Posted on 07/25/2003 7:16:17 PM PDT by HAL9000
The continued adoption of Linux by large enterprise in the face of SCO's legal threats is not surprising, said Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio. "I don't think many of them thought of it as a big threat, I think they viewed it as a mosquito at a picnic -- a sort of gnat buzzing around."Despite legal threats from SCO Group, Linux use by large enterprises is growing, according to a survey by network security company Netcraft. The firm's survey shows Linux growth in the Web server sector, which has long been one of the open source OS's strongest markets.
The list of large enterprise sites that have migrated to Linux in the last two months includes Royal Sun Alliance, Deutsche Bank, SunGard, and Schwab. Linux saw a net gain of 100 sites among the 24,000 Web sites run by 1,500 large companies in this period, according to Netcraft.
Netcraft data even shows that the White House site is powered by Apache on Linux, though this appears to have been set up prior to the SCO suit.
The continued adoption of Linux by large enterprise in the face of SCO's legal threats is not surprising, said Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio. "I don't think many of them thought of it as a big threat, I think they viewed it as a mosquito at a picnic -- a sort of gnat buzzing around."
However, "I think that's going to change as the months go on," she told NewsFactor.
Warning Letter
In May, SCO sent letters to 1500 of the largest companies globally warning them of the legal risks involved in running Linux. Although SCO did not make the identities of these companies public, Netcraft noted that it is "likely that the list of companies that received letters from SCO is quite similar to the list of sites we use to study enterprises' web site technology choices."
Some analysts speculate that SCO's legal action will slow enterprise Linux adoption among enterprises, both large and small. Meta Group analyst Thomas Murphy told NewsFactor that "If SCO has the intellectual property rights, then they're going to be the license holder, and any Linux distribution would pick up a fee, potentially, from SCO for every single copy."
Given that one of Linux's biggest advantages is that it is lower cost than proprietary software, this added fee "would be detrimental," to Linux adoption, Murphy said.
Reasons for Continued Growth
Explaining the apparent paradox of continued Linux growth in the face of potential legal action, Netcraft said that "It may well be that although SCO has generated an enormous amount of attention from the media and Linux evangelists, it does not presently have the attention of IT practitioners in large companies."
Netcraft listed a variety of additional possible explanations for Linux's increased growth despite legal threats: Companies realize the costs of migrating from Linux to FreeBSD at a later date, if needed, would be small, and they may feel the chance of a SCO victory is remote.
Relying On IBM
These large companies figure that "it will be years before this gets to court, they'll probably settle, IBM says 'don't worry,'" DiDio said.
However, "IBM had better step up to the plate and start saying whether or not they will indemnify their customers, and if so, to what extent," she said. SCO has filed a $3 billion lawsuit against IBM, alleging that IBM misapropriated SCO's Unix intellectual property, using it to increase Linux's capabilities.
Though IBM has denied SCO's charge, IBM should indemnify their customers anyway, DiDio said. "Microsoft has a great indemnification clause in their contract that they put in back in April," she noted.
That IBM has yet to offer their customers such an indemnification is troubling, DiDio said. "That fact that they're not doing it, and that they're not saying what they're going to do, I find that silence really ominous."
Some Move To Windows
Although Linux saw a net gain, "it is by no means one way traffic," Netcraft said. Of the 24,000 enterprise sites included in the survey, in the past twelve months over 1600 have changed operating systems.
Indeed, some firms have migrated to Windows. Examples of these firms are Valaro Energy, National Service Industries and Colt. Cadbury Schweppes has tried all three operating systems in last two years, and it currently runs on Windows 2000.
Your Pinto comparison is rather poor and invalid.
SCO acquired certain rights to the UNIX operating system from Novell. Now SCO is suing IBM, claiming that their UNIX intellectual property was used in the AIX operating system. SCO is also threatening Linux users with the same allegation. SCO has refused to publicly produce any evidence to support their allegations, and there is widespread skepticism about SCO's claims.
It's complicated, but you can scan some past headlines by searching for keyword "sco".
No, actually it is of great concern. Not sure how much you know about what is known as "open source" software, but it's name is exactly what it is, open source code, ie. the pre-binary condition of software in normal text format.
Linux is a member of the "open source" family, and because of that, the entire interworkings of it's internal mechanisms is freely published on websites around the world.
That makes for a very poor security model, and the secrecy of anything, especially as needed in Government or DoD environments, is depending on how "classified" you keep the material.
What this means in total is the source code parent of the sofware running at least the public White House website is know freely available throughout the world for potential exploit, a very bothersome issue to some that work in the field of computer security.
Sorry HAL9000, but I really don't think that is a fair representation of what is actually going on.
First, SCO never had issue with IBM using UNIX code in AIX. Hardly, this was one of their greatest revenue points, and it was how UNIX technology was legally getting to IBM from SCO in the first place.
Second, SCO is also threatening all Linux users in general not only for whatever code IBM may have put there, but what other UNIX licensees or other former ATT programmers may have contributed as well as have been found through examination of the mailist files as well as confirmed in the source code.
Also, SCO has offered anyone the right to view samples of their evidence, and many have including Ms. Didio who recently appeared in an article on EE Times that like many we are currently seeing seemed to add validity to SCO's claims.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030609S0011
If I could recommend one additional link in addition to those on FR where the topic is discussed at great length, that may better focus these issues I am attempting to clarify it would be this one from Byte magazine:
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=8276/byt1055784622054/0616_marshall.html
Happy reading.
My apologies, should have read "from SCO to IBM in the first place."
If SCO is right, then it is of AT&T origin. :-)
Well, no kidding...You don't suppose it has anything to do with the fact that hackers/crackers aim for MAXIMUM effect and Word, Outlook and Outlook Express are the most widely used word processing program and email programs in use all across the planet do you???
If anything else ever takes the mantle, the hackers/crackers will change gears.
BIND (Berekeley Internet Name Domain), OpenSSH, Apache, and sendmail, the most widely used DNS application, secure shell application, web server application and email server application all run on UNIX systems!
Actually, people who work in the field of security usually assume that the attacker knows the full details of how the system works. "Security through obscurity" is a bad idea. The idea is even if someone knows the entire mechanism or procedure, that they still cannot break it due to its safeguards.
Further, that the code is published means that everyone is free to audit it, including the NSA (which produced its own set of patches for Linux and ended up doing their own Linux distribution and made it freely available).
If the WH were using Windows XP, they would not have the ability to view the source code, and under US law could not decompile it to assure themselves it was working correctly.
With Mac OS X, you get to use all the unix doodads - I'm doing the mysql/postgres php development on a mac. But you aren't forced to be a complete geek. It is great for a laptop, and much easier to _keep_ the bits and pieces working than on a linux laptop.
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