Red Hat chief executive Matthew Szulik has written an open letter to Larry Ellison, essentially accusing Oracle of being a relic of a dying enterprise software age, which has served its own interests rather than those of customers for 30 years.
In an open letter distributed to the Fedora community earlier this week, Red Hat employee and Fedora project leader Max Spevack states that Red Hat is no longer interested in establishing an autonomous, nonprofit foundation to manage the Fedora project. Instead, Red Hat will revive the Fedora Project Board, which will include five Red Hat representatives, four members of the Fedora community, and a chairman appointed by Red Hat who will possess veto power.
Red Hat says it all on its website, "Hi, my name is Fedora Core `Bordeaux', and today I am 5. When I turned 4 last year, they got a funny salesman to talk about me like I was a toy. I like toys. But today Teacher said I am a big kid, and I should talk about myself. I can do lots of big kid stuff now, and everyone tells me that I play really well with all the other kids in class, even the ones who are mean like bullies. I always try and share, which is what teacher says is the best thing."
I've been meaning to write about this for some time, but couldn't. Firstly, because I couldn't touch on the subject while I was still employed by Novell. Secondly, because i didn't want to create problems for Novell while it was going through its road bumps a few weeks back.
But I thought now was a good time to talk about the differences I perceive in the two companies, having worked at the one and talked extensively with the other. In no particular order....
Fedora Core is the offspring of Red Hat of what was previously their Red Hat Linux range. For a history of Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core, you can have a look here. Anyway, Fedora Core 4 is what could have been Red Hat Linux 13 if Red Hat had not decided to turn Red Hat Linux into a community project. This is not a review but just a quick look at the various bits and pieces that interest me. Fedora Core 3 was a disappointment to many because it was slow and did not included many new ground-breaking features.
Red Hat has just announced the new version of Fedora Core, a week after the company said it was creating the Fedora Foundation to run the project.
Fedora Core 4 (FC4) promises the latest and greatest of the free and open source world, including GNOME 2.10 and KDE 3.4.
In addition to a prerelease version of OpenOffice.org 2.0, the full release of which is still months off, FC4 includes the latest Linux kernel (2.6.11), Firefox (1.0.4), Samba (3.0.14a) and Apache (2.0.54).
Top Linux seller Red Hat is expected to announce the latest version of its premium Linux product on Tuesday, leapfrogging rival Novell and expanding an effort to coax customers away from Sun Microsystems.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 is the first time Red Hat's commercial product includes the newer 2.6 kernel, or heart, of Linux. Although Red Hat's previous version included some 2.6 features, it was Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 that was first to include the full list last August, including improvements to communications and memory subsystems.
Red Hat is taking on rivals such as Novell with the latest version of its Linux distribution for businesses
The next version of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux distribution is planned for release next month, and is likely to fully support the Linux 2.6 kernel and include various security features. According to sources close to the company, the release is planned for 14 February to coincide with the LinuxWorld conference in Boston. A UK spokeswoman from Red Hat was unable to confirm the release date on Monday.
Two years after its first attempt fell short, Red Hat is trying again to reach beyond its own employees for help developing its Linux product.
In early 2003, the Raleigh, N.C.-based company launched Fedora, a free Linux package. The company had two objectives. It hoped numerous users would be drawn to the gratis software, making it a good proving ground for components the company was considering for use in its top-selling Red Hat Enterprise Linux package.
Red Hat and IBM will jointly help software vendors certify their applications for Linux in a partnership announced today.
The programme is designed to make it easier for vendors to migrate their software to Linux, and will also give IBM and Red Hat a boost by enlarging the pool of applications certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux with IBM hardware and middleware.
