[TriLUG] AOL Redhat Linux?!?

[Brent Verner]

[2002-01-19 17:22] John J. Cruz said:
| It seems to me IMHO that the possible buy out of Red Hat by AOL has
| received mixed reviews from the Linux community. 

I'd expect no less ;-)

| I do not see that AOL is out to further anyones cause but their own.

Should they be out to further anyone else's?

| I
| see RED Hat Linux becoming AOL Linux and only to the extent of meeting
| the email requirements of AOL needs and no more; something like Corel
| Linux.
| 
| What happens to the IBM connection?

My theory on how these alleged talks came about is as follows...

  AOL finds itself increasingly unhappy about being a MS bedmate,
  and may have plans to market an internet-enabled entertainment 
  device centered around their AOL service, which would certainly 
  not be as profitable if the device used a MS operating system.

    AOL: "So how much would it cost us for you to produce and 
          maintain a custom version of RH that we could 
          deploy/bundle/whatever to our existing and future 
          customer base?

    RH: "\$$BIG_NUMBER"

    AOL: "ahem.  we'll get back to you."



  RH realizes that there is little business sense for AOL to pay
  retail for such an amount of work.  This is one of the situations
  where a large company is better off doing the work inhouse, but
  AOL does not want to be in the OS business.  There is only one
  responsible solution -- for AOL to buy a linux distro company.

  AOL is not concerned that RH has market dominance, since the
  current user base is insignificant relative to the potential
  user base.  What AOL wants is a quality linux shop at a reasonable
  price.  Redhat employs more heavyweight linux contributors than
  any other linux shop around, AFAIK, and has a large mindshare in
  the developer community -- this is RH's trump card.  RH leaks 
  knowledge of the potential talks to rile interest of investors
  to bump up stock price so they will have a better seat at any
  real negotiation table.

The more I think about it, the more this feels like a 
done-deal-in-progress.

As to IBM's relationship:  
They are a hardware manufacturer, no?  I suspect RH and IBM's 
relationship is an additional bonus to AOLs (suspected) agenda 
of selling an AOL internet device.

Of course, all of this is just one uninformed speculation of what 
might be really happening.

  brent

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