ZDNet: Linux: Red Hat Should Just Stop Whining

“Two recent headlines are just too precious to let them pass
without comment. Friday’s ‘Red Hat accuses Sun of Microsoft
tactics’ is one. The ZDNet version, ‘Red Hat: Sun’s being a bully,’
wasn’t as much fun, but the point is the same: Any company, given
the chance, would use ‘Microsoft’ tactics against its
competition.

“I’ve known this for a long time. Several years ago, when I was
running conferences attended by hundreds of PC industry executives,
I’d often ask the crowd if Microsoft was using unfair competitive
tactics. Almost all the hands would go up. I would then ask the
executives whether they’d do the same thing to their competitors if
they could get away with it. Even more hands would go up.

“Red Hat is upset because Sun has started charging both
end-users and OEMs for StarOffice, the Microsoft Office competitor
that Sun owns and had previously given away. Red Hat has been
including StarOffice for free in the box with its own Linux
operating system; now it’ll have to pay Sun if it wants to do
that…”

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