[Am-info] AOL in Negotiations to Buy Red Hat

[Mike Stephen]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 22:27:03 -0500, Paul Rickard wrote:

>========== On 2002.01.19 01:30 PM, Mitch Stone typed: ============
>
>>This development is really puzzling. What possible use could AOL-TW have 
>>for Red Hat? About as much as they did for Netscape? Even less, I'd 
>>think, since they don't get any unique technology from Red Hat.
>
>    Doesn't make any sense to me, either. Unless RedHat is doing 
>something I haven't heard of. Why spend that kind of money to bury it in 
>the same place they buried Netscape and ICQ? Unless that is one of 
>Microsoft's demands in some kind of contract, which is what rumors said 
>was AOL's real reason for buying Netscape. But the AOL icon is gone from 
>XP anyway, so that wouldn't fit in this case.

I agree that this makes no sense for AOL.  If they actually want an operating system that will 
compete with Windows, and they are thinking that if they spend a whack of dollars on a redhat 
company, they would be much better off with FreeBSD as a starting point due to the less restrictive 
license arrangements.  The GPL basically makes putting big bucks into a GPL based OS senseless.  
However if someone could get a whisper in Steves ear, perhaps AOL could license OS/2 from IBM, 
put 50-100 milllion into fixing it up and adding all the newest geegaws, and getting a nice developers 
package together. They actually could dent the Microsoft monopoly.  I know a company that has a 
couple of hundred million to invest in an operating system would have the best chance with OS/2, 
and certainly not with Linux which is the antichrist to capitalist software business. Of all the 
operating systems available today, Beos. OS/2, and QNX are the most forward looking operating 
systems.  Almost all the others are so old fashioned as to no longer be considered a modern 
operating system. I am amazed at how the Linux community thinks Linux is so up to date when I 
see it as so backward as to be not worthwhile improving.  And with control of the operating system 
being in ... well no control whatsoever, it is going in a direction that no-one can see and no-one can 
direct. The three most promising modern operating systems were OS/2, Beos, and QNX.

Give me a budget of 50 million and I know I could deliver an operating system based on OS/2 that 
could compete head to head with Microsoft.  Needless to say it would (it actually does today in its 
existing condition) blow away all the X86 unixes as a desktop operating system.
>From the Desk of Mike Stephen