Red Hat Noncommittal On UnitedLinux

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Red Hat, Inc. is taking a “wait and see” attitude on the subject of UnitedLinux, the newly announced pact between four Linux distributors to market a single version of the open-source operating system.

This was the basic line that came from an interview with Mark de Visser,
Red Hat’s vice president of marketing. In his
official prepared statement, de Visser projected a sense of cautious
optimism about Thursday’s announcement:

“Too many distributions hamper the migration of applications to Linux, so if this effort by Caldera and others consolidates distributions it is a good development. But in Linux, application support is everything. Red Hat Linux Advanced Server has it today. Time will tell if the Caldera group’s distribution will achieve the same level of support.”

In the interview, de Visser
emphasized the notion of application support, which is what he says
will make or break UnitedLinux in the long run.

“By the time they release their distribution,” he said, “they will
have to prove they can handle application support.”

Red Hat seems not to be terribly concerned that this new distribution alliance is
going to make a big change for its business. According to de Visser,
many of the players within UnitedLinux have not shown up in Red Hat’s
accounts before, and he does not see this changing in the near
future.

“The market dynamic has not changed much,” he said, “There
were four distribution companies before and there will be four
distribution companies after.”

As for the open invitation for Red Hat to join UnitedLinux, the company is again taking a wait and see approach. Clearly, de Visser explained,
the circumstances would have to be advantageous for Red Hat to join
UnitedLinux. If, he raised as a hypothetical, Red Hat would be
required to lose its development staff in favor of UnitedLinux, then
obviously Red Hat would not be interested. In reality, negotiations on
the role of Red Hat in the newly formed group would have to be worked
out.

Microsoft, Sun Challengers To Linux

de Visser said Red Hat was not surprised by the creation of UnitedLinux, but until Wednesday it was concerned about the motives behind the move. “Until they called us yesterday, the whole thing smelled of
competition,” de Visser said, adding that Red Hat felt better about it
when it was notified before the formal announcement and asked to
work with the new distribution group.

de Visser strongly downplayed the notion of a competition between Red
Hat and UnitedLinux, citing Microsoft and Sun as the real challengers
to Linux.

He also highlighted Red Hat’s own Alliance Program,
which, like UnitedLinux, seeks to bring in independent software
vendors’ products into the Linux arena.

One upcoming example of that
will be Oracle’s announcement next week about its new Unbreakable
Linux, where Oracle products running on Red Hat Advanced Server and
Dell server hardware will be combined to form a very solid product
line. If these are the kinds of things UnitedLinux hopes to achieve,
de Visser said, then Red Hat is already ahead in terms of bringing certified,
ported software to Linux.

When asked about the perception that Linux companies are leaving the
desktop users behind with this sudden fixation on the enterprise, de
Visser was quick to brand this idea as a complete
misperception.

“Some of the most exciting development in Linux today is taking place
on the desktop,” he said, citing recent advances in Evolution,
StarOffice, and Mozilla. “I think that, very soon, we will be offering
a good desktop for users.”

Red Hat, he said, has not abandoned the desktop at all.

As for UnitedLinux, de Visser and the rest of Red Hat want to see the
product produced by the fledgling group before rendering judgment.

This article was first published on Linux Today, an internet.com site.