Red Hat: No plans for a traditional consumer desktop
Red Hat has been suggesting for years that it isn't interested in the traditional consumer desktop as a business, but it has finally come out and said it in concrete terms:
[W]e have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future.
That's OK, presumably, because there isn't a market for it today, anyway, as Novell's Ron Hovsepian recently noted. Hence, Novell is focusing its desktop efforts on the enterprise.
But I don't think either Novell or Red Hat are nearly as focused on the desktop as they are on the server, where the real money is. Only Ubuntu, community platform that it is (with a much smaller revenue base to grow), can really afford to make the Linux desktop a top focus (though, having said this, Novell does put a lot of resources into improving its desktop product - I'm still waiting to receive my copy of SLED so I can give it a spin...).
From Red Hat, the most interesting work that it has done is in conceptualizing a novel Linux desktop. In Red Hat speak, this was the One Laptop Per Child project but has morphed into something bigger: the Red Hat Global Desktop. Unfortunately, RHGD has been delayed a few times and was announced to be delayed again:
We originally hoped to deliver RHGD within a few months, and indeed the technology side of the product is complete. There have, however, been a number of business issues that have conspired to delay the product for almost a year. These include hardware and market changes, startup delays with resellers, getting the design and delivery of appropriate services nailed down and, unsurprisingly, some multimedia codec licensing knotholes. Right now we are still working our way through these issues.
In the meantime, Novell still rules the corporate Linux desktop (which unfortunately is still a bit like being the tallest skyscraper in Provo, Utah...), Ubuntu rules the community desktop (which means great branding but not much money), and Red Hat dabbles with OLPC and other such projects (again, no money).
None of which can be hugely profitable to any of the vendors, but it does make for an interesting Linux desktop landscape, something that can't be said for the generic Windows desktop market which is as bland as it is massive.
Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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We have three products desktop Linux products and announced a fourth last year. We feel that none of our products are market leaders, so we will publicly dismiss the idea that there is a market. That will make that lack of leadership look less embarrassing.
The Global Online Desktop that we announced last year is late and we many cancel the project. Why? Well our bean counters are not willing to invest in the real fight which is in the ecosystem building required to make a desktop platform.
Btw we just lost a good chunk of our desktop development team to a start up but we would prefer not mention that.
And while we, Red Hat are surrendering wholesale to the idea that there is no market - let's undermine the success of GNU/Linux on the desktop by attacking others as neither having business savy or profit focus
...Then at the same time let's say that don't spend enough on research and development.
Finally - Let's do it a week before the largest desktop release of Linux in 5 years. Yeah that will really help.
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Wow!
Red Hat are a really impressive corporation who have and continue to do great things for GNU/Linux. This post however, was sad and Red Hat did itself and the community a dis-service in the posting.