[ale] AOL in talks to buy RedHat!!!

[James P. Kinney III]

Remember back to the numerous business-based press releases when AOL
bought Netscape. They didn't care a hoot about the browser. The reason
they bought it was they wanted the server technology to surplant their
existing AOLServer. They wanted the messaging capabilities and some
other esoteric stuff that was not in AOLServer. (BTW: AOLServer is
opensource) 

If AOL aquires RedHat, it will be because they want a specific piece of
RedHat. I would almost put money on the following:
1. RedHat Network technology
2. Cygwin
3. The embedded RedHat stuff is where I would put twice the $$ of the
other 2 combined. 

Imagine kiosks running embedded RedHat with AOL on Mozilla at your local
library/bank/utility/train station being served custom, localized
content for specialized information access. 

Now for those of you who like to slam RedHat I would like to say the
following:

RedHat produced the first commercially viable Linux distribution. Sure
there are others that are older. I started on Slackware floppies (3 base
set A and 2 networking, then linux to download the rest over the next 3
days). But RedHat made a system that worked well enough that many others
copied (gotta love the GPL) the installation process. Is YAST GPL'ed? 

RedHat produced the first Linux packaging system that kept track of what
you had and what you needed to use a binary you just got. Where would
Mandrake be with out the work done by RedHat to produce the RPM package
system.

RedHat is still the easiest to install on the widest array of systems.
There will always be problems during an OS install. The implemented a
fairly rhobust process for upgrading a system from one version to the
next. They are also the fastest on security fixes of every Linux, UNIX,
or any OS on the market in any manner of widespread use. 

RedHat backed the earliest development of GNOME because the KDE desktop
was not GPL'ed. Once TrollTech made the QT stuff that KDE depended on
GPL'ed, RedHat included it in their distribution. 

The commercial nature of RedHat has spearheaded the adoption of Linux
into a more mainstream setting. I don't think that Debian or Slackware
could have advance the non-academic use of Linux anywhere near the
extent that RedHat has. 

RedHat is by no means perfect. But by the standards set forth in the
GPL, they are doing a damn fine job!  People buy their CD's, their
support, their auto-update network access and everything else they have
for sale. And they fund development that adds good code back into the
community that Mandrake and Slackware and Debian and SUSE use.

And their stock price is back above the post-split $7/share IPO price :)

> 
> Let's put it this way, AOL bought Netscape, and continued to use IE as 
> it's browser.
> 

-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and COO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 



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