Comments on: Red Hat's new CEO aims Linux at the cloud

Jim Whitehurst wants to do more than sell the Linux operating system. He wants his products to be the brains of cloud computing.

[PEdlund]

Welcome to the bandwagon RedHat! It's so amazing that by simply saying "we are the glue for cloud computing" that someone would actually believe them. Just because you have an OS doesnt mean that you are innovators for cloud computing. Define your platform and solution!!! ... not just your platform. That's the problem with open source. Everyone assumes that someone else will do the work for them. There is no roadmap and how can a business rely on that?

[Jim Hubbard]

There you go...... When you lose on the desktop, run for the hills (or the internet).

"Cloud computing".....I guess this is the "next big thing" in computing now. It should definitely be more fun to watch than other developments in computing.

[Penguinisto]

"When you lose on the desktop, run for the hills (or the internet)."

I never realized that Cisco or Oracle ever competed on the desktop. ;)

Gotta admit though - RedHat found their revenue in spades at the server level, so who can blame 'em for growing in that direction?

[Penguinisto]

Good read.

@PEdlund: You're joking, right? If you worked at the enterprise level at any position of actual responsibility, you'd know right away that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution, period. Each enterprise-sized group (or entire corp if applicable) has their own defined goals, and more often than not build their own solutions with what's at hand.

Open-Source software is the absolute best at letting them do that... by being highly flexible and extensible, but at the same time being highly reliable. I can build my own solutions with my own in-house programming team - for cheaper than it would cost to license semi-sort-of-fits-but-not-quite "solutions" being hawked by a third-party vendor (see also WebLogic, SharePoint Server, et al). If I can do my own support, why should I be stuck on a vendor treadmill? If I already bought the software and I'm building my own solutions from it, why the hell should I have to pay ongoing license fees (e.g. CAL's)? Unless I'm specifically renting an ongoing service or a physically tangible product, I should only have to pay for it once and be done with paying for it without good reason.

As for the farcical: "Everyone assumes that someone else will do the work for them", you couldn't be more wrong. Out here in the large enterprise, we assume that we will do our own work - we just want a nice and flexible set of building blocks from which to do it, so we don't waste time re-inventing the wheel. My employer has literally several hundred programmers whose collective job it is to tailor in-house solutions and to make them fit our needs.

The really cool part of FOSS is, more often than not a lot of these solutions and parts thereof make their way back into the world at large - and are licensed so that nobody can steal them, but have to share them. You're under no obligation to do so at all if you're not distributing the solutions or modifications... yet strangely enough, it happens all the time.

Maybe someday you'll realize that... or maybe not.

[PEdlund]

That?s rich! ?Hundreds? of developers eh? I wonder how many jobs could be cut if they didn?t have to argue over which distro they would run on or which version of which open source solution. Not to mention trying to glue all these non-integrated components together into a solution. I'm not living in lah lah land BTW... I have some of the largest (successful) enterprise deployments in the world under my belt. When you can tell me what the 3-5 year roadmap for ANYTHING is on your platform, then perhaps we can have a real discussion about what the best solution is. Maybe someday ?you'll realize? that you can certainly get there with Open Source... no doubt about it. It just takes 10 times the resources with 100 times the conflicting solutions and non-integrated interdependencies.

[Penguinisto]

Hey - it's a big company.

BTW, your argument has no merit because of (at least) the following:

1) code to the LSB, and distro choice no longer matters. It also doesn't matter which distro you use if you're writing your solutions in Java, Perl, Python... and if it's web-based in the first place, who cares what's behind it distro-wise? Of course, if you actually knew what you were talking about in this biz (instead of creating sock-puppet accounts all day long, "CTO_Dude") you might have known that.

10 times the resources? Really? Because I'm able to stack services onto a typical Linux server that would bog down the same hardware running Windows Server 2k3 (and judging from testing, 2k8 as well). There's a vast difference between writing solid code to start with, and throwing hardware and bandwidth at the results of a crap programming language.

Roadmaps are easy... building and keeping to one that doesn't boil down to: "pay Microsoft and some third-party vendor tons of money to get an ill-fitting solution that we'll have to replace in 5 years anyway" is a bit harder to do. OTOH, it's worth the extra planning when you do it right, and the budgets seem to have more room in them when I'm done.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Penguinisto- it's a ncie thought to believe that open source can be the solution to Cloud Computing, but it simply isn't feasible. For one thing, getting developers in Open Source to agree on anything is like herding cats. Look at the sheer number of distributions of the same basic OS. Look at the zealots out there that care more about feeding their egos than helping to present a unified product. Red Hat has a good chance of doing something if they do NOT listen to the open source community.

Ever hear of designing an elephant by committee? That's exactly the problem.

Cloud Computing is something that online providers like Apple, Google, Microsoft and even Amazon (who I believe will be entering the fray more seriously) are going to have the advantage. They only have to satsify the customers, not ego-driven geek wannabe's.

[anandsr21]

Actually this is not designing an elephant by committee. Every body is designing their own animal. So you get cats, dogs, elephants, lions, etc.

What Whitehurst meant was that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon are all going to do the cloud computing. Redhat is not going to compete their. But they will all need Linux at the base. Some will do it on their own like Google, others like Amazon will buy support from Redhat. Apple and MS both have their own OS. But those will not be the only players, there will be a lot of small players and those will have a high probability of chosing Linux and Redhat expects to compete better than other Linux vendors.

[Zorglubis]

Vagoman_Dan, you didn't really read the article, did you ?
First, AFAIK, Apple hasn't much Enterprise level framework for Grid/Cloud computing, then Google's stack is heavily based on opensource (which isn't synonym of availability for everyone at no cost) and finally, if you actually read the article, you would have learned that Amazon cloud is RedHat work.

Next time, when you don't know a topic, just refrain from commenting as it can become embarrassing for you.

[leesdowdle]

Red Hat and/or Linux can't make it in cloud computing? Ha. Have you seen the numbers on the top 500 fastest computers in the world? Linux runs 85.4% of them. (See: http://www.top500.org/stats/list/31/osfam) That's 427 of 500 compared to Windows 5 out of 500.

Linux is like a liquid... it seeps into ever nook and cranny that gravity takes it to.

[Mr. Dee]

Redhat probably has one of the worst desktop Linux distributions out there. Its still in that Linux in the late 90's infancy in terms of installation, ease of use and just look and feel. Maybe they do have a niche in Servers, but then again, if I have Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, migrating from them to Redhat or Linux in general seems like patriotic idiocy. As far as functionality goes and certification, Ubuntu owns the desktop and will most likely own Redhats Server market in the future. Redhat even attempted the desktop and failed miserably. The only good they have going for them right now is Fedora.

[leesdowdle]

Mr. Dee,

I have seen no forward movement in the use of Ubuntu server in business. If you look at who contributes to the kernel (and various other large infrastructure related software pieces) Red Hat has consistently shown up on top. Check out Greg Kroah Hartman's fairly recent presentation on the Linux kernel development process for the answer on "how much does Canonical contribute back to the community" question (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2SED6sewRw).

Red Hat makes a "corporate desktop" and I disagree with your comments regarding the quality of their desktop distribution.

Regarding businesses switching from Windows to Linux, it is quite common.

Ubuntu might "owe" the Linux desktop but they get close to zero money out of it. Red Hat was in that position about 8-10 years ago but realized that it would be near impossible to make money from that. Not much has changed since then (with regards to profitability of Linux on the desktop) and it is unclear if and when Canonical will have a workable business plan anytime soon. I guess that is fine as long as Mr. Shuttlesworth continues to operate is as a charity organization. It would be nice if Ubuntu were giving their changes back to upstream but that doesn't appear to be happening. From an end user's perspective Ubuntu might be good, but in the long run, as long as they continue to ignore upstream, not a whole lot is going to change.

Red Hat may not be targeting the desktop market directly... but they are funding a significant amount of work on desktop related technologies... indirectly through the Fedora project and directly by being the lead developers on a number of desktop oriented projects.

If and when the Linux desktop becomes financially viable (and it isn't for Ubuntu now), rest assured that Red Hat will be interested. In the mean time they are moving in that direction even though they don't have a current product line that addresses the desktop.

[ashyanbhog]

Ubuntu maybe the latest cool kid in the Linux landscape, but only Novell comes close to Redhat when it comes to contributing to the community. Its sad to see people bash Redhat without reason.

Remember, to date, they are the only successful growing business in open-source.