AOL in talks to acquire Red Hat

[Simon Cousins]

Cluggers,

Thought this might be of interest:

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Report: AOL in talks to acquire Red Hat 
By Rick Perera 
22 January, 2002 8:45 BERLIN, Germany

http://www.computerworld.com.au/IDG2.NSF/a/000592F2?OpenDocument&n=e&c=C
T
  
AOL Time Warner Inc. (AOLTW) is in talks over a potential acquisition of
Red Hat Inc., a major distributor of the open-source Linux operating
system, The Washington Post reported Saturday. 
The negotiations "are still fluid," the paper said, citing sources
familiar with the matter. AOLTW subsidiary America Online Inc. (AOL) is
said to be interested in Linux as a possible alternative to the dominant
Windows operating systems of its archrival Microsoft Corp. 

Officials at AOL, Red Hat, and Microsoft could not be immediately
reached. The Post said the companies had declined to comment. 

AOL has feuded with Microsoft in the past over issues such as the tie-in
between AOL's proprietary Internet software and Microsoft's Internet
Explorer Web browser. AOL revamped its own Netscape browser last year,
amid reports that it might drop its partnership with Microsoft and use
Netscape instead. 

AOL on users' PCs currently runs on Windows, but could be configured to
bypass the Microsoft operating system and run on Red Hat's Linux
instead, sources told the Post. 

A competitor of Red Hat in the marketing of Linux, Germany's SuSE Linux
AG, said large corporations have been increasingly open to the
alternative operating system. 

"In the last half year we've seen a marked growth in interest from large
companies, but only from the user side -- that they want to use Linux in
their own systems," said spokesman Christian Egle. "From the financial
side, we had an investment recently from the fund iMillennium (Capital
Management, Inc.), which includes big companies -- (business software
maker) SAP AG, Deutsche Bank AG, (consulting and software company)
Accenture (Ltd.), and La Caixa (La Caja de Ahorros y Pensiones de
Barcelona SA), a big Spanish bank. So there's already an interest from
key market players."

Ends.

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Simon Cousins
simon at simoncousins.com