Ubuntu to enact new marketing strategy: “Stay quiet and watch Red Hat implode”

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4262665/ubuntu-to-enact-new-marketing-strategy-stay-quiet-and-watch-red-hat-implode

by BryanLunduke • 3 years ago

37 19 3 years ago

lunduke.locals.com

juujian• 3 years ago

That's what it's come to? I have been using Ubuntu for about 15 years, but with snaps still starting up as slowly as they do in finally switching once support for 22.04 runs out.

cdchn2• 3 years ago

Can't tell if missed the parody nature of the post, or if also parodying switching off Ubuntu because of snaps?

Brian_K_White5• 3 years ago

I would absolutely switch off of Ubuntu because of snaps. I don't know why anyone would think that was a joke.

RedHat and Ubuntu both have gone bad and are no longer working for their customers but for themselves.

kundaru• 3 years ago

Canonical cannot do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36666920

jasoneckert• 3 years ago

I believe the author is providing an amusing viewpoint in this post rather than a serious one. After all, the final sentence is: In other news, Richard Stallman's head has exploded.

gary_0• 3 years ago

Satire is dead.

dhruvmittal• 3 years ago

"Ajar source" is definitely the funniest take I've seen on this. Kudos, Bryan.

In other news, Richard Stallman's head has exploded.

I'm honestly not sure about this one. If I'm recalling Stallman's takes correctly, I think he's fine with "Ajar source" as long as the source is open to Red Hat's customers. I remember him saying something along those lines when explaining how he expects developers to make a living-- something along the lines of it being okay to charge money for your product, but then your customer should have [some list of freedoms].

Maybe the telemetry does it though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mcpackieh4• 3 years ago

RMS has always been clear that selling Free Software and only distributing the source to people who bought the software from you is fine. But I don't think he's ever suggested that somebody selling Free Software in this way might threaten to cut their customers off from future updates if they ever exercise their right to redistribute the software they bought. Redistribution is a key part of "[some list of freedoms]", and this "you can redistribute this version but if you do you'll be cut off from future versions" scheme is not something I've ever heard him endorse.

webmaven• 3 years ago

*> Redistribution is a key part of "[some list of freedoms]", and this "you can redistribute this version but if you do you'll be cut off from future versions" scheme is not something I've ever heard [RMS] endorse.

He likely wouldn't endorse it, but I don't think he would condemn it as non-Free. After all, if a company wants to "fire" a customer, they're allowed to do so, for whatever stupid reason they like.

As far as the customer's freedoms are concerned, as long as they're aware that by redistributing they're pulling the ripcord on the relationship and starting (or switching to) an unfriendly fork, well, that's just an oddly formal version of the process.

mcpackieh4• 3 years ago

Why are people still referring to "Red Hat" instead of IBM? Back when that sale was announced the talk was that Red Hat's culture wouldn't change, they'd be operating independently from IBM, so it made sense to still speak of Red Hat. Well there has evidently been a dramatic shift in Red Hat's culture; do people still believe this "independent subsidiary" stuff?

CameronNemo• 3 years ago

The Brand Asset is still going strong, for now. IBM'll burn through it soon enough.

I remember that acquihire like it was yesterday... I was sad to see my $RHT shares liquidated.

Brian_K_White5• 3 years ago

Fact.

But Ubuntu are if anything worse in their own ways.

So if there is any RH to Ubuntu traffic, I don't expect it to stay.

Anyone considering Ubuntu should probably just use Debian. Not that Debian is the ultimate answer to all needs, just that "if you were considering Ubuntu".

But really I don't know what to suggest these days. Alma & Rocky have a strategy for the moment but who knows if RH will figure out a way to break that at any minute.

That leaves what? Arch? Nix? Gentoo? no. Maybe just everyone makes their own based on Alpine or something.

I mean at work not your desktop.

mcpackieh4• 3 years ago

I think we can probably count on Debian staying true to Debian, so that's a good choice. Besides that, if somebody was using Red Hat and wants to continue using a distro with corporate support, SUSE Linux Enterprise seems like the obvious choice to me. Also OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is great for home/hobby use.

Brian_K_White5• 3 years ago

ok agreed

I actually had chosen opensuse for my own employer for almost 20 years (holy cow, but yeah from about 99 to about 2018) and then switched to Centos due to my feeling that the engineering at Suse had gone down the toilet.

I don't know if Suse got better in the last few years but obviously Centos 7 was an unlucky time to decide to commit to the next 20 years of Centos future.

But opensuse was great for most of that time, and at it's worst, better than Centos now. Suse at least haven't tried to pull either RedHat or Ubuntu shenanigans. They're looking pretty good now!

Ubuntu to enact new marketing strategy: “Stay quiet and watch Red Hat implode”

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