Last night I drove to Pasadena to attend the first night festivities
of Red Hat's recently announced Revolution Tour. The program,
indicative of any opening night, was complete with dysfunctional
microphones, hung-up X screen savers and speakers with first
night jitters. Other than these minor quibbles the presentation was
good enough to make any Linux fan happy... except possibly me.
The problem stems from Red Hat's fast and furious deal-making. Many
would argue that this is good for Open Source because it's good for
the business of Open Source. I disagree. I think it could end up
being a nightmare.
Red Hat and other Linux distributions are making deals with software
vendors, in this instance, Red Hat's partnership with
MetroWerks, the creator of Code Warrior.
I have absolutely no knowledge of Red Hat's agreement with MetroWerks.
But I can say that the main effect of that agreement is an
exclusive relationship between MetroWerks and Red Hat made at the cost of
all of the other Linux distributions.
Here's the scoop. MetroWerks
is releasing CodeWarrior not as CodeWarrior for Linux but as
CodeWarrior for Red Hat Linux. Yes, you read that
correctly. Look at their Web
site where you will also find the system
requirements specifically mentioning only Red Hat.
As a current SuSE and former Slackware user, I have a real problem
with commercial Linux offerings being made exclusively for any one
distribution's benefit. I brought this objection to the MetroWerks
and Red Hat people last night. Their response was that CodeWarrior
was specifically designed to work with Red Hat's distributions. One
of the MetroWerks reps added that there were some 39 Linux
distributions and they couldn't target them all.
My response, "Yes you can--./configure; make; make install," was
shrugged off.
Given that there are thousands of volunteers ready, willing and able
to assist in porting CodeWarrior to other distributions, I find it
interesting that MetroWerks would cite the proliferation of
distributions as the reason that they are releasing CodeWarrior for
only one of those distributions.
This begs the question: Why is one and only one Linux distribution to be supported by
CodeWarrior when, by using the Open Source community, the cost to do
one or two more of the other big distributions would be minimal and could be recouped quickly by
sales?
This strongly suggests that there may be an explicitly
exclusionary contract between Red Hat and MetroWerks.
As it stands, even if isn't intentional, the results are equally
harmful. First, it puts pressure on all the distributions to adopt
the Red Hat way, not because it is better, but simply because Red Hat
got there first and received the most initial support of the Linux
community.
The Linux business is still in its infancy. We haven't
even figured out all the rules of an Open Source business. It's much
too early to declare winners. Winners certainly should not be
declared because of serendipity. This whole matter stands the peer review
process inherent in Open Source on its ear.
Allow me to speculate of another future scenerio.
Red Hat makes deals with software vendors X, Y and Z
Soon we get X for Red Hat, Y for Red Hat and Z for Red
Hat.
Caldera hurriedly counters with deals with software
vendors A, B and C
Soon we get A for Caldera, B for
Caldera and C for Caldera.
Debian responds with deals with J, K and L...
Well, you get the idea. The balkanization of Linux becomes a reality.
All the good work that everybody has done to
promote Open Source goes out the door. We end up with a pissing
contest to decide which commercial distribution can sign the biggest
and baddest commercial players. We may as well have formed the International
Software League and sell tickets to the events.
Let the distribution wars begin... brought to you tonight by Flam Coffee and Blark Beer...
I don't see any gain in this
except for the upcoming Red Hat stockholders.
If these dangers are real, how can we avoid this future.
Support the Linux Standards
Base and only support vendors who support LSB. Let the rest
be nonstandard pariahs.
In the meantime, encourage Red Hat and MetroWerks to be good Open Source citizens and support the entire Open Source community.
I take this very seriously. In spite of everything Red Hat's done, I
consider exclusionary contracts (explicitly or otherwise) to be a
serious breach of trust. I hope others will see the danger considering
Red Hat's recently announced IPO.
I hope Red Hat and MetroWerks will see this as an important enough
issue to do the right thing to re-level the playing field. The other
distributions should be able to work with Red Hat and MetroWerks to
make it possible to bring out CodeWarrior as a Linux product, not a
Red Hat product.
By initiating exclusivity in Linux distributions Red Hat is in effect
saying, "We're now the biggest and the baddest. Who else deserves to
have the cream?"
My answer is simple. "We all do."
Linux is for everybody, not just the chosen few.
