Customer Reviews

Under the Radar: How Red Hat Changed the Software Business--and Took Microsoft by Surprise

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the story of Red Hat through its public offering in 1999. Red Hat is the largest provider of fee-based Linux products and services in the world. The book emphasizes the economic model advantages of creating a company based on providing open source software to established companies.

Linux is an operating system for computers that offers many advantages for users by typically being faster, more reliable, less expensive, and easier to improve. It is an open source program, which means that you get all of the software (including the source code) for free and you are licensed to make any changes you want to it for your own use and to share or resell. Unlike other operating systems, this one was developed by the volunteer work by thousands of contributors around the world. Their motivation came from the desire to have a better computer environment to work in, to be able to do their own work better, an altruistic desire to help others, and for personal recognition. Through Red Hat and other Linux providers, Linux is becoming the major alternative operating system to Windows in personal computers.

Think of Linux as being somewhat like creating the world's largest free electronic library for accessing information, by having people with the copyrights on all of the most valuable information share it for free on-line with volunteer librarians to put it all into shape and to create the Web site.

I strongly urge you to read Eric Raymond's excellent book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, before reading this book. Although the open source software movement is accurately summarized in Under the Radar, you will not fully understand its development and potential power without more background. With that background, this book deserves four stars. Without that background, this is a three star book.

If you are like me, what interests you about Linux is whether it will spread beyond advanced users in scientific laboratories. The first sign that that could happen was when ISPs (Internet Service Providers) began favoring Linux for their servers.

In Under the Radar, you will learn a great deal about the reactions at Microsoft, Intel, Netscape, Dell, and other major computer industry companies to the news of Linux's success in these environments. To me, this information confirmed that Linux's best days are ahead of it, as Microsoft's are behind it. While most people are focusing on the Department of Justice's case against Microsoft, the real action is in the development of Linux-based competition for Microsoft. That is where the break-up of the Microsoft monopoly will come from. Now that you can get personal computers with Linux preloaded from Dell and others (and a Windows clone of Linux is just down the road), the monopoly is doomed. That will be good for us all.

What will even be better for us is if Linus Torvald's vision of eliminating all software patents occurs. Then open source will become the standard for software rather than the exception.

I also learned a lot about how Red Hat will be important in taking Linux into the corporate market by making people feel comfortable with its reliability and predictability. I wish the book had spent more time in discussing how current and potential customers evaluate Red Hat's version of Linux. That would have made this a five star book, assuming you already had the open source software background to understand how the development process works.

Where else is secrecy delaying human progress? (I call this the trade secret stall.) Could it be that this will be the case with patents on genes? How can the equivalent of open source development of gene therapies be pursued to accelerate healthy progress?

Open your mind to the full potential for cooperation!

A fascinating story that succeeds somehow despite the terrible writing. It as if the authors simply assembled at random the chapters and, in many cases, whole paragraphs within any given chapter. There is no discernable flow or organization to the tale -- chronoglogical or otherwise -- and it is difficult to follow the events being described. As acknolwedged in one of the introductions, it appears that the book was all too hastily thrown together in the face of a looming deadline. Still, the story is worth reading for software engineers, entrepreneurs and others involved in the VC industry.

The importance of the topic in this book is highly underestimated. Anybody considering themselves a "personal computer novice" might want to read this book. (and perhaps even those that feel they are "experts.")

For some of us who were "plain old average Joe's being forced to learn computers" and still programming on computers using fortran "card readers" in college in the early 1980's, and then used the Unix based system in the "real business world" in the mid 80's, only to be shocked and perplexed with everyone's fascination with this software called "Windows" (which this reader found to be incredibly unreliable and complicated to use in comparison to Unix based systems) in the late 80's, this book is a complete breath of fresh air !

If you are the typical user of a PC desktop at home, and are even only ocasionally frustrated at the unreliable nature of a Windows based PC and the super-slow connection to the internet, I would highly recommend this book. Even though your PC might not see this type of system directly, I humbly believe it will dramatically improve the overall performance of anyone using and depending on the internet.

It is very readable, and easy to understand at least in concept (I say that because I haven't even utilized Unix based computers since 1983 and am definitely not a programmer or computer "geek") I do recall with great clarity the "good ole days" during a 3 year period as a college student trying to pay his way through school, that this type of system NEVER crashed !

A very sincere Thank You to all of the computer programmers who unselfishly committed their time and energy to developing the "free" software.

PS. For all of its misgivings, this reader wants to note that MS Windows of any version has done quite a bit of good for the people who have benefited from the personal computer over the past 15 years or so, and probably will for the foreseeable future...So thank you also MS. (and Bill even if you have more money than You know Who)

This book is a great read, and provides fascinating details and insight into the surprising success of Red Hat (which recently broke IPO history on Wall Street), and the open source software movement as a whole. Highly recommended.

a great text on the history of the open source movement and on the first IPO for a business catering to the linux community.

a new business model has proven successful. hats off to robert young and wendy goldman rohm for taking the time to do the research to "get it right" and to map out an alternative to the more traditional business plans of the past.

it just became required reading for our team. methinks investors wanting to understand the new model [of making money based upon a 'free' product] will gain tremendous benefit too.

If you don't know anything about Red Hat or the open source movement this book is a good place to start. Though most of the information I've read in Linux Magazine and Linux Journal. From a historical perspective this book is good becuase it chronicles the rise of a new kind of company.

My suggestion buy it, read it, exchange it for something you want to permantly keep. That is what I did.

You can be a Linux enthusiast yet still find this book about as dull as the instruction booklet for your microwave oven. It's a combination of corporate cheerleading, meeting minutes, and open-source propagandizing. I approve of Young and his efforts, but this badly written, chaotically organized, and totally colorless book gives them a bad name. It has none of the atmospherics and vivid personality of, say, a book like BURN RATE. I cringe to say it, but even Bill Gates's THE ROAD AHEAD was more interesting...

Young convincingly reminds the reader that the OSS leader really wants to be the Heinze ketchup of the computer industry - a brand name users can trust. What the book boasts in simplicity of message, it lacks in sincerity and genuine insight. This is not a computer manual, but rather a basis for doing business in the open source market place (like you were going to start). The problem is, Young decides to write his company's history minutes before going public. Quite period? Not a good time to write a book.

The suits give each other millions of dollars.

Robert Young styles himself as a salesman, not a technical type, and it shows.

Meanwhile the real story goes untold.