Michael Chen, director, Red Hat was recently on a visit to India. In an interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, assistant editor, EFYtimes.com, Chen elucidated upon various issues ranging from the awareness about Linux and open source to India's strengths and the challenges the country is facing in the open source world. Here are some excerpts from the lively exchange.

ET: Do you think there are still issues regarding the awareness about Linux and open source?

Michael Chen: I guess, there are. We recently did a survey to explore what people think of Red Hat. We found that while people are very well aware that we are a 100 per cent pure open source company, they nevertheless equate Red Hat with Linux, which is not good. Now, the challenge is how to help people understand that open source is more than Linux; Linux is more than just free software and a lot more than that. So, yes there is an awareness issue. But, we are working on it now.

ET: On the awareness front, Ubuntu seems to be making waves these days in the user segment, to an extent that people don't say they use Linux anymore; they say 'I use Ubuntu'. What do you say about that?

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