Comments on: Battling with Microsoft on foreign soil

Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik sees potential overseas where open source is fast establishing a foothold. But there are obstacles.

Congrats to RH but...

COngratulations to Red Hat and their financial successes but I like thousands of others are leaving the Red Hat fold to persue other FREE distributions. The ramifications of this migration away from Red Hat by the average user is that now any innovations added to RH will have to be paid for by the company instead of freely given by the users themselves. A big boon to Red Hat when it was developing was the thousands of unpaid developers it had in its' loyal user base. They will soon be gone as one thing that Linux users like is "free"

The mad hatters.

I agree with the premise that Linux users like free; however, there is nothing more important than competitors who take on Microsoft market share. The power of the Microsoft monopoly can only be offset by at least two or three more SERIOUS competitors (not these 1% or 2% market cap companies).

The problem with just one more competitor to MS is you just won't see much change. It's too easy to cooperate in a duopolic market - even with 3-4 competitors its too easy to cooperate and hence coordinate pricing. What is needed is 6-7 competitors. As each company vies for its self interest, competition will drive prices down.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear this will happen in the near future, but I do believe it is coming.

Redhat should be rewarded for taking on MS. I have no problem with paying to receive a product/service I use. I just wished it weren't so darn expensive!

[David Arbogast]

Where is this guy from??

"Consumption for fee is also a very big threat. People paying for products and services is a threat."

Aye, Comrad.
Finally those capitalist pigs will pay!