
A billion thanks to the open source community from Red Hat - taylorbuley
http://opensource.com/business/12/3/billion-thanks-open-source-community-red-hat
======
bmelton
I'm seeing a lot of comments that equate to nitpicking over how little RH is
giving back to the community.

Despite how uninformed I might consider that opinion to be, given how many
open source developers are on payroll, and how many projects get many of their
patches from RH, the other little thing that RH has done was effectively
legitimize Linux as a sellable resource.

Without the RedHat sales team getting RH in the doors of enterprises around
the world, Linux would be significantly further back in terms of performance,
compatibility, scalability, etc.

~~~
ughugh
I used RH and liked it in the 90s, but since then I don't see why a RHEL-based
distribution for server isn't a good enough option. I understand that is just
being parasitic, but it is free after all- why pay for it? So, I think Linux
is strong and will be strong with or without RH. Sure it's great that they
provide a major paid option for customers that feel like they have to pay
something, but I don't respect any tech company that pays for Linux because
they feel they need to just to have the support. If they like the distribution
and want to support them, fine. But, don't do it because you feel that you
have to have support.

Also, I interviewed for RH several years ago and was not impressed. Their
employees seemed fairly unmotivated, and despite the number of people I
interviewed with, it didn't seem very well thought out. I didn't like their
distro at that point, so it was a bad idea in hindsight to interview with
them. I just didn't believe in RH anymore, and going there only solidified
that.

~~~
bmelton
Ironically enough, that is exactly the reason most people buy it. However, I
believe you underestimate the criticality of support.

If you're a tech-savvy startup, then sure, you just put a few guys on staff,
but if you are most other kinds of businesses, then you'll employ some 'good-
enough' administrators for the day to day operations, but you won't be able to
necessarily employ a full team for something that isn't core to your business.

Another common scenario is in government, or large companies. Especially in
government, we, as tax-payers, would consider it wasteful if the gov were
hiring top notch tech engineers to maintain their file shares and directory
servers. They are also completely unwilling to put a system in place with a
company that not only will be available for same-day support on critical
systems, but will also have to be relatively certain that company will be
around in 10 years when they are still running those systems.

In short, support is probably more important than you're giving it credit for,
but even for customers where it isn't, RH's credibility has opened the doors
for every other Linux distribution and their ability to do work inside the
Enterprise.

~~~
jvdongen
Personally I would be delighted if the government hired (as in permanent, not
by the hour) top-notch tech engineers to maintain their IT infra. It would
most likely cut down IT costs enormously while at the same time making things
running a lot smoother ...

~~~
bmelton
Government work would just infuriate any top-notch engineers by moving too
slow.

Simple changes move slowly, and hard changes take forever. Naturally, it isn't
a limitation of the equipment, but the bureaucracy in place.

I've been involved with projects where, after having already spent money on
hardware and software procurement and over 3 months worth of man hours on
actual implementation, the project stopped because a DNS change request form
was filled out incorrectly. Correcting the form and getting it reapproved took
four weeks to correct what was literally a one character correction.

------
mark_l_watson
Good for them, and nice that they are contributing a bit of their profits.

There are a few negative comments here, and it is cool for everyone to have
their say. In response, I would like to say that Red Hat supports some
projects like Hibernate, JBoss, etc. that are useful and help me earn my
living as a consultant - so thanks to them for that.

------
Jach
To add a little perspective since people seem to be losing their heads at "one
billion dollars!", their annual GAAP net income was only $146.6 million. [1]
How much did omgpop get bought for again? Anyway, congrats RedHat. Who knows
where Linux and FLOSS in general would be without them. I tip my...(•_•) (
•_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■) hat to them.

[1] [http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2012/3/red-
ha...](http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2012/3/red-hat-reports-
fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2012-results)

~~~
ajross
How is equating and/or confusing revenue, profit and market capitalization in
the space of a two-sentence post "adding perspective"?

Clearly Red Hat isn't going to be the next Apple (or even IBM, to whom they
have a closer business model). But I'd be shocked beyond belief if Draw
Something does a billion in revenue this year.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> But I'd be shocked beyond belief if Draw Something does a billion in
revenue this year._

I think that was Jach's point: that omgpop was overvalued.

------
anyonecanhere
Thanks, Red Hat, for the donation. It is a gesture, but an important one. I
can appreciate treading the fine line of meeting market (ie, Wall Street) is
demanding and keeping alive the ethos of the open source mantra at the same
time is challenging. You've hired open source developers and people who's
passion is in writing code and doing it well. I remember how Red Hat offered
shares when they IPOed (<http://tech.mit.edu/V119/N30/30redhat.30n.html>) to
open source developers. Red Hat did not have to, but they did.

So, thanks for doing this. It _does_ mean a lot.

------
cpeterso
A more accurate title might be "100,000 thanks to the open source community
from Red Hat."

------
brianbreslin
This might be nitpicking, but them donating only $100k (even if its to each)
still seems paltry in my opinion. You hit a billion, donate a full million
bucks!

------
drostie
Okay, does anyone else have the unfortunate problem of automatic numeracy?

After a lot of physics tests, basically comparing numbers and subtracting
exponents is something I do almost automatically. Like, I enjoy that they're
donating at all, and I know that their staff often contribute in the form of
patches and commits -- really one of the key ways contributions _should_ go --
but somehow the numbers seemed a little dramatically understated. They're
literally saying, "Free software made us billionaires, so we're paying them a
0.01% commission." It just sounds like, "I earned $4 000 from homeless people
and then gave four of them each a dime."

I mean, I'm sure you made their lives better and helped them to help you, but
still, the gap between the numbers is a little startling. ^_^

~~~
jlarocco
I guess there's just no pleasing some people.

RedHat aren't obligated to donate anything to anybody.

They could even take the Apple KHTML/Webkit approach and make it difficult to
incorporate their code changes back into the original code bases.

If anybody releasing open source code feels cheated by this it's their own
fault for choosing to release code using an open source license.

~~~
_delirium
I'm generally supportive of RedHat, and think they do pretty well by the open-
source community. But I don't agree with the latter part of your comment on
principle: not everything that is _legal_ is a good idea or something we
should cheer. I think there is a general ethical requirement to give something
back to people who got you where you are, even if you aren't legally obligated
to do so. (And RedHat does in fact do so.)

Things actually work better in the case where there's an ethical but not
legally codified understanding, imo, enforced informally through community
pressure rather than lawsuits. If you try to add it into legal obligations,
complex licenses start piling up; the old BSD advertising clause, for example,
was an attempt to turn the ethical principle of "you should prominently
acknowledge the work you built on" into a legally enforceable license, which
in retrospect most people agree was misguided. But you should still
prominently acknowledge the work you built on, anyway, and it's fair to call
people out on it if they aren't giving sufficient credit. You can't _sue_
people who don't give sufficient credit (past the bare minimum copyright
statement), but you can criticize them and apply community pressure.

------
pilom
Interesting that none of the recipients will be actual projects that Red Hat
is built upon. No donation to the Linux Kernel, nothing to Gnome, nothing to
GNU at all, etc. I think that some people might be upset about that but I view
it as extremely forward thinking. These other Free Software supporting
organizations provide support to the community in ways that are much more
difficult to quantify than simply lines of code. Without them the "free/libre"
community would have a much harder time being taken seriously.

~~~
cagenut
redhat "donates" to all those project you mentioned in the form of payroll

~~~
shuzchen
To further clarify this point, if you look at the reports here, you'll find
that RedHat is the largest corporate contributor to both the kernel and to
gnome:

<http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation>
<http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/07/28/gnome-census/>

