[TriLUG] AOL Redhat Linux?!?

[M. Mueller/bhu5nji]

On Saturday 19 January 2002 11:03 am, you wrote:
> Brent Verner wrote:
> > [2002-01-19 02:24] Greg Brown said:
> > | Red Hat, if you are listening, DON'T SELL!!!  At least not to these
> > | people.
> >
> > have you lost your mind?  :-) I can't imagine a more positive scenario
> > than having *nix users (even if the users don't know dick about *nix)
> > on 30 million machines.  What could be negative about this?
>
> I have to disagree with you.  When a mass consumer firm buys an
> engineering firm, I think, the result hasn't been good.  Think Compaq
> buying Digital -- a perfectly good engineering firm got wasted
> in the process.  No more Alpha processor -- I know at least one
> theoretical/computational chemist who is none too pleased with that.
>
> Personally, I am moving toward using SuSE more, so while I would hate
> to see RH go down the tubes (especially being a local company), it would
> affect me less than hardcore RH fans.

Therein lies the beauty of Linux, eh?  DEC was the only producer of Alpha.  
There are many producers of *nix.  If AOL ruins RH, there's another distro 
waiting to take up the slack.  If AOL turns a PC into a 
entertainment/communicator appliance, then I say, "cool".

Besides, if AOL buys RH then there might be more jobs in the Triangle and 
less in Redmond.

RH is a good technology company at a drastically reduced price compared with 
its capitalization in 1999-2000.   RH is going to let themselves get bought 
sooner or later.  They can't keep slogging around with all the other distros 
and raise the stock price by very much.  They've got to do something 
dramatic, and being acquired by AOL fits my description of dramatic.  

To top things off, it is worthwhile to note that both AOL and RH make money 
and give away software in the process.

Mike