Posted on 03/10/2005 9:38:47 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Senior OSDL executive tells vnunet.com of systematic campaign of disinformation
So-called "enemies of Linux" are conducting a systematic campaign of disinformation which aims to undermine the enterprise credibility of the open source operating system, a senior executive from the Open Source Development Labs has told vnunet.com.
Nelson Pratt, marketing director of the pro-Linux organisation, which boasts Linus Torvalds among its top brass, said that unnamed vendors are trying to scare firms with a campaign claiming that Linux is inadequately supported for enterprise use.
However, Pratt argues that these charges simply do not hold up. "There are enemies of Linux that will introduce questions about the stability and ability of some companies to offer service and support, but there is the same quality of service and support available for Linux as there is for any big enterprise version of Unix," he said.
Linux is expected to become a $36bn business by 2008 and well over a quarter of all servers shipping are running the open source OS, according to Pratt.
"It's not surprising that the revenue is so great. More and more commercial organisations choose to buy Linux rather than download and deploy it independently," he said.
"They are increasingly treating the operating system as an enterprise product and engaging commercial firms of the calibre of Computer Associates, HP, IBM and Dell to support deployment."
Pratt also insists that the security of Linux
is perfectly adequate for enterprise use. "Linux is absolutely a secure operating system to the extent that it does not suffer any more or less than any other mature enterprise operating system. The 2.6 kernel is a key step forward in terms of boosting security and reliability," he said.
Specifically, Pratt disputed recent US research suggesting that measuring the time between security patches shows that Linux is less secure than Windows.
"Not every patch going into an operating system is in response to a security breach. Some enemies of Linux would say that the issue of patches shows how secure an OS is. I'm not calling out one vendor here, but it depends which side of their mouth they are talking out of," he said.
"They say that too many patches and we are not secure, or not enough patches and we are not addressing security well enough, but the arguments begin to sound specious."
Another allegation disputed by Pratt is that the distributed development processes of Linux make it impossible for any one firm to effectively take responsibility for the platform.
"It is nonsense to say that nobody owns Linux and nobody is responsible for it. Linux has a development process that is very similar to any enterprise operating system. It is not like we are talking tens of thousands of developers responsible for the kernel and subsystems," he said.
"Full time kernel core operating system developers number in the hundreds. There are very well defined professional processes in place for the development of the kernel and subsystems.
"Is there a kernel development community to fix problems fast and professionally? Yes, absolutely. There are requests for changes that come from mature enterprise users and these requests are taken very seriously, even if the enemies of Linux say differently."
Current market share figures detailing operating systems on shipped servers are potentially misleading, Pratt claimed. "It is not what has shipped. You need to look at redeployments when firms have taken a server and installed Linux onto it after purchase," he explained.
"The true installed base of Linux is being undercounted if all we do is look at the server shipments alone. We need to look at what companies actually do with the servers after they have purchased them."
To support these assertions, Pratt cited a recent poll of OSDL members which asked how many had purchased servers with an OS pre-loaded and then removed and replaced it with Linux. Virtually all of them claimed to have taken this action.
"However, going the other way was totally different. We asked how many had swapped out Linux and installed Windows and nobody had," said Pratt.
Linux is moving beyond its traditional role as just a web server platform, according to Pratt. "Look at Oracle and IBM. Oracle is using Linux as the OS for its grid. This shows that there is a solution stack on top of Linux that is not just Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl, but a mixture of open source and proprietary software. ISVs such as Oracle, CA, SAP and IBM are fleshing out the Linux stack," he explained.
"As the big sophisticated software vendors start putting more and more deployments onto Linux, all the questions about Linux only being suitable as a web server go away."
Pratt was careful to emphasis that Linux is not a panacea and should only be deployed where it is appropriate.
"At OSDL we are trying not to be religious about Linux. We do not want to be evangelists about Linux where it is not practical to put Linux. For example, enterprise resource planning and data warehousing are on the horizon but there are not robust solutions yet," he said.
"We are not saying that all applications need to be Linux when the operating system is not ready for it. If there is a failure this could taint the feeling for Linux in general, so we say that the OS should only be used where it is appropriate."
If MS persists in its increasingly restrictive and arcane licensing schemes, it will probably succeed in driving me away. If Linux will get away from the geeky GNU & Gnome-speak, and reach a level where you pop in a CD and get a running system without have to change hardware, hunt drivers, and join forums, it will finally be ready for prime time. IMO, it's not quite there yet. But it may be approaching it.
Same here!
This is my point exactly. Linux is okay, but it just takes too much work to get it where you can do the things on MS that you do daily. Add in the hair-pulling experience of trying to track down application dependancies and it can be frustrating.
MS should have reason to be wary of Linux, as in can compete in the future, but it has a ways to go yet.
Speaking of Linux enemies, SCO is in the news again. They want another delay to answer IBM's request to limit the scope of the discovery. They whine that IBM refused when asked for a stipulation -- no kidding! I can see IBM now, "You want ANOTHER delay?! Hell no!"
Exactly.
Gator where you were having troubles was running AIM on Linux instead of GAIM which is a native product with the same functionality.
The dependency issue is solved by YUM, or APT. If you try to pick and choose RPM's yes you will hit them. If you install with YUM or APT (which comes on every distro I have ever used) they solve the dependency issues for you.
Well, right now with a stock price of around $10, their market cap is 1.93 billion. Back last year when their stock was around $30, their market cap would have probably been around 5.75 billion. That would be a rough guess of a loss of about $4 billion, or ~60% of their value in less than 12 months.
Typical linux speak. From one of their favorite overseas websites, of course.
Red Hat has a very tough job ahead trying to sell something they are simultaneously having to give away for free. Just like when the Chinese government takes "Red Hat" and renames it "Red Flag", without a dime back to Red Hat. And it's a growing problem for them. From today:
Attack of the Red Hat Clones
http://internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3488781
I'm opposed to just about anything that uses the "GPL" license, like Linux does. GPL was developed and is maintained by the Richard Stallman, who you can find more out about here:
http://www.stallman.org/archives/2005-jan-apr.html
I especially dislike it when GPL products are renamed by foreign governments, and resold abroad without a dime back to the US, like China does when they take "Red Hat" and rename it "Red Flag". All supposedly legal, according to this GPL license that many open source products use.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5116
And the US isn't getting any money from these foreign clones, even though open source lawyers come out in public and admit their products are likely to be encroaching on the patents of others.
http://nwc.securitypipeline.com/26805484
No wonder these countries are passing laws against US for-sale software products, when they can get a supposedly legal copy, for free, and the right to slap their own name on it.
http://www.silicon.com/management/government/0%2C39024677%2C39116719%2C00.htm
Where will it end? According to Linus Torvalds, the son of a well known communist from Finland, only with "total world domination".
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=torvalds+%22total+world+domination%22&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt
I did not try Fedora, but I did try Suse, SlackWare, RedHat 9.1 and Mandrake. So far, I like Mandrake the best and, like I said, it has tremendous potential.
Unfortunately, I develop, exclusively at this point, in MS (VB, .NET, ASP & C#). If not for that, I probably could make the transition to Linux much faster.
And you are the exception, n3wbi3, I've looked around on other help sites and most Linux "gurus" give very generic, non-specific help. Typical answer: "I figured it out and you can too".
And on the basis of this they think Linux will generate 30 billion a year within 3 years?
Red Hat != Linux
That 30+ billion figure is riduculous. Not only does it include mainframe and other hardware costs, it' incredibly inflated since current Linux+hardware incomes are less than $5 billion/year now.
As for the actual software, market leader Red Hat only grosses about $200 million a year I think. #2 Novell, like $100 million, total.
http://news.com.com/Red+Hat+tries+financial+tease/2100-1014_3-5234070.html?part=rss&tag=5234070&subj=news.1014.20
Plus like the Novell link in the post above, Red Hat is always having to restate results to keep their shell game going.
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/45593_p.htm
That last fiasco of restating several years at once is what started this recent nosedive in their stock price, rightfully so.
Redhat paid 0$ for the os, if not for Linux they would not even exist. They still get continuous development from the community (you think they keep SAMBA up to date?)... All and all the GPL has been a good thing for them...
Thus the problem is not one with the technology, its a problem with the documentation. If when you install a copy of Linux there was a 'hello and welcome to Linux' telling you things like that it would not be an improvement in technology. I have not used LinSpire (I think formerly WinSpire) but I have heard it provides a pretty nice interface.
Unfortunately, I develop, exclusively at this point, in MS (VB, .NET, ASP & C#). If not for that, I probably could make the transition to Linux much faster.
Well ASP runs fine through chillisoft, but C# and the like require mono which is far from production ready. Basically after MS lost a suit to sun about their hijacking of Java the started C#. MS does alot of crap like this SQL server is not ANSI99 compliant for no other reason than Microsoft wants to have 'their own thing'. Example: the 'is' statement does not work in sql server 2000, you have to use '=' which is not a huge thing but as the 'is' clause is what every other database uses (Informix, Oracle, DB2, ...) it is a nagging problem for someone like me.
And you are the exception, n3wbi3, I've looked around on other help sites and most Linux "gurus" give very generic, non-specific help. Typical answer: "I figured it out and you can too".
Im sorry you ran into that, I can honestly tell you I started out like you three years ago (maybe a little better off on the *nix side). I found good help from people until I got comfortable troubleshooting myself. When I set up my first sendmail server with a squirrelmail interface I was drowning in problems, one of the developers started mailing me off the forum to get the problem fixed quicker.
Linksys is another companie that uses Linux to make money, every one of those Linksys boxes you see at CompUSA is nothing but a small Linux Firewall with a web interface..
Your constant claims that Linux is standard or consistent in any way are hilarious. Here's a more realistic description of the state of the Linux chaos as it exists today, from an article right on Linux.com:
http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/01/2248250
"every distribution of Linux sucks in its own special way. Some just suck less. However, eventually, no matter what distribution you use, something about it will drive you insane, and you'll try another distro to see if it's any better. What you'll then realize is that, while it may handle what drove you crazy before much better, it handles something else in a way that drives you even more crazy."
LOL
Whats different is this: there is no documented ansi standard on where the passwd file should go. There is one for SQL syntax.. MS decided to break ANSI compliance..
These are totally different OS kernals, aren't they? Isn't Win 2000 the first one to run without DOS while Win 98 is completely DOS based? Win 98 is FAT32 & Win 2000 is NTFS. Moving from 98 to 2000 in NOT an upgrade ... it's a complete install. Pretty bad comparison, really. Nice stretch, but that's like me saying I moved from RedHat to Suse and it was tuff.
At least you were able to move from 98 to 2000. Try that with 2 different versions of Linux.
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