JM's Good Times: On Red Hat and Commercial Open Source

"I recently had lunch with a friend from Red Hat. Suffice it to say, it was rather revelatory. At some point, the conversation drifted to rPath and how they split off because Red Hat 'couldn't afford to please the diehards'--they had to make money, and the only way to do this was by ignoring the 'diehards.' This Red Hatter then went on to talk about how they couldn't just continue to give stuff away, they had to charge for it, yadda yadda--pretty standard stuff we've heard from Red Hat for a while now. It then occurred to me how Red Hat continues to get it wrong in the marketplace--they still think it's about engaging in solid business practices in spite of the resistance of the GNU diehards..."

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