In the face of adversity, Red Hat tries to act natural

It's no secret that Shit for Brains thinks he owns Linux, or at least part of it. And it's also no secret that Red Hat thinks SFB is full of shit. But every couple months Stevie B. hints at an intellectual property lawsuit just to keep everybody on their toes. This time around, however, Red Hat says it isn't going to push back. They say they're just going to smile and nod and act like everything is normal. My lawyers are following the whole thing very closely. They say that Novell caving in was a good sign and that soon enough we'll be able to sue Microsoft for violating our patents. No joke. And we're talking large sums of money here, people. When you consider the fact that every computer running Windows has a little relational database inside, you'll see the scale of what I'm talking about. So we're almost ready to start entering into license negotiations with Microsoft. We think they should pay us about $10,000 per Windows installation. That's fair, right?

Revenge of the Nerds coming to Xbox

Doesn't it seem like Microsoft takes a hit every time Red Hat releases their numbers? It sure seems that way to me. Red Hat announces record profits and Microsoft's stock goes down. Red Hat announces that they've gained market share and Microsoft fires a couple of their vice presidents. Don't ask me why it's like that. When you really look at the numbers you realize Microsoft has nothing to fear. But they're still afraid. It's like the elephant jumping out of its skin every time it sees the mouse. This last time Microsoft tried something new. Shit for Brains said, well, look. If we release Halo 3 on the same week Red Hat announces quarterly earnings, we'll probably be okay. And they were. In fact, Halo 3 actually did much better than they thought it would. Which is kind of surprising when you consider that the game sucks ass.

So the new plan is to release an Xbox game every time Red Hat announces quarterly earnings. That way, according to Shit for Brains, Microsoft can weather the storm. So SFB has directed Bungie to start working on a new game. This one is going to be a lot like the Revenge of the Nerds movie, except it's going to star younger Silicon Valley greats. Gates and Jobs are in there, of course. So am I. Larry made it in, people. Microsoft sent a couple developers down here to look at pictures of me when I was younger (above and to right) so they could get me just right. The evil frat boys are going to be the gentlemen from the SEC.

And you probably won't believe this, but Shit for Brains actually has hair in the game. I tripped out the first time I saw his character. I didn't even recognize the dude. Seriously. But here's the best part. I bribed the Microsoft guys to put in this cheat code that makes Shit for Brains go postal. Once they put it in the game, all you'll have to do is just punch in the code and Stevie B. will start throwing chairs and shit. Priceless.

Report: Red Hat to gain more market share than OS/2 Warp

Let's hear it for these Red Hat guys. They think they're going to capture half of the server market by 2015. See here. They won't make it, of course, but I do appreciate the effort. And I'll tell you that this is really great news for us here at Oracle, because we're all about Linux. Seriously. Why do you think we released 11g for Linux first? We hate the Microturds even more than we hate the turds working on JBoss.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret here: Linus Torvalds is my homie. I take the dude and his little toy penguin up in the MiG sometimes. We buzz the Microsoft campus and talk about that movie called March of the Penguins and how he really wanted to be an extra but didn't get the part. And believe me when I say that Linus hates MySQL more than I do. He really does. And we're both mixed on Red Hat. He's leaning towards Ubuntu now and I'm about to jump ship for FreeBSD. But we're friends. Partners in arms, as we say on my boat.

A bit of advice, Szulik

I was impressed yesterday, Matt. Seriously. Red Hat's numbers turned out pretty well, and I see some potential for future growth. That's the good news. The bad news is that there's a lot of bad news. First of all, pretty much everybody views Red Hat as the Microsoft of the Linux world. Face it, bro. You went from darling to Darth Vader in like eight years. You lost the marketing war. How did it happen? Well, you started taking things away from people and you stopped being cool. That's the funny thing about people, Szulik. They don't really appreciate it when you take things away from them. Fedora sucks ass, and everybody knows it. Maybe you don't care about that. The problem is that lots of little teenage turd droppers love Ubuntu. They've never even heard about Red Hat, Matt. So you've got a bunch of Slashdot admin types -- the ones who are hopelessly behind the times and still think grep will solve all their problems -- using Red Hat. And the new people are all using Ubuntu. What do you think is going to happen? You're going to get broadsided by Ubuntu. When that happens, Canonical will pick up the enterprise support and you'll be fucked.

And then there's JBoss. Honestly, you never should have bought it. We knew that years ago. You didn't. And it's all working out exactly the way we thought it would. Get rid of it. JBoss will never make money. People can get Tomcat for free and it works better anyway.

Which brings me to the economy. I'm still not even convinced that this subscription thing is going to work. If things take a turn for the worst, all of your star subscribers are going to make their lazy admins get off their fat asses and actually do some work. You think it can't happen, but it can. I've seen it.

To tell you the truth, I don't even know why I'm telling you all this. I know you won't read it. Nobody listens to Larry. Ah, well. After Red Hat kicks the bucket, we'll start doing Red Hat support ourselves. Somebody's got to carry the torch, right? It might as well be Oracle.

Red Hat shareholders head for the hills

Big news today from CNET: Credit Suisse is downgrading Red Hat's stock from Outperform to Neutral. See here. Why? According to Credit Suisse, "Our checks indicate that the organization continues to be in a state of flux as the company works through its transition to a multi-product company." That's a polite way of saying that Red Hat's JBoss integration has failed miserably, its organizational structure is so fucked up that nobody can tell who's supposed to be doing what, and its subscription model could possibly be failing. Minor problems, admittedly. But still enough to shake people's faith in the world's greatest open source software company. Strangely enough, CNET recommends that Red Hat let JBoss do its own thing, "similar to how Oracle has managed its acquisitions, to good effect." Um, yeah. 'Nuff said.

Red Hat tags along; bashes Microsoft

These Red Hat people are a riot. Seriously. I mean, check this out. After spending the entire day watching the rest of the world react positively to Europe's decision to punish Microsoft, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik finally issues a press release commending the decision. Szulik says, "Given Red Hat’s firm belief that competition, not questionable patent and trade secret claims, drives innovation and creates greater consumer value, we were pleased with the overall decision and look forward to examining the decision in greater detail." In other words, Red Hat strongly believes that buggy open source operating systems drive innovation. But only when customers pay Red Hat thousands of dollars per year to support the buggy open source operating systems. That's where the greater consumer value comes in. Get it? You better. Because according to Szulik & Co. Red Hat's pretty much the only enterprise alternative to Microsoft. So good luck, dudes. And remember to use protection. Because honestly, I wouldn't touch that company with a ten foot pole.

Hellva job, Szulik

This is one shipwreck I don't want to miss. I mean, just look at all the great things Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's CEO, is doing for the company. Their stock has tanked. Their JBoss buyout is starting to look like the pile of dogshit it was all along. And now Novell is beating them at their own game. I can kind of understand buying JBoss, but losing to Novell? Come on.

Listen, if I owned stock in Red Hat, I'd put Szulik out to pasture ASAP. The dude's past his prime and he doesn't know when to quit. Take the guy out, and do it now before all of you are tarred and feathered by the Ubuntu turds.