As I write this, Red Hat has just gone into the black with a small profit of $300,000 on total revenue of $24.3 million. That makes Red Hat, by my count, the first Linux company to actually make money. The secret to their success? Red Hat Advanced Server (RHAS).
As I write this, Red Hat has just gone into the black with a small profit of $300,000 on total revenue of $24.3 million. That makes Red Hat, by my count, the first Linux company to actually make money. The secret to their success? Red Hat Advanced Server (RHAS).
Meanwhile, the UnitedLinux companies — Conectiva, SCO, SuSE, and Turbolinux — have placed their bets for profitability on UnitedLinux, their competitor to RHAS, Windows 2000 Server, Solaris, and others.
Not to be outdone, Mandrake just released Mandrake Multiple Network Firewall (MNF) with a dual licensing scheme that requires its commercial users to pay $1,999 for the firewall and use a more restrictive license, the “MNF Commercial License Agreement,” that’s reminiscent of the BSD license.
So what do RHAS, UnitedLinux, and MNF have in common? While they’re all open source, some commercial uses are restricted to paying customers. To me, what this says is that the old idea of open source business, the notion that “We can make money from service and support,” is finally, officially dead.
Pass me a shovel so I can heap some more dirt on it.
I used to believe in that same notion, but I got better. I saw company after company, with good, bright people and solid business plans based on the service idea, like Linuxcare, struggle to survive at…
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