Business
Red Hat spins disappointing Dell loss
Red Hat lost this round, but there will be others. What's H-P's desktop Linux strategy?
What do Red Hat and Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson have in common this morning?
They're both trying to spin a disappointing loss. Fortunately in the case of Red Hat the season is far from over.
Scott Crenshaw of Red Hat has responded to this week's news about Dell and Ubuntu, as the company's press page becomes a blog.
It's a tough assignment because this is not good news. And his attempt to spin it as good news, in my view, fails.
- Crenshaw trumpets Red Hat's involvement with the One Laptop Per Child initiative. But my own spin notwithstanding, that design has been tweaked to take Microsoft's new $3 Windows.
- Crenshaw insists it's a big market and implies Ubuntu won for reasons other than software quality. "Fedora is the most popular Linux distribution in the world," he writes. But with Dell pushing Ubuntu, for how long?
Actually the transparency of the spin is good news. I don't want to become a Microsoft-ologist while covering open source vendors, pushing through jargon and risking the relationship each time I write.
Red Hat lost this round, but there will be others. What's H-P's desktop Linux strategy?