Re: Class Action Law Suit (2 responses)

[Michael Huntingdon <hunting ix netcom com>]

It's my understanding that the RH/Compaq/Alpha relationship is not over and
that both parties are working to agree on the best approach to support
going forward. It might be worth waiting to hear what they have to say
before giving much consideration to any talk of litigation.

In addition, the extra-ordinary growth in Linux over the past several years
is doubtfully the result of the performance superiority of Alpha. It's a
contributing factor; however, marginal at best given the number of other
platforms RH is ported to. This begs the question of how much real revenue
RH might have ever seen as a direct result of Alpha.

The two are a perfect match, but because many preferred the lower price
point of x86 products, and never did the testing on Alpha to determine if
the architecture was better suited from a price/performance perspective,
the number of systems shipped never reached a level required to sustain the
engineering costs. Pure and simple, if the revenue had been there, and it
had been profitable, we'd be in a different situation today.

But I find it hard to believe we can blame Compaq for this. Poor
marketing..yes...but business managers make buying decisions for a variety
of reasons. If a manager knows Alpha has offered higher performance levels
with similar or lower pricing, and the major applications on Alpha can save
their company $$, and they choose the easy road, you can't blame this on
DEC or Compaq.

It's a great architecture...just too bad the vocal support for it was never
this obvious until the Itanium announcement. Again, I'm hopeful the
Compaq/RH announcement will offer a better picture than we've been hearing
so much about recently.

best regards
michael

At 04:03 PM 10/24/01 -0400, you wrote:
>>Huh? what did RHAT buy?
>
>Working with my VERY bad "slave's memory" here is what I'm thinking
>
>I believe that RHAT bought a small software development company with
>expertise in 64 bit development, specifically for the Alpha (Someone help me
>here my brain is mush)
>
>I'd be willing to bet that not all the alpha hardware that RHAT has was
>donated.
>
>RH partnered with Compaq on the Alpha Cluster, Enterprise toolkit and the
>Deluxe edition of the of the Alpha boxed set which included various Compaq
>tools.  Compaq's discoing has devalued those products and made Rat's
>position more difficult in regards to supporting them.  If there are any
>memorandums of understanding between RHAT and Compaq, they may need to be
>reviewed in light of recent events.  In fact I would probably guess a good
>lawyer would say ANY agreement between the 2 companies should be reviewed.
>
>RH certificates where also excepted internally for Compaq/API training.
>(how does this affect anything, i don't know INAL)
>
>>I'm just the lowly scum of the earth developer that never gets told
>anything
>>other than "work harder/faster slave" I'm interested.
>
>In management you can still be treated like a mushroom.
>
>Daniel Potts <danielp@cse.unsw.edu.au> said
>
>>Why not save your money and use it for a licence and engineers to make an
>>Alpha CPU and system. That way you don't need to deal with Compaq FUD and
>>aren't wasting your money with law suits that will only waste time and
>>result in the Alphas demise anyway.
>
>Because personally I'm interested in a good alternative to the x386 entirely
>and because of my background in Physics and the analysis required when I was
>a student the alpha has always struck me as a good sound fast processor.  If
>I get a licence and some good engineers i'd probably have to contend with
>Intel lawsuits right off the bat, sad but I don't put much/any faith in a
>what a company like Compaq may be liscencing in light of their recent deeds.
>
>>Our Alphas didn't suddenly devalue because of these announcements. Last I
>>checked, they were still running at the same speed, computing at a rate
>>that they were when we bought them. The software we run on them didn't
>
>Some software sources as recently mentioned on the list did dry up.
>Development has stopped for others.  Some hardware drivers magically stopped
>being supported from what I understand (that is rumor and hearsay, but
>fairly reliable University source)
>
>>suddenly stop working.. you get the idea. People that rely on any one
>>architecture to run their code are asking for trouble and those people
>>that really need Alpha for running their applications because they have
>>lost the source code or think the porting effort is too large, wake up, it
>>is your own fault.
>
>I test and run all my code on Alpha before I port it to another machine.  If
>it's not 64 bit clean then it's not "good code".  I've been doing that since
>I had my first alpha machine running a distro of Linux called craftworks.
>The problem is that for some really intensive calculations nothing beat an
>Alpha.  That is why some people are so fond of the architecture.
>
>To be honest in the end, it's about holding companies accountable when they
>do something illegal.  If they get away with it, then they will try again,
>and I'm not much of a fan of letting any entity large or small break the law
>with impunity.
>
>
>
>
>
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