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

[madodel@ptdprolog.net]

In <3C4B230C.8030107@3times25.net>, on 01/20/02 at 03:05 PM,
   Geoffrey <esoteric@3times25.net> said:

>>>
>>>AOL doesn't even use their own browser.  Figure that one out.
>>>
>> 
>> IBM doesn't use their own Operating System either.  Microsoft demanded that IBM
>> standardize on Windows and IBM did just that.


>Although that may well have some truth to it, it's unrelated to the this 
>thread.


I think it does from the point of view that AOL bought Netscape never
planning to support its own product.  They just wanted leverage over m$. 
Its all about bargaining power.   In the end, m$ was able to brush it off,
since they had already grabbed overwhelming market share with exploder. 
So perhaps AOL is looking at Red Hat to give them the leverage they
thought they'd get from Netscape.  Some people just keep trying the same
old tactics, no matter how bad they've been burned before.

In the case of OS/2, m$ couldn't force IBM to kill it, but they could
wield their  handcuff licensing to prevent IBM from preloading their own
operating system, which IBM still supports to this day, on their own
hardware.   IBM was so intent on pleasing m$, that they supposedly lost at
least one big sale in Brazil because IBM refused to preload OS/2 on any
workstations or servers, while Compaq (or maybe it was Dell) was more then
willing to bend the rules to sell several thousand machines.

So if AOL buys Red Hat, will that force m$ to be more receptive to AOL?  
Does AOL even have software that will run on Linux?  



Mark

-- 

 From the OS/2 Desktop of: Mark Dodel

  "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself.   That in it's essence, is Fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power." Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Message proposing the Monopoly Investigation, 1938 

  For a choice in the future JOIN VOICE NOW
    check out http://www.os2voice.org/index.html