AOL in Negotiations to Buy Red Hat?
 

The Washington Post has stated that Red Hat and AOL are currently talking about an acquisition. I am not too sure I like this one. We will have to see what happens. What do yo think?

http://www.washtech.com/news/media/14759-1.html

--jeremy

oh.... :(
 

Hmmmm..
Me thinks it might be time to switch away from red hat if that happens..
Tho I don't live in the us so I don't have to put up with all the crap from aol I hear of..I don't like the idea of such a evil sounding company taking red hat..

always 2 sides in any coin...

it's all talk now. if it happens, we'd just have to see what they bring out of that acquisition. business practices may change and maybe the direction of rh, but the product remains. it's a linux. the gpl should be able to handle that. if aol violates that, most people will boycott them.

my 2 cents...

I think that AOL/Warner will be looking to buy a compaq or dell type operation next, can you imagine AOL PC's with a pre loaded and fully configured redhat, just plug in the power and boot to aohell.

Yeah, this one definitely has two sides to it. On the upside Red Hat getting bought by such a large company would pretty much assure that they survive. On the downside they MAY turn the distro into something aimed at complete newbies and call it AOLinux. I can just picture there logo everywhere, AOL preinstalled, etc. I think they might want a linux distro to use in a set top webtv style box. That would really make sense!

--jeremy

Well, suprisingly, I just got hired by Time Warner and start Tuesday working for RoadRunner Cable Modem Division..... I can see two sides to this, as many company's that AOL Time Warner own after merging, it still seems that whatever company's they own, they let do their business. Like Roadrunner and AOL, two separate company's basically, you call support for Roadrunner seeking help with AOL crap, they will redirect you to AOL still, stating they can't support them.. Thank God, especially if I will be working for their cable modem ISP, wouldn't take it if I had to deal with AOL subscribers.
Now AOL TW owning Redhat can be good, first yes, the largest multimedia company in the world owning Redhat, yeah, its gonna survive. Second, it could help boost Linux exposure in the business market place and possibly home.
But now, I do hate what they could do and turn around the company. If acquired, probably might see AOL in Linux now... I would hate if they did change the name, but I highly doubt it, why change a worldwide known name, it would deter people away from using it... plus they own Netscape now, and they didn't even change its name... they still use their own browser with their software, which sucks.. you think they would at least implement Netscape to take its job... Oh well... they seem to let company's do what they want to do... that they own a piece of course.

If they do acquire it though, it might be easier for me to transfer to Redhat division... :D

They (AOL/TM) do seem to leave some companies they buy alone and let them run as they were. Some haven't been so lucky though. The great thing about linux is that if Red Hat does get bought and you do not like where the company goes you can always switch distros, or just roll your own LFS style.

--jeremy

BTW congratulations on the job trickykid!

Thanks Jeremy,

yeah nothing special, just a job while going back to school so I can get a better job when done with that...

totally agree.. one thing good about linux, once familiar with it.. its easy to switch to another.

I'm actually quite surprised that this has come about. AOL/TW were/are some of the big players (along with MS) that are completely for this DMCA extension thing that could mean that the very GPL is meaningless and possibly illegal. I know that there is a certain amount of boycotting of TW going on, certainly on this side of the pond, because of it (not because of a huge Linux influence over here, but because England basically does everything that you guys stateside do, but later, and we don't really want a DMCA type thing over here).

Maybe that's the push Linux was waiting to show people something really good for peanuts.Aol is really going to launch a full scale operation . What happends next ?Who knows,but It can only be good for Linux Community.

Red Hat maintains stricked adherance to teh GPL, I have no idea if AOL would let them continue this.

I don't use or like AOL products, but I have nothing against them as a company, and if they are gonna survive the onslaught from MSN they will have to move off of win32. or course they can do that w/o purchasing RH.

they might develop some more linux apps

i'm actually surprised that it took aol this long to consider jumping in with linux. they've had their share of differences with ms in the past, and they looked at creating their own o/s before linux was ever in any headlines.

i think it would be great to have a company with aol's clout behind linux, but that's only so long as they comply with the gpl, which i don't think will be a problem. the last thing they want is a multi-billion dollar lawsuit from the EFF. despite microsoft's infamous hatred for the gpl, it's not a threat to a software company. aol makes their money off of subscription and ads, not selling their software. besides, the gpl doesn't mandate that they release their code, so long as it's all written in house, which it already is.

i admit to a bit of trepedation here... but i think the potential for linux here is almost unlimited.

seems like a potentially good thing in general, if they're not gonna mess with it, but it'd be pretty easy for them to start customizing things here and there till you could start getting compatability issues with AOL's brand new operating system they made all by themselves and conventional distros, and that would presumably either lead to a) everyone to adopt AOL's ideas if there were big changes they were making, or worse to be shut out... MacOS X is BSD but very much altered... and I would only see GPL going so far if a company like that was maybe going against it. But if they do stick with gpl spirit then i'd be inclined to think it's, grudgingly, good for linux.

This could be good.
 

If AOL gets RedHat that can give the a foothold to make a Linux port of their browser. Then, if they comply release the code leave it wild for 6 months and get a stable browser that WORKS! Then, start to make Linux MORE user friendly so the average AOLer can use it.

If they can make stable browser which is easy to use. Then M$ will take a huge kick to the stomach.

This seams outrageous I know, and would be hard to pull off, but I think it could happen.

Thats my two cents