OT: I don't get this - Red Hat

[Michael Hipp]

Net Llama! wrote:
> I personally think  that Redhat is doing a smart thing.  They've finally
> split their offerings so that one focuses on the enterprise where the
> real revenue comes from, and the other focuses on the random home user
> where all the word of mouth comes from.

Thanks for the info. I wish I could share your confidence.

But it seems to me there are dangers aplenty with this approach. Some 
thoughts ...

- The enterprise desktop offering will likely be priced such that a Red 
Hat branded offering with stability as a major portion of its goal will 
no longer be available to the SOHO, small or medium-sized business user. 
They'll have to look elsewhere.

- Once Severen and its offspring have split from Taroon, the two will 
forever cease to bear any similarity. Severen won't be Red Hat Linux.

- Severen as a "community project" could very well devolve into being 
little better than the other dozens (nay, hundreds) of half-baked 
homegrown distros. Of interest only to the hobbyists.

- They are leaving a portion of the market unsatisfied. There simply 
won't be a Red Hat offering (stable but with a good quantity of 
reasonably modern packages) that can be purchased at, say, the price 
point of a copy of WindowsXP Pro (aka $150) with good (printed) 
documentation, timely security updates, and support available. There 
will be the free hobbyist version or the unaffordable enterprise 
version. But nothing in-between.

- And exiting the retail market can only cause the kind of loss of 
mindshare / visibility that has yet to bring good fortune to anyone who 
has tried it.

Hopefully I'll be proven embarrassingly wrong on all of this.

Michael