[OpenStack Foundation] Today's WSJ article <-- Alternatives to RHEL?

Gil Yehuda gyehuda at yahoo-inc.com
Thu May 15 17:02:51 UTC 2014


RH has spoken https://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2014/5/on-openstack-and-open-source

If understand this correctly they are saying:

1.       RH will sell RHEL support (operating system) to users of RHEL regardless of which virtualization management technology is being used.

2.       RH will only sell RHELOP support  (RH’s OpenStack Platform) to people who use it to manage RHEL images.

Meaning: RH’s support of their OS is independent of your use of Open Stack, but their support of their Open Stack requires that you also use their OS. If anything this makes it easier for competitors to take business away from RH, since they are limiting their prospective customers to only those who already like RHEL.

This comes at odds with the key statement in the WSJ article:
In its quest to sell OpenStack, Red Hat has chosen not to provide support to its commercial Linux customers if they use rival versions of OpenStack, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Whereas that might be factual (i.e. someone leaked documents suggesting this position as an option), it’s not what RH says in their press release is their actual service offering strategy.
To be clear, users are free to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux with any OpenStack offering, and there is no requirement to use our OpenStack technologies to get a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription.

Thus you have four cases.

1.       People who want RHEL and want RHELOP: RH will gladly take their money and support both. Customers get what they want. RH earns their business. Yey Open Source.

2.       People who want RHEL but a different OpenStack provider: RH will support the OS and someone else will support the OpenStack environment. Customers get what they want. RH earns some business, a competitor earns the other business. No lock-in. Yey Open Source.

3.       People who don’t want RHEL, but do want RHELOP: RH will not take their money. So they’ll have to find someone who will. Customers do not get what they want, but that’s ‘cuz RH does not want to manage the mixed environment – since they believe OpenStack and the OS are intertwined. They walk away from customers (their prerogative) and those who believe that OpenStack and the OS are independent can score some business. Yey Open Source.

4.       People who don’t want RHEL and don’t want RHELOP: Nothing changes for them. They don’t care what RH sells.

As best as I can tell, this is not a threat to the success of OpenStack’s stance on supporting a healthy and competitive open environment.

Can anyone confirm or correct the above?

Gil Yehuda
Sr. Director of Open Source, Standards
gyehuda at yahoo-inc.com (408) 336-4857

From: Gil Yehuda [mailto:gyehuda at yahoo-inc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 11:33 AM
To: Dave Nielsen; Joshua McKenty
Cc: <foundation at lists.openstack.org>; Stefano Maffulli
Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Today's WSJ article <-- Alternatives to RHEL?

Suggestion: watch http://press.redhat.com/ Let’s see what Red Hat themselves has to say about their plans to support or not support their products. Why? Because the WSJ might have it right, might have it wrong, or might have it mostly right but wrong in some details. And before people react to a position on the part of a company, we should verify that position.

Then by all means, if they are not playing fair (either from the perspective of the court of law, or the court of public opinion), then the OpenStack community will have to react. And in the case, react strongly.

I’m simply suggesting that we consider the reaction based on what RedHat actually says, not what WSJ says about them.  I haven’t seen them say anything formal yet – when they do (or if they did) please share.

Gil Yehuda
Sr. Director of Open Source, Standards
gyehuda at yahoo-inc.com<mailto:gyehuda at yahoo-inc.com> (408) 336-4857

From: Dave Nielsen [mailto:dnielsen at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 11:20 AM
To: Joshua McKenty
Cc: <foundation at lists.openstack.org<mailto:foundation at lists.openstack.org>>; Stefano Maffulli
Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Today's WSJ article <-- Alternatives to RHEL?

I'm no lawyer, but I think it would be hard to prove RHEL has a monopoly. Still, Red Hat has turned a reliance on RHEL by OpenStack customers into a clear liability for the rest of the OpenStack community. Rather taking Red Hat to court, it seems it would healthier to get serious about supporting a competitive alternative, or helping to create one.

[this my opinion, not that of anyone I may consult for from time to time]
Dave

Dave Nielsen
Principal Consultant: Platform D, Inc<http://platformd.com>.
Part-time Consultant to HP Helion
Co-founder: CloudCamp<http://cloudcamp.org>, BigDataCamp<http://www.bigdatacamp.org>
Co-chair: Cloud SIG<http://cloudsig.org>; SFBay OpenStack<http://www.meetup.com/openstack>, SVDevOps<http://svdevops.com>, SVBigData<http://svbigdata.com>
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On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 8:56 AM, Joshua McKenty <joshua at pistoncloud.com<mailto:joshua at pistoncloud.com>> wrote:
Yes, that’s the one. I’ve printed a PDF just to help out.



--

Joshua McKenty
Chief Technology Officer
Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.
+1 (650) 242-5683<tel:%2B1%20%28650%29%20242-5683>
+1 (650) 283-6846<tel:%2B1%20%28650%29%20283-6846>
http://www.pistoncloud.com

"Oh, Westley, we'll never survive!"
"Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."

On May 14, 2014, at 11:26 AM, Stefano Maffulli <stefano at openstack.org<mailto:stefano at openstack.org>> wrote:

is it this one? Title: Red Hat Plays Hardball on OpenStack Software

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303851804579560290024021158.html&ei=aIpzU_vzFevJsQT_kIGoBw&usg=AFQjCNHe46xKvlhxjlEttnUlRWwzhEXyLA&sig2=sMzbNDF7bRan-69AJ0a5fQ&bvm=bv.66699033,d.cWc&cad=rja

Trick: if you google the title of the article, WSJ will give you the
full article but if you follow the url straight from a link, WSJ
requires login

On 05/14/2014 09:38 AM, Joshua McKenty wrote:
Sorry
- http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303851804579560290024021158

--

Joshua McKenty
Chief Technology Officer
Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.
+1 (650) 242-5683<tel:%2B1%20%28650%29%20242-5683>
+1 (650) 283-6846<tel:%2B1%20%28650%29%20283-6846>
http://www.pistoncloud.com

"Oh, Westley, we'll never survive!"
"Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."

On May 14, 2014, at 6:34 AM, Dave Neary <dneary at redhat.com<mailto:dneary at redhat.com>
<mailto:dneary at redhat.com<mailto:dneary at redhat.com>>> wrote:

Hi Josh,

Do you have a link?

Thanks,
Dave.

On 05/14/2014 09:07 AM, Joshua McKenty wrote:
Board members et al,

As usual, I am not a lawyer. However, given the overtones of
antitrust concern in this article, if other board members and/or
foundation staff feel that we should discuss this, I would ask that
we schedule a quick board-coffee-meeting. We need to avoid any
walking quorums, and we also need to instruct Jonathan and foundation
staff with a clear response. This is not a topic where I feel it
would be appropriate for Alan to represent the board.

Joshua

Sent from my iPhone
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Dave Neary - Community Action and Impact
Open Source and Standards, Red Hat - http://community.redhat.com
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