Journal Zarf's Journal: What makes an open source project thrive? 3
Why, for example, is MySQL a big business now and not PostgreSQL? What makes on project succeed where another starves out? What makes Ubuntu the new wonder kind and Gentoo a fading star? What happened to RedHat and the spot light? Why does one project capture our attention and another fade into obscurity? Is it only technical superiority? Is it all about marketing? Is it politics? Is it community?
I don't know, I'm asking.
A few ideas (Score:2)
RedHat in the spotlight: RedHat is still a pretty big name, but with more new distros, attention starts getting divided. Again, Ubuntu is getting the most growth because it's very good for people new to Linux. Still, RHEL has a sizeable corporate user base (which is now it's target audience), and there are plenty of people who use Fedora.
Re: (Score:2)
I would say that being the dominant player comes from a combination of getting your name out there and giving people what they want.
Well, I guess you could argue that the PostgreSQL people gave the people what they wanted but didn't do a good job with getting their name out there... and the MySQL people gave just enough of what the people wanted to get their name out there and in the last three years has been doing a bang up job of giving the people what they want.
Still doesn't give me a good idea of what happened to Perl... which is what I've been wondering... really... where is my Perl 6? How long has it been?
A lot of the fragm
RHT (Score:1)
Based on their high P/E ration, I would say that Red Hat's still got buzz. They've also moved over the NYSE, although their market cap is only 4 Billion. The stock's doing fair to middling.