Glyn Moody aptly asks, “Why doesn’t Red Hat lead?” I posed a similar question a few weeks back, and 100 percent agree that open source needs a leader, and that Red Hat has failed to assume that role:
I have to confess to a certain disappointment with Red Hat. On the one hand, it is clearly the leader of the open source world–both historically and in terms of its size. On the other, it is remarkable for the low profile it keeps: it is striking, for example, how much more influence Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth seems to command, although his company is a tiddler by comparison to Red Hat’s whale shark….[I]t is punching below its weight on the computing scene, and the open source world is suffering as a result.
On one hand, success covers a multitude of sins and to the extent that Red Hat continues to grow, its rising tide will (to a certain extent) raise all boats.
But on the other, Red Hat’s success will ring hollow if Sun and others steal its thunder as the center of the open-source universe. So what can it do?
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