[wplug] AOL looking to buy Red Hat

J Aaron Farr jaaron_farr at hotmail.com
Sat Jan 19 09:21:59 EST 2002


>From: Hagbard Celine <hceline at softhome.net>
>Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 04:50:10 -0500 (EST)
>
>I have just read the following Washington Post article:
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5064-2002Jan18.html
>
>For my part, I have written Sens. Santorum and Specter, asking them to 
> >call for an investigation into AOL's monopolistic practices.  They're
>the mouth of Time, they're holding Bugs Bunny hostage.  They turned the Six 
>Flags theme parks into a joke, killed Netscape, and now they want gcc and 
>glibc???  This has got to stop.
>
>For what it's worth...
>Hagbard
>

I definitely see your point on this one.  I'm no AOL fan myself either.  
Although I wouldn't necessarily mind seeing AOL coming out with a 
distribution of Linux.  The money and media power behind such a deal would 
do a lot to legitimize linux on the desktop.  It would also mean a much more 
interesting showdown between Microsoft and AOL.  However, I also feel really 
disappointed with the AOL takeover of Netscape, turning the once innovative 
company into a shell of its former self.  My fears about AOL taking over 
Redhat have less to do with AOL's power, but more to do with AOL not knowing 
how to manage the company.

One other point is that even if AOL swallowed RedHat whole, they wouldn't be 
able to mess up Linux too much.  There are other distributions and the 
software itself is controlled by maintainers.  AOL would just have control 
over distribution of one flavor, not over the actual development of all the 
software.

slashdot has a heathy discussion going on about this too.

-jaaron

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