Meeting |
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Report |
Meeting |
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Report |
March 20, 2001 |
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President Don opened the meeting. Pete deWitt introduced a large number of
guests, including guests of the Club and visiting Rotarians. John Lassiter reported on Health and Happiness. On the health side, Bob Barber is now at home, recovering from an illness. As far as happiness, John gave some "marriage advice" as well as some "Only in America" tips. After the pledge of allegiance, Richard Early led the Club in singing "Danny Boy" with Thomas Moore not only playing the piano but singing part of the song solo a cappella. Bronnie McNabb gave the invocation. Sitting at the head table with President Don and our speaker were Mary Mack, Bill Underwood, Bob Young, Bronnie McNabb, Suzunne Fetscher, and John Magee. Before the introduction of our speaker, President Don restated the goal of increasing our membership. There was also a request from Tom Robertson for additional workers on the Habitat project for either Saturday, March 24, or the following week, March 31. Bob Young, with less hair, introduced Bob Young, with some hair, to talk about whether the future of innovation is in jeopardy. Bob Young, the speaker, is a native of Canada who moved to Raleigh about five years ago. Bob helped found Red Hat, Inc. He is also chairman of the Center for the Public Domain, a nonprofit foundation established to help the public gain free and open access to intellectual property. Bob began by talking about North Carolina. Being a history major, he said he originally thought of North Carolina as a tobacco/cotton state. He moved to North Carolina because of the infrastructure and technology in the Research Triangle. The state changed over the years because of the foresight of people like Luther Hodges, who took the long view and bet that if you built it, the people would come. Bob did suggest that since no one outside of North Carolina knows exactly where the Research Triangle is located, all of North Carolina could become the Research Triangle and any technology company in the state could market themselves as such. Prior to founding the very successful Red Hat, Bob was in the computer leasing business. By 1993, he had managed to reduce his net worth to less than it was when he graduated from college. He was leasing systems that used a form of the Linux operating system. He was trying to do business with many large businesses and he began talking to the technology people in these companies. Many of these people loved the Linux software because you could make changes to it and could get control of it. Most software is proprietary, but Linux is not. The Linux model is unlike a feudal model, as Bob put it, where the vendor has control over the customer. The customer cannot make changes in this feudal model. From this Linux-based operating system, Red Hat has built a much larger operating system with the "killer ap" being the web server application. This system is currently being used by about 30% of the internet websites. Red Hat offers software, support and services to their customers, treating them, as Bob says, as partners, not victims. Bob's goal with Red Hat is no less then to reinvent the industry. What could be a threat to this type of innovative model that can be used or added to by anyone? According to Bob, copyrights and patents issued for ideas instead of inventions could destroy innovation not only for companies like Red Hat but for the future of innovation. To that end, Bob helped found the Center for the Public Domain to support collaboration, open access, and the fair exchange of information. Bob was asked about the Microsoft case. He said he didn't have any opinion on the government position but he did have an opinion on whether Microsoft is a monopoly. He asked how many people in the audience had PC systems that were based on an operating system other than Windows. Only two people raised their hands. Bob said that was the answer. An additional question was asked concerning how Red Hat could make money if it gave away its software. Bob said that prior to April 2000 that was an irrelevant question, but not now. Red Hat makes money by helping customers with new applications, giving service and support to customers and partnering with large companies like IBM, Dell, and Compaq. As Bob Young stated as he put on a red cap, "We give away the software and sell the red hat." * * * |
In Memoriam
LESLIE G. BERRY, JR. January 25,1914 March 1, 2001
Charlotte Rotarian Leslie Graham Berry, Jr., passed away on Thursday, March 1, 2001. He
was a native Charlottean, born here in 1914. * * * POWELL'S
Michael Elder had
two Goodwill Stores robbed in one day. * * * |
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Revised: January 31, 2008.
