The blogosphere has been abuzz the past several days with speculation over what Steve Ballmer and Matt Szulik may or may not have discussed over lunch in March. Doc Searls wonders if Microsoft might be interested in acquiring Red Hat, and David Berlind agrees the notion isn’t as insane as it might sound at first:
On the one hand, an acquisition of Red Hat by Microsoft seems ludicrous. On the other, consider the bigger picture. In the tug of war for industry supremacy, there’s IBM and Microsoft. Then, there’s everybody else–many of whom are pawns in the Armageddon-like battle. […] [A Microsoft acquisition of Red Hat] would be a stunning blow to IBM who, if you put two and two together, is attempting to once and for all wean itself from dependence on Microsoft–with Red Hat being one of the lynchpins to its declaration of independence.
Personally, I think Joe Brockmeier hits much closer to home:
[P]erhaps, the meeting was just a tad more mundane than that. […] I think, by now, Microsoft has realized that it has to come to grips with Linux and open source and learn how to co-exist. […] The best way for Microsoft to provide decent support for its hybrid customers is to work with a Linux vendor like Red Hat so that its product works well with Linux–at least a specific Linux distro like Red Hat Advanced Server. […] It’s certainly a smart move for Red Hat to make sure that their enterprise distros run in MOM [Microsoft Operations Manager] to ensure that they can reach more of Microsoft’s customers–particularly if Red Hat distros are the only officially-supported Linux distributions.
Emphasis mine. As my use of bold text should make clear, I think there’s more to this than just providing better support for their hybrid customers.
As Jonathan Schwartz noted last July, it’s much easier to compete against a single company than a social movement, particularly when that single company is tiny by comparison. Says Schwartz:
At Sun, as I said, it’s tough to compete against a social movement, especially one in which we all believe. But compete against a single company, Red Hat? Finally.
Still with me? Ok. Imagine this scenario: Microsoft finally “capitulates” and does the if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em thing, and it does this through a highly publicized partnership with Red Hat to work on improving interoperability between Windows and Linux. Yes, this seems like something out of the twilight zone, but an equally surreal thing has already happened once in the past year.
Part of the Microsoft/Red Hat interoperability partnership involves Microsoft providing limited support for Linux in some of its products, such as MOM–though only if their customers run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The pockets of the business world that have been reluctant to adopt Linux, largely due to Windows/Linux interoperability concerns, no longer have any reason to delay Linux rollouts.
At first blush, this would appear to be a big win for Linux–except when you realize that, now, Microsoft can control the terms, only offering up those technologies it makes strategic sense to decouple from Windows (hence better positioning them for the coming Internet operating system wars) and further concentrating power in the Linux world to boot, thereby taking one step closer to reducing the social movement they can’t figure out how to compete against to a single company–and competing against a single company is something history shows they do very, very well. Oh, and to top it all off, the market sees them playing nice, perhaps winning them back some of the goodwill they’ve lost over the past decade, and they get the governments of the world off their back too.
Far fetched? Makes perfect sense to me.
Except of course if IBM switches its allegiance to another distro, Novell continues with Suse and Sun continues with its Java Linux desktop… Companies will see that Red Hat isn’t the only Linux distro around and request support for the other distros as well… If Microsoft doesn’t grant those requests nothing will have changed.
Oh, and for all those community activists who just love to compete against Microsoft, what do they do now, compete against Red Hat AS WELL or
congratulate Microsoft for surporting Linux?
If they dont, Microsoft can call them eg. “Ungrateful idelists”
If they do, thenwell, microsoft will capatalies and make sure it milks all the press it gets, reverting to point 1 when the good will stops.
Oh, and if the community starts going after Red Hat, all of a sudern a big chunk of there development effot can go into there porpryity componets and hence the community lose’s an alful lot.
Ofcoarse, to me it still sounds a bit to far fetched!
Can’t beat em join em? Are you serious? I have always loved linux but Windows is STILL light years ahead in business functionality and Linux doesn’t show much signs of catching up anytime soon. They spend way too much effort working on stuff that doesn’t matter and ignoring low hanging fruit.
you had me up ’til “internet operating system wars.”
give me a break.
I can understand Microsoft making a deal with Sun. They exist in almost entirely separate areas of the computer industry. No one who pays Sun for their hardware is ever going to replace them with Windows. In fact, they’re more likely to replace their Sun with Linux than they are with Windows.
Microsoft can probably recognize that Sun is going do a fine enough job of limiting Java’s adoption all on their own. Allowing them to win their little Java victory is hardly worth worrying about.
But using this to argue an alliance with a Linux vendor?
I would say that out of every dollar that Red Hat spends, a few pennies or even a dime or two of it enhance the idea of Linux as a standard. This doesn’t so much enhance Red Hat’s bottom line in the immediate sense, but it does make life harder for the people who aren’t in the Linux world. For Red Hat, this is money well spent.
For Microsoft, this same money would mean cannibalizing their own products that earn them real money.
There is no way Microsoft can take over Red Hat and prevent those spare pennies/dimes off of every dollar they put into it from going out there and damaging its Windows offering. If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I would see that move as insanity and seriously favor a class action lawsuit against the board.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Never get involved with Microsoft unless you want to bend over.
For only the most recent example:
1) Microsoft “works with” Sega during the Genesis
years.
2) Microsoft and Sega are “partners” for the Dreamcast. Windows CE runs on it.
3) Xbox and Xbox2, Sega who?
Ok, there is a *lot* more to it than that, but that’s at least one thread. Doesn’t anyone ever learn from history?
“Never get involved with Microsoft unless you want to bend over.”
I like that. I like that a lot.
Ian, imho you forgot an important factor, Microsoft’s large patent portfolio. Its in redhat’s interest to co-operate with microsoft on some level, just like sun is doing. Perhaps the meeting was all about that, after all redhat’s primary responsibility is towards its shareholder’s including one Michael Dell. In order to protect its turf, redhat cannot have all out competition against microsoft because the suits at redhat know their primary market is unix converts and their competition sun, novell and other linux vendors. I doubt microsoft would want to take over redhat.
I think it’s just the old Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt manoeuvre again. And it’s a really clever one this time. They start by spreading the rumour that Red Hat could be taken over by Microsoft. If they do it well, this may shake people’s confidence in the long-term viability of Red Hat as a provider of support for Fedora-based systems. If they do it really well, they may even cast doubt on the viability of Fedora itself by appearing to threaten a key corporate ally of the project. Microsoft chose Red Hat as the target of this rumour because Red Hat are true champions of the Linux cause, enjoying considerable and well-deserved goodwill credit with users, and losing them would deal a severe blow to morale in the free-software user community. And to whom would users whose confidence in Red Hat had been shaken turn? Well, many would turn to Debian, but many more still, I’m afraid, would turn to SuSE. That would be bad for free software and good for Microsoft. Here’s why.
Historically, SuSE has been very friendly toward vendors of proprietary solutions. With SuSE’s help, many non-free packages end up on the average SuSE Linux user’s machine. At the most popular downtown bookstore here, you can even buy a SuSE bundle that allows you to install Microsoft Office on Linux. Recently, SuSE was acquired by Novell (a proprietary software vendor from Utah, whence the SCO Group also hails) and has gone even further in that direction. Now more than ever, SuSE has the mainstream consumer of PC software in mind when assembling its products, and their product development strategy reflects that: pile features up, lump binaries in, stick logos on, push colorful shrink-wrapped boxes out — quickly, quickly, time’s a-wastin’! Does this remind you of anything you’ve seen before? Maybe Microsoft already has its long, invisible tentacles in SuSE via Novell, who knows? In any case, this much is clear to me: Microsoft hopes to reign-in the long-term success of free software distributions in general by helping vendors like SuSE prevail over vendors like Red Hat; in other words, they want to bring the Linux distribution space, as a whole, to their arena, where they expect to win. Let me support that claim by indulging in a little thought-experiment. What happens when Joe Blow’s first experience with a Linux-based free software distribution is almost indistinguishable from his experience with Windows or perhaps actually worse? In the worst case scenario, his misadventure discourages other would-be defectors and he is himself eventually recaptured by Redmond. And how often does this worse-case scenario arise? Too often, I fear.
Consider this: here, in Europe, the only Linux you can buy in your average store here is… SuSE Linux. And don’t think for a minute that people are going to look for the nearest well-informed nerd and ask him what Linux distro he should get. No, people just figure SuSE must be the best and most professional, and that’s why the big store sells it. And it’s German, too, and Germans are known for their quality engineering, you know. Plus, look, it says it supports my brand-spanking-new cards and peripherals! So they buy it. Or they download it. Or borrow it. Whatever. They have decided to try to install SuSE. Then, often enough, comes the big disappointment. For example, the store-bought SuSE Linux my girlfriend installed on her computer after XP committed sepuku was so flaky that it almost made her miss Windows. Without a nerd for a boyfriend, she would very likely have done what others have done: taken the ailing box to a computer hack-shop and asked the guys there to reinstall Windows XP for her. Actually, even if she’d had no trouble with the installation at all, without a nerd for a boyfriend she would have paid SFr.129 within the year in order to get the latest and greatest releases because these no longer came through with the automatic online updates, and then it all would have started to look suspiciously like the old Windows routine. What would she have said to her friends? She would have told them that Linux sucked. And all because SuSE put an evil product on store shelves. And it won’t do any good to tell a slighted customer that he or she should instead have chosen distro foo for Great Justice, should have come to you first, or whatever; until somebody hands him or her a working Linux box, that user is probably going to run Windows.
In summary, when a mainstream computer user has a disappointing experience with one Linux distributions, all Linux distributions pay the price. That is why, in order to hurt free software in general and Linux in particular, Microsoft doesn’t have to go hog-wild and buy Red Hat so they can turn it into crap. Scaring users of Linux-based operating systems, especially newbies, into choosing the “right” kind of commercial product is good enough for their purposes. Actually, it’s better. That’s because Microsoft understands that the real threat to its domination of the PC software marketplace comes from the freedom that a truly free Linux-based free-software distribution gives the user. And this freedom is dangerous because knowledge of it will forever transform all who experience it… into former Microsoft customers. Yes, users hate being disrespected, and if my girlfriend’s reaction is any indication, Microsoft has much to worry about. It is clear to me why Microsoft would steer the inevitable dissidents, the would-be Linux-users, away from Red Hat and toward SuSE if they could: because Microsoft has figured out that, in the long run, Windows and Office cannot compete with community-driven free-software but they could compete and coexist with (heck, even run on, if it came down to it) proprietary commercial products that incorporate free software for the sake of expediency. That is why Microsoft wants us to think that Red Hat is a take-over target: because, in this case, as in chess, “the threat is more powerful than the execution.” It’s a diversion. I’ve seen the Linux card that was up their sleeve and it’s called SuSE. And, with this card firmly in hand, they want to reshape the Linux marketplace stealthily, without getting in trouble with the FTC or even arousing our suspicion. They are so smooth they are practically handing the tinfoil hats out to us. In other words, undermining community-driven free-software efforts (and the companies that support them) and shifting the balance of public opinion in favor of companies like SuSE would serve Microsoft’s purpose as well as or better than a take-over.
Disclaimer: I am writing this message from a copy of the aforementioned SuSE installation on which I’m testing some updates. Oh, the irony! :)