Guys, the reason RedHat's linux *distribution* is dead:

1) It's not cool (and has not been for the last 10 years).

2) It's not free.

Most small-mediums sized company's operating system choice goes like this:

CEO: So Ben, What operating system should we use?

CTO: Well Bill, I think we should use <insert personal preference here> because of <x,y,z>.

Personal preference tends to involve quite a lot of the cool factor and a large amount of the "I'm a stingy bastard and don't want to pay for stuff I can get for free".

RedHat's only selling points relate to large sized deployments and remote management, these will never be cool, just like groupware will never be cool.

Get Sarah Lacey. And have her interview Stallman!

Nice Kermit vs. BillG game this week. BIG thumbs down to gnu boy bands - it was the absolute worst part of RevolutionOS.

Well Bill Gates may not fart angels, but if he follows through a bit then we get a new version of Windows!

Had to ask.

Also: The guy who says Red Hat isn't cool. What are you on? No OS is cool, IT isn't cool! I think people are beginning to wake up to the fact that reading and looking at things on a computer is not cool, even if you try and call it surfing.

To quote Dave from the discussion: "Ours are not proprietary - ours are just not available in the community version. They are Open Source code. When you pay, and everything, or you become a subscriber, or whatever else, we don't actually keep anything closed."

Maybe Dave ought to read the definition of Open Source.... I did and here is my analysis: http://pzf.fremantle.org/2008/07/open-source.html

Paul Fremantle (a dangerous Apache License company founder)

Gents,

As for the guest suggestions ,may I suggest wandering completey off the beaten track and bypassing the usual suspects, shuttleworth, stallman, vance! and people in OSS who's name starts with Bob.... ( don't they all )

How about talking to a real pioneer in software development and getting Jeff Minter ( Llamasoft ) in on the program. I met him in the 80's at the personal computer world show in olympia, he was a hero before and didn't dissapoint.

So lets bypass the 'cloud' for a week, forget about Big tables and google and talk to someone who's been in the game a very long time and doing his own and very strange things.

Please...........................

Naturally, you'd need to track the mighty Yak down at his farm in Wales and fight the security Llama's, but with enough will in the world it would at least make for an interesting podcast........

Go on Ashley, you know it makes sense....

My first reaction was to vote for Ms. Lacy. What geek doesn't like hearing a smart nerd chick talk? But after looking at the links for the other two potential guests, I have to say Bob Bickel looks like he might be the more interesting person to interview. He seems like someone who is passionate about his interests, and would provide some truly interesting insight into the industry. But if he says no, nerd chicks are OK, too.

Above spelling mistake non-intentional 'Ashlee'..

The coat... ... it's made from baby seals and small children.

CEO: So Ben, What operating system should we use?

CTO: Well Bill, I think we should use <insert personal preference here> because of <x,y,z>.

But then....

CEO: Listen Ben, if you want to play around you are in the wrong company. I recently went golfing with this guy from Rotary and they are all running their stuff on <insert "forgotten but soon remembered" preference here>. Virtualized. And he knows the top salesman from <outfit>, so we can get a real deal. I suggest you look into it.

I vote for Sarah, too.

Also, please shorten the music at the end. I'm lazy, so I hate to have to manually delete the podcast from my iPod/iTunes because I don't want to listen to the same boring, fairly unpleasant music to the end.