At one time Linux was derisively known as Hacker OS. These days it’s getting so respectable that even database vendors are climbing aboard. In the space of ten days in July, Computer Associates, Informix and Oracle announced database ports to the platform. Now Dell has confirmed that it has been shipping PCs pre-loaded with the open source operating system for twelve months. The clincher, though, has to be a panel discussion devoted to Linux in the Enterprise at Comdex/Enterprise San Francisco. Hacker OS comes to Suit Central? What gives? Is it time for hackers to throw in their mice and switch careers to biotech or rocket science? Is Linux getting boring? Fortunately Linux bucked all Comdex conventions by providing a platform for ninety minutes’ lively chat and even a nugget or two of real meat. Panel members included Larry Augustin, president of VA Research and director of Linux International; Scott McNeil, president of SuSE USA; Bob Young, president of Red Hat Software; John Downey, Linux product manager at Informix; a couple of enterprise users of Linux and representatives from Intel and Oracle. Asked about the news from Dell, Larry Augustin drew a fine distinction between companies that pre-install software upon customer request and companies that tell customers they will pre- install if required. Dell’s stealth campaign hasn’t been very stealthy, he said. That’s just fine with him: We have customers at VA Research who chose our hardware over pre-installed PCs from Dell. Panel chair Nicholas Petreley next asked SuSE’s Scott McNeil whether the North American market differed from Europe in any way. Sure, said McNeil. The European market hasn’t been hypnotized by Microsoft.
By Rachel Chalmers
Red Hat’s Bob Young stepped in to describe Microsoft as the 20th Century’s best marketing organization. They may do evil, Young said, but they do it so well! He said the Linux distributors are not trying to compete with Microsoft on Microsoft’s terms. We’re trying to change the rules under which they have to play the game, he said. We don’t try and control our technology. Because we don’t own our intellectual property we have to try to build our brand. Young made the observation that while Microsoft’s brand still carries cachet in the consumer space, among technical people it is becoming more and more tarnished every day. They have used their ability to coerce the industry to do what they want one too many times, he concluded. There was some lively discussion about the newly formed Linux Standards Board, formed in a bid to prevent the ‘Balkanization’ of Linux into many incompatible Linuxes. SuSe’s McNeil called the LSB: absolutely critical. Red Hat’s Young said that while all standards bodies are a Good Thing, having open source should prevent Balkanization in any case. Unix only fragmented when vendors added tools, then claimed their software as proprietary and refused to release the source. The terms under which Linux is licensed are designed to prevent this from happening. There followed some lively questioning from the audience. One of the questioners turned out to be Paul Cubbage, a founder of Unix house the Wollongong Group, who insisted that without a standard user interface, Linux would never crack the consumer desktop market. This proposal was hotly debated. Another questioner, from the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group, demanded of the panel what they were giving back to the community that had created a market for them to exploit. Vendor waffle ensued. Petreley, who presided over the now-defunct NCWorld magazine, has just been appointed to edit a web-only publication to be called LinuxWorld. While recognized for the quality of its content, NCWorld lasted only as long as the marketing hype generated by Oracle. On the grassroots support for the OS alone, it seems safe to say that LinuxWorld should last longer. Until that support evaporates and panel discussions turn into content-free Microsoft-esque ma
rketing exercises, Linux can get as respectable as it likes. It still won’t get boring.
