that’s whacked

Red (faced) Hat

Monday, Sep 27. 2004  –  Category: OpenSource, Sun

(warning, this is actually a somewhat serious “rant” as far as my rants go)

I was fortunate enough to come through a school that still taught their systems on Unix (at the time, though they now teach a lot of classes w/ Microsoft’s blessing on MS donated hardware running Windows). But, I did a lot of my learning on Solaris, and Linux.

In fact, it’s probably safe to say that I wouldn’t have learned what I know now without free open source OS’s like BSD, or most importantly: Red Hat. I have a lot of respect for Red Hat’s goals and what they’ve tried to do… but in his latest blog entry, Red Hat CEO Michael Tielmann has made me lose quite a bit of respect (and also made me question the wisdom of letting executive’s blog openly, but hey, that’s a whole other can of worms).

A lot of us joke about blog entries being “rants” (like this one), but it’s bad when a CEO rants. Tielmann comes across as someone who has been backed against the wall without a real defensive argument to make. He looks like someone grasping at straws. Instead of taking the time to carefully formulate a good argument, calculating when and where to throw that one well-timed punch for the KO, he is hoping that if he hits out enough, with enough punches, ONE of them will land. This is NOT the way to fight a battle, Michael. (especially with a fat ‘old’ heavy-weight looking to refresh its career like Sun standing in the opposite corner).

Merely being pathetic doesn’t score a whole lotta points, even if you are an executive of a once-great company.

Silicon Valley is built on a history of “once-great” companies that have risen again. To write off a company because they have made mistakes, is a folly. Look at Apple, look at IBM. Companies can, and have, turned around. And it’s the people who were at the top of their industry (i.e.: like Red Hat’s position in the Linux/OSS market) who got wrote the “once-greats” off that inevitably lost. Sun itself has been guilty of blindly looking over things in its pride. We’ve learned from that mistake… big time. Trust me, when I’m certain that we won’t be making that mistake again.

The open source community doesn’t really care what you think. You can love them, you can hate them, you can ignore them, even insult them, but what matters at the end of the day is this: what have you done?

Oh….I dunno….Java (it’s not open source, but it’s OPEN damnit), Open Office (oh I’m sorry Red Hat…which office suite do you package with Linux? is it…could it… be… OOo?), not to mention other things you ship like GNOME (yeah..last time I checked, it was your standard desktop environment), Evolution connectors, NetBeans, and the list goes on. Sun has a longer and richer history with open source than Red Hat has had.

Now, you say that you love the open source community, but how much? If you love the open source community, you’d open source Java. If you won’t open source Java, it means you don’t love us, or at least you don’t trust us. Why, then, should we trust you?

WHAT?!?! “Daddy…if you really loved me, you’d buy me the Ferrari for my 16th birthday”. That’s a completely irrational argument. At the end of the day, a company has to make money. Red Hat does this by charging exorbitant prices for its system and services. Sun does this by making money off of Java; but most importantly, we have opened the standards and specifications. People whine all the time about open sourcing Java, but WHY? Why should we GPL it? Java is kept proprietary so some form of control can be exerted to prevent people from forking and breaking its standards. The whole appeal of Java is in standards, standards, standards. We’ve made it open to allow people to collaborate easily, and isn’t that the main desire of open source. You make such a petulant argument, you just sound ridiculous.

And if you won’t, why not? Because you love Microsoft more?

No, because we have to do what we have to do to survive, and more importantly, NO, because we’re giving our customers what THEY want - because our customers come first. You should try THAT sometime, eh? Our customers are tired of the fighting, tired of us expending money fighting a losing battle. Interoperation is the key word Michael…. it’s not capitulating to Microsoft, it’s allowing our customers to utilise the technologies they want in order to do the business they need to do.

You are still messaging from a proprietary platform: drawing conclusions first, and then spinning things to make those conclusions appear to make sense.

You mean….like people hearing Sun is going to open source Solaris and then drawing conclusions, and then spinning things to make those conclusions appear to make sense? Yeah, I hear a lot of idiots are doing that in our industry.

If you won’t open source Java, you won’t take the right positions on software patents, and you keep doing things that benefit nobody but Microsoft, why should be trust what you ask us to do? And why should customers believe what you are telling them?

Because we’re doing things that benefit nobody but ourselves, our customers, the open source community, …. and maybe even you, Red Hat. Think about that when you package GNOME localisation packages, Evolution connectors, and OpenOffice with your next distribution.

We are not bizarro numbskull anti-Sun conspiracy theorists. We are realists, living in a world of reality. Come join us. Calling us lunatics and making other claims that don’t stand up is not the Open Source way.

You would be wise to listen to your own advise, Michael.

…. take it with a grain of salt, I’m just an enraged lunatic junior engineer who clearly is not living in a world of reality.