[NTLUG:Discuss] @#$%^&*! redhat up2date!!!!!

[Justin M. Forbes]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 05:35:17PM -0600, Paul Ingendorf wrote:
> Maybe you can answer some question since you seem to know so much.
> 
> How many developers does redhat employ?
I dont know as this is not published information, but if you really want to, you could
write a script to parse the headers of every RPM in but their RHEL
distribution and Fedora, pulling unique @redhat.com addresses from the
changelog.  Add them up, and that would give you a large percentage of
them.
> How many lawyers does redhat employ?
Not sure on that one either, but probably about the same number as any
other publicly traded company of their size.
> How many people are employed through redhat?
According to their website approximately 600.
> How many projects does redhat support with more than 10k a year?
If you count the money they pay developers who push 100% of their code
upstream to mainline? well over 100 counting only the percentage of time
that those developers spend on code for the particular projects alone.
> How much money did redhat make last year.
Not sure, check their filings, last year was the first they have turned a
profit.
> How much was spent on advertising their services?
No clue
> How much money was spent on developing new business ventures?
> 
No clue... 

Why does it all matter?

> I think your allowing your personal agenda to alter your view regardless of
> the facts.  I'm all for capitalism but I think if your going to build your
> business on the back of a community you really need to step to the plate and
> do things right by all parties.  If they did something special for you,
> yippee. 
<SNIP>
> It does not mean I'm wrong
> only that you have an agenda of keeping redhats name out of the mud so your
> investment was not in vain.  Contracts and meeting don't cost as much as a
> magazine ad and you will only convince idiots and fools it does.
> 
I think you have somehow confused me with someone else.  I do not have any
business of my own, nor do I have any intentions of starting one.  I do
Unix engineering for a large retail company, and we will leave it at that.  The
work I have done with Red Hat is work for the community.  The investment I
have made in hardware and time to do that is out of my personal pocket, it
is money that I must work for everyday, and I will see no financial ROI. I
dont get to promote any product for a cut of sales, or anything else.  I am
a member of the individual developer community you seem to feel was so
wronged by these changes, yet strangely I cannot see where they are doing a
bad thing, developer community-wise they are doing much better than they
did in the past.

> For the record I don't use redhat anymore I quit when they started jacking
> with the registration for updates.  Now I use Mandrake and I'm happy with
> their current policies.
> 
That is the joy of Linux, use what you like, there are many good
distributions out there.

Justin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org]On
> Behalf Of Justin M. Forbes
> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 9:33 AM
> To: NTLUG Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] @#$%^&*! redhat up2date!!!!!
> 
> Actually, you are just wrong here... What really costs money, is the
> massive infrastructure required to put out QAed distributions and updates,
> the army of developers they employ so that they can devote themselves full
> time to Linux development, and release every bit of those changes upstream.
> Finally, and most people dont get this, but I have been dealing with it for
> a couple of months now, corporate backing is almost required for new
> hardware support.  It takes an act of congress for an individual to get
> agreements in place for access to hardware specifications, test platforms,
> etc.  I for one do not have the money to have lawyers look over every NDA,
> or access agreement, and most of them are prewritten to be signed by
> "________ a Corporation based in ____________" .  Well, if you are not a
> corp, they just dont know what to do.  It can be worked around, but it
> takes alot of effort.  My AMD64 port of Fedora has cost me over 5K in
> hardware for testing and the like that I would not have  purchased
> otherwise.  And that is still using Red Hat or their partners resources for
> a lot of backend infrastructure.  That is also having Red Hat make some
> pushes with AMD to give me access to some things they typically would not
> give individuals access to, and that doesnt include the hundreds of hours
> of work effort put in.   You are right, Linux is developed by the
> community, and I put in my time and money gladly.  I can however assure
> you that if it were not for companies like Red Hat, Suse, Connectiva, and
> the countless other Open Source based companies out there actually being
> able to make a profit on this, your Linux distribution would not be
> anywhere near what it is today.  They take a profit, but they give much
> more back.  As for Red Hat, they dont feel necessary to take a profit from
> Joe Home user, only businesses which need the extra services they provide.
> The have finally made that clear by getting rid of their profit center with
> Red Hat Linux, and made it a cost center (that's right, it still costs them
> a good chunk of change to build and maintain)  with Fedora.  On top of
> that, the only real benefit to them from Fedora is a hopefully more refined
> RHEL product.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Justin M. Forbes
> 
> 
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