Red Hat’s new CEO
January 4, 2008 – 3:42 pm by JohnJim Whitehurst, the man hired as Delta’s CEO to lead them out of bankruptcy, is the new CEO of Red Hat, Inc. His and Red Hat’s goal in the near future is to keep a sizeable portion of open source software, support, development, and “leadership” out of the hands of the likes of Microsoft and Oracle, which, it is thought, would eliminate the “openness” of many open-source applications and corner computer users into using and paying for closed, proprietary software, the way they always have with their products.
In a way, I understand Microsoft’s desire to appeal to the large computer geek crowd and put on a show of supporting free and open-source software because it is a good PR move and it could induce many Microsoft-haters to reconsider their ire. But, on the other hand, we know Microsoft and lots of other companies (e.g., Apple, Oracle) have no true and lasting interest in software that is free as in freedom, and seek to corner consumers into using and paying for their closed-source, legal-monopoly-protected products. I really don’t think any free-and-open-source effort by behemoth companies will work (any better or worse than their current business strategies work), because computer users won’t trust them and because it goes against their very nature to support the open-source movement. They won’t know how to do it or how to keep it up in the long run.