MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-06-06 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] OS News
|
Red Hat lets go of Fedora Linux
Published: June 3, 2005, 10:17 AM PDT
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Red Hat is changing course again with its free Fedora version of Linux,
announcing Friday that it will turn over copyrights and development work to
an outside entity called the Fedora Foundation.
Red Hat once had just one version of Linux, but beginning in 2002 it split
the product into the commercially supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the
free and fast-moving Fedora. But the company struggled to meet the original
Fedora goal of attracting widespread outside involvement.
Given that Red Hat treated Fedora as a proving ground to rapidly mature
features it wanted to add into RHEL, it's not a surprise programmers saw it
as a Red Hat project. But the Raleigh, N.C.-based company is making concrete
moves to help Fedora stand on its own.
The establishment of the foundation comes on the eve of a new version of the
software. Fedora Core 4 is due to ship Monday, bringing broader processor
support, the Xen software for running multiple operating systems on one
computer, version 4 of the GCC compiler, and other features.
A vibrant Fedora project is important to Red Hat, and not just as a way to
build improvements fed into RHEL. It also stands to boost Red Hat's image as
a company that cooperates with others in open-source programming, fill the
pipeline of new RHEL customers, and keep Red Hat at the center of
open-source operating system work in the face of rivals such as Gentoo and
OpenSolaris.
For example, in recent months, Red Hat has opened access to the Fedora
source-code repository so others can contribute code more easily. It also
has been working to provide servers that automatically build Fedora from its
underlying source code so new bugs can be found quickly on a variety of
computers.
The latest step is the Fedora Foundation, which, instead of Red Hat, will
maintain copyright of code contributed to Fedora, Red Hat's deputy general
counsel, Mark Webbink, said Friday at the company's first user conference.
"Red Hat will still provide substantial financial and engineering support,
but this move will assure broader community involvement in Fedora-sponsored
projects," the company said in a statement.
Webbink also said Red Hat is creating what it calls a Software Patent
Commons to encourage sharing of patents. The company has spoken against
software patents and permits its own patented technology to be used in any
open-source project.
"We need to move away from a system of software patents compromised by
trivial, incremental enhancements that block innovation to a system that is
aimed at rewarding substantial innovation," Webbink said in a statement.
"Patents are not equal to innovation. More often, innovation occurs despite
patents."
And in what appears to be a thinly veiled jab at rival Microsoft, Webbink
added, "What we observe today in the software industry is the use of patents
to maintain market share, even where that market share has been obtained by
anticompetitive means."
Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips
Published: June 3, 2005, 5:08 PM PDT
Last modified: June 3, 2005, 5:11 PM PDT
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
update Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it's scrapping its
partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel's microprocessors,
CNET News.com has learned.
Apple has used IBM's PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased
transition to Intel's chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple
plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in
mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources
said.
The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer
Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving
the keynote speech. The conference would be an appropriate venue: Changing
the chips would require programmers to rewrite their software to take full
advantage of the new processor.
IBM, Intel and Apple declined to comment for this story.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Apple was considering
switching to Intel, but many analysts were skeptical citing the difficulty
and risk to Apple.
That skepticism remains. "If they actually do that, I will be surprised,
amazed and concerned," said Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. "I don't
know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every
time they do this, they lose more customers" and more software partners, he
said.
Apple successfully navigated a switch in the 1990s from Motorola's 680x0
line of processors to the Power line jointly made by Motorola and IBM. That
switch also required software to be revamped to take advantage of the new
processors' performance, but emulation software permitted older programs to
run on the new machines. (Motorola spinoff Freescale currently makes PowerPC
processors for Apple notebooks and the Mac Mini.)
The relationship between Apple and IBM has been rocky at times. Apple openly
criticized IBM for chip delivery problems, though Big Blue said it fixed the
issue. More recent concerns, which helped spur the Intel deal, included
tension between Apple's desire for a wide variety of PowerPC processors and
IBM's concerns about the profitability of a low-volume business, according
to one source familiar with the partnership.
Over the years, Apple has discussed potential deals with Intel and Advanced
Micro Devices, chipmaker representatives have said.
One advantage Apple has this time: The open-source FreeBSD operating system,
of which Mac OS X is a variant, already runs on x86 chips such as Intel's
Pentium. And Jobs has said Mac OS X could easily run on x86 chips.
The move also raises questions about Apple's future computer strategy. One
basic choice it has in the Intel-based PC realm is whether to permit its Mac
OS X operating system to run on any company's computer or only its own.
IBM loses cachet with the end of the Apple partnership, but it can take
consolation in that it's designing and manufacturing the Power family
processors for future gaming consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo,
said Clay Ryder, a Sageza Group analyst.
"I would think in the sheer volume, all the stuff they're doing with the
game consoles would be bigger. But anytime you lose a high-profile customer,
that hurts in ways that are not quantifiable but that still hurt," Ryder
said.
Indeed, IBM has a "Power Everywhere" marketing campaign to tout the wide use
of its Power processors. The chips show up in everything from networking
equipment to IBM servers to the most powerful supercomputer, Blue Gene/L.
Intel dominates the PC processor business, with an 81.7 percent market share
in the first quarter of 2005, compared with 16.9 percent for Advanced Micro
Devices, according to Dean McCarron of Mercury Research. Those numbers do
not include PowerPC processors. However, Apple has roughly 1.8 percent of
the worldwide PC market, he added.
Apple shipped 1.07 million PCs in the first quarter, and its move to Intel
would likely bump up the chipmaker's shipments by a corresponding amount,
McCarron added.
CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos and Richard Shim contributed to this
report.
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