GMT -5.
So I stand by my statement that I’ll be reading it in August, because it will probably be released late enough on the 31st that I’ll be in bed.