AOL in negotiations to buy Red Hat
Not one to normally cut n paste news articals i find, but I thought this maybe of interest to many here :-
By Alec Klein,
Washington Post Staff Writer
AOL Time Warner Inc. is in talks to buy Red Hat Inc., a prominent distributor of a computer operating system, an acquisition that would position the media giant to challenge arch rival Microsoft Corp., according to sources familiar with the matter.
Red Hat, a publicly traded firm based in Durham, N.C., sells products and services based on the Linux operating system, the freely available software developed collaboratively by volunteers. Linux is designed for a wide variety of gear, running corporate computer servers and consumer devices such as personal computers, cell phones and video games.
The Red Hat negotiations –which are still fluid – are the latest indication that AOL Time Warner, the world's largest media company, is looking for alternatives to software made by Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs 90 percent of the world's PCs. The longtime competitors have fought over an array of rival consumer technologies lately, including online subscription services, instant-messaging systems and Web-based video and audio players.
Officials of AOL, Red Hat and Microsoft declined to comment.
More HERE.
Would AOL buying out Red Hat be a good idea? Personally I feel the more people who are given an alternative to M$'s products the better - I just bought Red Hat 7.2 today :) - real competition is what is needed in the O/S world. Though perhaps Red Hat fans might start to use another Linux O/S if the buy out was to go ahead.
