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Linux Business

Servers with a Smile 141

Posted by michael from the would-you-like-fries-with-that dept.
9jack9 writes "Fortune Magazine has this article entitled Servers with a Smile. While they probably get almost as much wrong as they get right, it's still an interesting article, if for no other reason than it's in Fortune, with a readership undoubtedly consisting of people more focused on business than technology. To me the strange thing is that in portions of the computing world Linux and related phenomena (GNU/Linux, OSS, etc) does seem to be "the hottest thing", but in other parts of the computing world it is all but invisible. It reminds me of NT in the early days. There is also a related article Does Software Yearn to be Free?."
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Servers with a Smile

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  • After a bit of slashdotting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:32PM (#4337211)
    the server goes from :-) to ;-( to X-|

  • Journalism has never been a hard science. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drhairston ( 611491 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:35PM (#4337243) Homepage
    'It will never beat Windows on the desktop, but the Linux operating system has an undeniable charm in the world of corporate computing: It's free.'

    One draws the impression from this statement that these capitalists are using the word 'free' to describe the cost of Linux, rather than its nature. Hopefully the recent move by Linux's premier distributor to solidify the Linux desktop and put an end to the endless bickering over controls and widgets will do something to dispel this notion of Microsoft's invincibility in the user interface department.

    • Free is good? My impression was that corporations would not choose to adopt 'free' software because the lack of official support, culpability, yada, yada. They typically want expensive software built by huge companies staffed by thousands of tech support folks, insuring that the software company will be there to lean on when things go wrong.

      • Re:Journalism has never been a hard science. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Soko ( 17987 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @01:12PM (#4337561) Homepage
        Batter up...

        Lack of offical support,

        Right. RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and others will be happy to take your money for them to supply 24X7 support for thier distro. Oh, and support from newsgroups and Linux specific message boards are usually just as fast and thourough as any tech support dept. I've ever called.

        Swing and a miss - Strike 1.

        culpability,

        Ha! Have you read any EULA included with "expensive software built by huge companies staffed by thousands of tech support folks"? EULAs exist to make sure you don't sue that same company if the software you buy from them blows your business to smithereens. "Sorry, Mr. Customer. Guess you shouldn't of bought the line from the Marketing Dept. Or (heh) our software package..."

        Swung at a ball in the dirt, Strike 2!!

        insuring[sic] that the software company will be there to lean on when things go wrong.

        No, not lean on. Call and give more $$$ to so they can fix the problem with thier software, or tell you how to use thier crappy UI. They sold you a defective product, and you have to pay more for a correct product. IMHO, they're leaning on you, as in "Vinnie, I needs youse to lean on dis stooge 'til he gives us da dough..."

        Strike 3!!! Batter out!

        Software Libre _is_ good - read the article.

        "It's a sea change," says Bridget O'Connor, a top technology executive at Lehman Brothers. "Now I can play all the vendors off against each other to get the price I want. I never had that negotiating power when all my machines came from Sun."

        Power in the customers hands, not the vendors. Competition based on technical merit and value. That's what Free means, bud - freedom to choose. Spin that to the execs next time they ask.

        Soko
        • "Oh, and support from newsgroups and Linux specific message boards are usually just as fast and thourough as any tech support dept. I've ever called.

          Swing and a miss - Strike 1."

          Its this kind of thinking that unfortunately keeps the adoption rate of Linux/Free Software artificially down.

          Corporations, ones bigger then your local mom and pop that is, don't want to obtain their tech support from a bunch of geeks in a web forum or on a mailing list. They want teams of experienced consultants and tech support specialists whom they can call upon at any hour and not recieve answers like this "Stop being so pushy! We do this for free you know! WE DON'T OWE YOU ANYTHING!"

          • Re:Hello Free Software Zealot! (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Ian Wolf ( 171633 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @01:36PM (#4337758) Homepage
            Most large corporations get their support from newsgroups and knowledge bases, they just don't know it. I have never met a Windows or Unix administrator that doesn't do a google search as one of their very first steps, and quite often they hit on something.

            Anyone who has ever done any real system/database/app support knows that the web and message boards are your best source of information. Even the best tech support organizations suck at the first tier. The best I've ever seen was Oracle, and it depends on the phase of the moon as to whether or not you get anybody who has even the slightest clue. Sun's support is the worst, until you get to the third tier. Microsoft is better, but not much. With them you have at least a passable chance of getting someone competent at tier 2.

            Besides the parent post did not say that forums and message boards are the only way to go, he simply said they are often faster, and they are. He said you can purchase support for Linux and you can.
          • that doesn't make him wrong! I'm sure many of those FSZ's out there would contract as an experienced consultant or tech support specialist if the Bigger than Mom and Pop, Corp. made them a decent offer.

            So, if you are getting your support for free by all means feel free to bitch somewhere else.
          • You can purchase all sorts of levels of support contracts from Linux vendors who often employ the Linux developers who are directly responsible for creating the operating system.

            Frankly, professionally supporting an open operating system like Linux is easier than a closed one. As a Linux guru, when push comes to shove I can get my hands dirty and dig into the source myself to solve the problem. That simply isn't an option for 99% of the Microsoft support firms.
            • ...when push comes to shove I can get my hands dirty and dig into the source myself to solve the problem.

              There are some people who doubt that source code is ever searched through by people who want to find problems but aren't working on the project that produced the code. Believe it or not, this actually happens. As an example, I had a problem with the GNU MP library that I couldn't figure out. I looked through the source, and found what was going wrong. It involved division by zero, and it was my fault.

              This is just an example. It does help illustrate, however, that having source code is useful to actual users, although perhaps not your normal "where's the any key?" user.

              • not quite true... i tweaked linux krnl some times to get around some dodgy hardware I have (shitty dvd player and au8830 card). Pretty easy if you know C. Also tweaked it for Oracle, but it is a no-brainer since Oracle docs teach how to do it ;-)

                cheers.
              • It does help illustrate, however, that having source code is useful to actual users, although perhaps not your normal "where's the any key?" user.

                Ultimately that's the rub. Open-source software will always have a hard time getting out of the back room until Joe and Jane User are comfortable and experienced with the UI. I have a Linux box or three in our server room and would be happy to have one on my desk too, but few of my users can even spell Linux. Their comfort level is with Windows and Windows applications and despite what some of the Microsoft bashers around here would crow the reality is that our workstations are quite stable and the work gets done. At the end of that day that's all the bosses with the big offices care about - did the work get done.

                Me? I like the whole idea of open source software and enjoy the moments when I get to pull up a chair in front of a Linux box and play. I'm always interested to see the latest tool for this and that even if it's something I know I'm only going to tinker with for a few days then uninstall.

                My users just want to do their jobs though; and their jobs have nothing to do with compiling the OS. Windows provides them with a level of comfort.

                -CoachS-
        • You make a great argument, based on the technical merits of 'free' software. Note that the article was from Fortune, a magazine more read by decision makers than technical people. The opinion I expressed was that of corporations (i.e. corporate decision makers), not that of the technical people that have to make things run day to day. I'm sure /. has had a subject/poll at one time or another something like 'How often do you made an intelligent technical recommendation, only to be overruled by a PHB?'

    • One draws the impression from this statement that these capitalists are using the word 'free' to describe the cost of Linux, rather than its nature.

      You have to remember, of course, that to much of the business world, it is the bottom line that counts. Most could care less about the ethical grounds behind free software.
    • They almost certainly are using the word "free" to describe the cost of Linux. This is Fortune Magazine, after all; it's attempting to describe the advantages of Linux to the finance-minded, not to the programming-minded. As for Linux taking over the desktop, I have to say, at this point at least, it's unlikely (and I say this despite the fact that I use Linux as my desktop at home). It's not because of the GUI so much as the fact that most programs are written for Windows, especially programs the majority of the population likes to use (computer games come to mind). Unless Linux comes out with some sort of interface or desktop application that just blows Windows out of the water, I don't see things changing.
      • People seem to use the term "desktop" pretty loosely. It sounds like you're referring to Joe Sixblogg who wants to surf the web, run Quicken, and play a few games at home. Until Linux gains more than 10% or so marketshare, you're probably right.

        But what about business desktops? In those situations, you often have an IT department to manage things, so that's not a problem. Employees shouldn't be playing a lot of games. The required software often amounts to email and a word processor, which open software has fairly well covered these days. Free is a huge plus, saving on up-front costs as well as the headaches of managing licenses. Seems to me there's a great case to be made for the business desktop in many situations (not all, some businesses [or portions thereof] are more tied to Windows-only applications). And if Linux can make inroads there, it'll increase mindshare and familiarity, speeding adoption with consumers....

      • Re:Journalism has never been a hard science. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Ian Wolf ( 171633 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @01:27PM (#4337661) Homepage
        This has always been the biggest limiting factor, but the sands are shifting faster than I think you know.

        Thanks to Codeweavers you can have Office, Notes, Quicken, IE, and many other windows apps running flawlessly in Linux. Thanks to Transgaming you can play many windows only games in Linux, such as Warcraft III, The Sims and many many more. Now, unfortunately, Loki is gone, but I'm glad I got my Quake III, Railroad Tycoon, and SimCity 3000 before they went under.

        Last but not least, UT2003 will have a Linux version at the same release as the windows version. Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs in Linux and so will Neverwinter Nights, if Bioware ever gets it out the door anytime soon. If it wasn't for Battlefield 1942, I'd never boot into windows.

        Plus there are many great apps on Linux already like Bluefish, GIMP, Grip, XMMS, Evolution, Ximian Connector, and Red Carpet to name a few. I think this is no longer a real issue, but that's just me.
    • A bit off topic: I don't understand MS on the desktop. More, I don't understand why all users need a multipurpose machine, with a sound card, color monitor, can run millions of apps, ... when their job is to edit documents and read emails. Mostly, I think the multimedia computer is just a way for employees to waste time, and is a huge waste of time for sysadmins. Seems like the problem is that linux has been ready for the desktop for a while, but the desktop is not ready for it.
      • I actually came across an interesting essay [coolth.com] checking out Adrian Lamo's site [adrian.org]. I think you might find it an interesting read.

        • Good one, thanks for the link.
        • thanks. Quite a good article. The problem is, now, how can we reverse this process? Everybody in an office already has their computer (and the act that this is only slight exaggeration is scary).

          actually, what recently got me thinking about this is working in an office where up until last year, they only used typewriters. They actually are quite well organized with paper files, phones, and typewriters.

          i fear for them, entering into the digital world.

          • Well, some would say the answer is Network PC's, which in reality are nothing more than a graphical return to the old mainframe days. The only problem with these implementations is that they are generally implemented VERY poorly.

            For example:

            Imagine a group within the company that uses email, IM, a ticketing system, a browser, very little office apps, and the rest internal n-tier applications.

            Now imagine that the company decided to replace their PC's with SunRays, only they didn't use any Solaris versions of the applications they need, only windows apps. Instead of using Mozilla and its mail or some other native mail client, everyone used Outlook Express and IE (mostly because clueless developers couldn't make their internal web apps multi-browser). Instead of using StarOffice they use MS Office. Instead of running a Solaris version of Vantive, they use the windows version. Now imagine that they are running this all through Citrix. So in effect they are running a thin-OS from a remote server, running a thin-os from a remote server.

            Now that sounds like someone read that article and completely missed the point. And sadly, I've seen this in two major enterprises.
    • "Businesspeople have tended to associate Linux with the charlatans of the Internet bubble and the flakes who seem to dominate its over-granolaed, Berkeley commune culture."

      Does anyone here take seriously anything said by a publication that would actually print something like this? "Over-granolaed"? Is that even a word? Is that even a valid concept? How does one become "overgranolaed"? If you eat a lot of red meat, do you automatically become a good businessman? If this is the target audience for Linux adoption, it's obvious why it's been less than successful. These characters are congenital idiots.
      • Granola? That sugar-filled, grain-heavy junk food?

        Granola has long since been discredited as a health food; anti-oxidant fruits like purple grapes, green algae, and tofu are the correct breakfast food for berkeley commune linux nuts these days.

      • The best quote: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mbourgon ( 186257 )
        Does anyone here take seriously anything said by a publication that would actually print something like this?

        What, Fortune? Sure. The fact that they don't see the world the way you do is fine. Indeed, irrelevant. Just like the fact that we see Free (Speech) and they see Free (Beer). It's nothing to be shocked at. They're doing it in terms their readership will understand, just like Slashdot has spelling errors (at least, I _hope_ that's why) and the inevitable Microsloth slam (whoops, did I just contribute?).

        As for the comment on the culture? If the shoe fits... I keep thinking back to the old Dilbert strip, with the bald, bearded Unix guru ("Here's a nickel, kid, buy yourself a real operating system"). Like it or not, Berkeley is viewed as a hippie commune, a view that many (in Berkeley) subscribe to and act in accordance with.

        And finally - it's largely irrelevant WHY they choose Linux, isn't it? After all, even if they're just buying it because it's "free beer", (a) the techs that will be running it know the difference (b) they're happy, (c) the techs are happy, (d) Microsoft is unhappy, and (e) WE'RE STILL RUNNING LINUX.
        • My basic point was that people who have to make up words because they don't know a real word that means the same thing and then don't even come up with an invented word that actually means anything beyond a simple expression of displeasure for which the normal, verbal, equivalent would be a random obscenity don't have the intellectual acumen to be taken seriously.

          As for your proficiency at setting up straw men, I would strongly suggest that in the future you consider responding to what I actually said, not what you find it easy to refute. Consider the old joke about the drunk and the lamp post: A guy walks up to a drunk crawling around on the ground in the middle of the night apparently looking for something. Guy asks the drunk what he's looking for. "Dropped my keys, Mister," says the drunk. "Did you drop them under the lamp post?" the guy responds. "No," says the drunk, "I dropped them over there," and points towards the wall of a building. "Then why are you looking under the lamp post?" "Light's better over here," answers the drunk.

  • Quote... (Score:5, Funny)

    by *xpenguin* ( 306001 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:38PM (#4337271)
    it's such a good thing, he said, that Oracle had just taken 3,800 lines of its own proprietary code, developed over more than a decade, and posted it on the Internet for all the world to see. "We're trying to be a good member of the community," he said.

    Heh, 3,800 lines developed over a decade. More like a month of work.
    • that works out to about 1 line of code per day. good work larry.
    • As it turned out, the 3800 lines of code were Ellison's first attempt at "Hello World". Of course, he still hasn't gotten it quite right...

    • Actually, I've heard rumors that a great deal of the Oracle code at the heart of their is exactly the same as what was originally licensed from IBM.

      Anyway, most of the big companies don't seem to crank out much more than 10 lines of code per programmer/day.

  • Most disturbing quote (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:42PM (#4337306) Homepage
    [Amazon.com head systems engineer Jacob] Levanon says the hardware and software savings are nice, but what has really made the conversion compelling is that his labor costs are down 10% to 20%. Linux has become the main operating system used in university computer science classes at places like Berkeley, Stanford, and Cornell. That means Linux programmers are more plentiful and cheaper to hire than ever.
    Translation:
    When we had Solaris machines, we needed professional Unix system administrators. Now that we have Linux instead, any geek with an undergrad degree can do the job for 80% of the pay!

    Scary. Keep in mind he's talking about the sysadmins for production e-commerce server farms, and explains the cheaper labor by saying "Linux programmers are more plentiful and cheaper to hire than ever."

    • Re:Most disturbing quote (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:47PM (#4337349) Homepage Journal
      When we had Solaris machines, we needed professional Unix system administrators. Now that we have Linux instead, any geek with an undergrad degree can do the job for 80% of the pay!

      For a time. Then as demand for Linux geeks increases the salary will increase as well.

      • Re:Most disturbing quote (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:53PM (#4337400) Homepage
        For a time. Then as demand for Linux geeks increases the salary will increase as well.
        That's not the point. The misconception held by the pointy-haired boss (and reinforced by this article) is that junior programmers can do the job of senior system administrators if only you use Linux.
        The end result of this will be high-profile Linux failures; not because of flaws in Linux, but because of bad decisions driven by drivel like this piece.
        • Well, PHB's we'll always have; their decision making process will never be good, but sometimes they'll make the right decision like the proverbial clock that's right twice a day.

          Failure or success, high or low profile, doesn't have much effect on these persons' decisions. Are we talking Code Red scale disasters? Remember, membership in the PHB group is a fuzzy thing; last year's script kiddie antics has only nipped at the tail edge of the PHB bell-curve.

          What does affect these persons' decisions is the herd mentality. Once the herd starts moving towards Linux, demand for Linux sysadmins will rise, along with salaries.

          And, in any case, while hiring of competent sys admins is important, in all probability junior Linux geeks are probably better than cargo-cult Windows drones (of course, expert senior Windows sysadmins would be better than junior Linux geeks).
      • The most disturbing is the subhead:
        It
        will never beat Windows on the desktop, but the Linux operating system has an undeniable charm in the world of corporate computing: It's free. (Emphasis added)
        Now even for people who don't care one way or the other whether Linux does someday beat Windows, how can they be so blind to history to suggest that it can never happen?
    • That was exactly the sort of sales pitch that Microsoft has been using for Windows for years: The skills are so basic and so accessible, that labor is plentiful and cheap. The flip side of this is that many organizations did exactly what Microsoft recommended: Bob, the guy who "knows stuff about computers" became the corporate IT technologist, and the rest is history (i.e. Countless worms, exploits, etc. For all of Microsoft's security faults, most would have been a footnote in history if people patched when possible, but instead we live in a world where Klez is still making the rounds). Over time the exact same thing is going to happen to Linux (already we're seeing that...there is an exploit making the rounds, and it's exploiting long patched holes).
      • Oh, come on now. You're trying to tell me that all the exploits and worms only came about because we didn't have "trained professionals" administering those Windows-based systems?

        Nah, I'm not buying that one at all.... "Bob, the guy who knows computer stuff" is not the one developing those exploits and coding worms in his spare time.

        The only reason you see increases in exploits, virii, and worms for a particular platform/OS is due to a rise in its popularity. In general, people writing destructive code do it for 2 reasons. #1 is to gain some notoriety. #2 is to do damage to a particular business (ex-employer?). In both cases, it only makes sense to aim at the platform/OS in widest use.

        Sure, the news media may pick up on a virus or worm that goes around for a long time, due to people who don't do the security patches. Still, patches only come about *after* the fact, in most cases. Nobody writes 100% perfect code, and the more people have reason to try breaking a particular piece of code - the more times they'll succeed.
        • if real sys-admins that knew what to do were incontrol instead of MSCE monkeys. I'm not doubting that a MSCE can do what the degree trains them to do, but it doesn't help them learn how to think.

          If real professionals had been hired, then I think that all the worms that are still circulating would not have gotten as far in the first place.
          • I don't disagree with what you just said about MCSE's. Many are out there that don't stop to think. In fact, it appears that some didn't even take the exams. I was on one of the certification sites recently, where a guy was talking about people you can pay to go in and pass the exams for you. (Apparently, they have connections that work for the testing centers, so they simply fill out the forms using your SS# and info, and they memorized all the test questions and answers - since they do it for a living.)

            Still, I'm not so sure "better trained I.T. staff" would solve the worm circulation problems. For starters, many people run small web servers from their home, and they're not "professionals" at all. Every copy of NT includes the IIS server, installable with a single click of a checkbox during setup. How many people thought "Hey, I'd like to host my own web site. I think I'll try that!" and became worm distributors, without ever realizing it?

            Also, I've worked for companies where it's like pulling teeth to get the I.T. manager to allow you to do upgrades and patches. They're so afraid of service packs that break expensive/complex applications loaded on the servers, they refuse to patch things until months go by and they know for sure it's "safe". After all, if you have a million dollar in-house app developed using an obscure manufacturing control development package, you're much more concerned that the "security fix" might GPF the thing and stop your factory from producing product. The idea that "it keeps your system from spreading the XYZ worm" seems pretty insignificant by comparison.

            • Also, I've worked for companies where it's like pulling teeth to get the I.T. manager to allow you to do upgrades and patches. They're so afraid of service packs that break expensive/complex applications loaded on the servers, they refuse to patch things until months go by and they know for sure it's "safe".

              True, and if there isnt active development going on for those in-house complex apps the company is going to be in a world of hurt sooner or later - when they face the choice between freezing all upgrades & fixes on the core servers or paying through the nose for the app to be reengineered to cope with changes in the IT landscape that naturally occur over the years.

              Where I work, the in-house apps have a defined release cycle for regular updates - after all, patches aint just for the OS :) This means that when I have a patch for any OS component I put it on the integration test & QA setups first, if nothing breaks there it goes on development and then later into production concurrent with the first release of the app that was developed and run through an entire test & QA cycle running on the patched OS. Sure, theres some delays involved and I occasionally break this rule if theres a serious security hole to fix but these all get argued on their merits and I have not had a problem getting a management signoff for critical stuff. In general I find my systems are at least as current on their patches as most of my colleagues at other companies and often much better. The only thing that makes this difference is that the apps I must not break have developers working on them too and they are savvy enough that if an OS patch breaks it they dont care whether its their code or the patch that has the "bug", they just know they have to work around it before the next release.

      • *LOL*
        You made me squirt cofee all over my screen, ill sue you!!

        Here in sweden we have 90% Bob's. They all say that education and skills says nothing. I know plenty of sysadmins that scripts their servers to restart every night instead of trying to find the memory leaks that makes them die. I even saw one put in more memory so that he didnt have to reboot it so often. I dont think this is Microsofts fault. Someone emplyed theese goons and they are responsible.

    • That's not necessarily true. He's referring to the properties of a market. If lots of new CS grads are trained on Linux, then there will simply be more labor available to hold Linux-oriented jobs. Therefore, there will be less scarcity and labor will typically cost less.

      Additionally, when linux expertise was scarce, you might have been forced to hire someone who was overqualified, which, strictly speaking, is a waste of money. Now that the linux labor pool is larger, companies are more likely to find an employee with just the right qualifications without having to pay someone who is overqualified just because he/she is the only person with expertise.

      The point in the article is about efficiency.

    • labor costs are down 10% to 20%

      It could just as easily mean that overtime is down. Many places pay their Tier 1 administrators hourly.
  • Interesting to see that Slashdot has adopted GNU/Linux as the name for the "operating system previously known as Linux" as proposed by the FSF! [gnu.org]

  • Canibalizing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ivanandre ( 265129 ) <ivan...tamayo@@@gmail...google...com> on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:43PM (#4337314) Journal
    I just cannot stop thinking that the great growing of Linux is because is eating Unix share, not microsoft...
    • I just cannot stop thinking that the great growing of Linux is because is eating Unix share, not microsoft...
      Right on the money. The example in the article is Amazon.com's migration from Solaris to GNU/Linux. Microsoft doesn't view this as a loss. If anything, they're delighted that Amazon.com has moved from Sun hardware to something that can run WinXP -- makes the business case that much easier for migration to an all-MS solution.

    • Re:Canibalizing (Score:3, Interesting)

      by miffo.swe ( 547642 )
      "I just cannot stop thinking that the great growing of Linux is because is eating Unix share, not microsoft."

      Who in their right mind cares? Ofcourse the *nux guys pick it up first. They are "home" at first boot. I would be more surprised if the MCSE's would be the first to pick linux up when they dont know anything about unix. Its easier to go from someting you know to something almost the same.

      After the unix guys have changed is when the Microsoft camps will start to think about it seriously.

    • UNIX was ripe for the picking. Microsoft has been going to businesses for years and telling them that they could replace their expensive UNIX servers with Intel based servers, and their message has been pretty well received. I know lots of places that were primarily UNIX shops that have been switching to Windows because Windows was "good enough" at a lower price.

      Now, along comes Linux, which also runs on inexpensive commodity x86 hardware. Even worse, it is basically a drop in replacement for UNIX. Migrating from UNIX to Linux is easy, and your staff needs very little retraining. All of a sudden the UNIX to Windows migrations have stopped, and instead they have become a flood of UNIX to Linux migrations. While this is devastating to Sun, it is also bad news for Microsoft. All of a sudden Windows is having a much harder time getting server sales. UNIX shops, generally speaking, are looking at Linux first, and they are liking what they see. Once you have shifted to Linux there is very little chance that you will ever use Windows on the server. Microsoft's ace-in-the-hole has always been the fact that they ran on commodity x86 hardware, but Linux has stolen this advantage and is "free" as well.

      Without the built-in growth market Microsoft has to find other ways to keep their revenues up. Their new licensing plan is just another example of how Linux is affecting their game plan. The harder Microsoft squeezes their customers the better Linux looks.

      • from the article:

        It's still early in the conversion cycle. IDC says servers running Linux represent only 5% of the servers in operation, compared with 27% for Windows and 43% for Unix, the umbrella term for the proprietary operating systems largely in use by IBM, HP, and Sun. And there are still big business applications like Siebel's that don't yet support Linux. But IDC predicts that by 2006, Linux and Windows will have all but replaced Unix as the dominant server operating systems. It forecasts that 26% of servers in operation will be running Linux, 56% will be running Windows, and only 12% will be running Unix.

        Yes im sure MS is shaking in their boots about the prospect of more than doubling their server market share in a 3 year period according to these projections (which yes, could certainly be flawed but nonetheless it sure looks like good news for them to me)

        Of course that projection of Linux more than quintipling their share ain't to shabby either ;)

        • Microsoft has seen enough market shifts to know what happens if you allow a lower priced competitor to set up shop in your market niche. They have competed against Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Novell, and now commercial UNIX by being "good enough" and less expensive. If Linux is allowed to grow its marketshare then Microsoft is going to have serious long-term problems, and they know it. With every new version of their software their customers are going to compare the cost of upgrading against switching to Linux. And Linux is going to be more feature-competitive with every release. When I first started using Linux in 1995 it had almost no applications that weren't development tools available for it. Now there are Free Software equivalents for almost all server side software (and lots of commercial server software as well), and Linux is even a credible desktop.

    • ...growing of Linux is because is eating Unix share, not microsoft...

      In every unix-to-linux conversion, a potential sale for Microsoft is lost.

      In each case, the "linux mindshare" is increased. Linux is legitimized by its wider deployment, and word-of-mouth communication. Linux's initial success in some parts of an organization pave the way for wider adoption, which only means more lost sales opportunities.

      And worst of all for Microsoft, linux capturing a very substantial share of the market means that (almost) nobody will tollerate lack of operability between Microsoft's client/desktop software and linux servers. Had linux not come along (or had MS figured out how to write a true 32 bit protected memory operating system many years earlier), Microsoft would have been able to capture most of the server market with NT (as people were predicting in the late 90s)... and then they'd be in a strong position to dictate communication protocols that marginalize the small remaining fraction of installed competitive software.

  • That obnoxious FAQ written by RMS even admits that the FSF has no legal or ethical reason to demand that "Linux" be called "GNU/Linux".

  • Software Yearns To Be Free! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @12:46PM (#4337346) Journal
    But programmers yearn to be paid.

  • So I guess Ellison's message is.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Linux is great! It's free! But MySQL and PostgreSQL are the devil!"
    • Assuming there are enough applications that *need* the power of Oracle to run so that this wouldn't be suicidal, ...

      Ellison ought to consider an Oracle-supported distro of Postgres. Put in the work to make porting between Oracle and Postgres trivial and then position Postgres as the low-end Oracle offering.

      If this pulls more MSSQL deployments into the Oracle camp than the number of Oracle deployments it pushes to Postgres, it could be a net win for Oracle and OSS.

      And if it enables Oracle's own enterprise apps to scale down in price to appeal to a broader audience, it could be a big win for Oracle.
  • [...] in portions of the computing world Linux and related phenomena (GNU/Linux, OSS, etc) [...]

    So GNU/Linux is a related phenomena to Linux ? Damn, I have to read that FAQ [slashdot.org] all over again !

  • Amazon's review (Score:4, Insightful)

    by (trb001) ( 224998 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @01:01PM (#4337449) Homepage
    Ignoring this articles somewhat grim slant on Linux, the Amazon success story will be a great asset to Linux. When a big 90's .com all of a sudden starts making money and one of the main reasons given is because they reduced IT costs by switching to Linux, that's what's going to make other companies perk up their ears. When they listen to Amazon say "Yeah, we saved money on technical support...Linux gurus are cheaper than Solaris gurus", that is what will make them switch.

    At my college (Virginia Tech), I suggested for 2 years while I was there that we switch to Linux as the primary server software for the engineering department. I always got a 'No.' response...why? "Not enough people know how to administrate it, what happens when you leave?" I hated this reason, mostly because *I* knew that there were other people out there that could admin a freakin Linux box, but they didn't. This response from Amazon helps out more than all plugging us geeks can do.

    --trb

    • Had the same thing here. When I came in, the intranet web server was IRIX. They wanted to move away because of the HW support contracts being too expensive. I suggested going to an Intel platform (we had extra machines around that had plenty of power) running Linux. Same excuse, if you leave, who's going to support it? Well in a systems group of about 20 people, 3 others ran Linux servers at home.

      And when you're only talking about FTP access for a few web developers and a simple Apache install (our Intranet doesn't use any scripting, all static HTML) its not difficult to maintain. Instead, we spent several hundreds on a Windows NT license, and just recently another $1500 on a 2000 Server license. Meanwhile, there have been several applications that I could have built in a couple of days using PHP/Perl and a database like our room booking software (over $1000) and a telephone directory (still using an Excel spreadsheet).

  • Awww man (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Daath ( 225404 )
    I couldn't make sense of the damn article, until I re-read the headline - "Servers with a smile" - not Sewers with a smile - phew!

  • Change is inevitable (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gokubi ( 413425 )
    Would you want your support staff inundated with calls from people confused by a new system? Probably not.

    Clearly the author never upgraded a company from Win98 to XP.

  • Ballmer's "Linux is cancer" pitch misfired! Great! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @01:09PM (#4337539) Homepage
    The article says:

    "A year ago Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux a 'cancer' that would cause the death of intellectual property as we know it. Microsofties were encouraged to make that saber-rattling pitch on their corporate sales calls. But that just made IT executives angry. Peter Houston, Microsoft's head of industry strategies, says, 'became clear that we were being seen as having a polarizing and myopic view.'"

    All right! Maybe there's hope.

    (Now let's just hope that the same IT executives are savvy enough to see what Palladium can do to them--and don't see it just as a way of stopping college students from trading music).
  • to the effect that the suits own Linux now. I think that's wrong.

    The same companies that balkanized Unix are now jumping on the Linux bandwagon. Some may try to introduce proprietary extensions. I don't think that's going to work, mostly because of the GPL, but also because any company that tried would face a backlash from developers that would impair the company's ability to get features added to the standard kernel.

    The question of whether the suits own Linux or not boils down to whether or not the suits can get the features they want, at the expense of everyone else. Case in point: DRM. Suits love it. Linux users hate it. Linus may include it in the kernel, but Linux will be dead the day he includes it *without* a compiler switch to turn it off.
    • So let them think they own Linux. Their chest will puff up, they'll swagger a little more and if one of them steps out of line, they'll get crucified by the industry press, their competitors and customers.

      Nobody in their right mind will be able to sell a proprietized Linux because its "Optimized for their hardware". Anyone with half a brain will immediately throw the word UNIX back in their face and the calamity caused by the fragmentation of UNIX.

      hmmm, that sounds a lot like a never. OK, they shouldn't be able to pull it off, but its amazing what some people can sell.
  • either way it looks like it's intel who wins, they get to beat out all the old unix companies while the software is what's causing the shift. what the hell happened to all those unix server companies anyway? they're just gonna go down without putting a fight.
    • The old Unix companies have been heading down for a while. Apollo and Sun started the workstation market, with HP, Digital, and IBM doing their thing, and SGI always hanging around in their own niche. Apollo was bought by HP. Digital sold alpha to Intel and then was bought by HP. IBM is still hanging around, but has surely thrown their hat into the *Linux ring. SGI is still there, but still in their own niche. Which means we are left with Sun, whose SPARC was always the slow machine that was marketed better than the rest, and HP. And, don't forget that HP and IBM have announced their migration to IA-64. So, Sun/SPARC seems to be the only remaining player outside the Intel fold. And SGI. Then there is Apple who keeps the MIPS architecture moving forward. Who knows where that will end up, but at least they keep things interesting.

      More and more it is looking like an Intel world. AMD mearly adds some price competition. I worry about where we'll see the competition from inovative hardware architectures?

  • What I really hated was that last comment made about "Suits are taking over, and are here to stay."

    Linus is possibly the closest thing to a 'suit' that will have influence over the kernel. "Suits" are left with the GNU system to "Take Over." I will laugh my ass off at any businessman that tries to remove the freedom of GNU from GNU. RMS, and others will not stand for such stupidity, and fortunately the GPL protects the system from pointy - haired idiots.

    There were references to changes made to the Kernel and OS that would make it run faster only on their machines. This is to be expected! Ever heard of Gentoo? My version of Gentoo runs fastest on my machine, an Athlon, and not on an Intel Pentium 4. What point is this guy trying to make? That the version of GNU/Linux that IBM/Sun/whateveh comes up with will be proprietary? Is he trying to say that the source code for this version will not be released? Is he trying to say that this version of GNU/Linux will be the only version?

    Bad businessman, Bad! You are meddling in things that you cannot possibly understand.

  • Anyone renember SCO? (Score:3)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Thursday September 26, 2002 @02:00PM (#4337970)
    I can't tell you how many times people told me that linux was a "toy" oppeating system not fit for commercial use and would never replace more serious UNIX solutions like SCO. That Linux might be OK for a non critical print server, but other than that SCO was it and would always rule. Well, well, well - if I'm not hearing the same thing from Sun today?
  • imho Solaris is still strong, and Linux (sorry GNU/Linux) is gaining speed. In all honesty, would you run your 30,000 employees through linux servers? Or would you use the 7 nines of Solaris? oh, wait. actually, i think win2k's active directory could handle it....

    Solaris is rock solid, and will continue because of the proprietary systems. Damn, even their x86 Solaris is Rock solid. Oracle needs rock solid for mission critical. This is why Sun owns the mid to high end market......

    • I agree. Linux makes a very nice "we-also-run" for Solaris/Oracle shops. Develop with Linux on the desktop, put Linux on continuous/automated build servers, use Linux for smoke and unit testing. Then deploy to test and production Solaris servers running Oracle.

      This combination is effective because it allows a development team to explore, and even break stuff, on low-cost but highly capable systems. These systems don't need the "grooming-the-queen" approach of mainframe administration, or the "you-can't-handle-the-root" management of Solaris system administration. Most of the well paid Solaris sysadmins I've encountered have proven to be well worth their pay. That makes it even more important that we concentrate their effort on optimizing and maintaining production systems (storage management, fail-over, system security, OS patches... etc.).

      Let the developers worry about bouncing an application server or web server to test a change. Let the developers worry about scripting and scheduling builds. Let the developers figure out how to configure the application and try several different ways of doing it. Let the developers do all of this on Linux.

      Sorry for the rant... I'm out of breath now.



      The opinions expressed in this post are my own, and not necessarily the opinions of my employer.

  • backhanded compliment (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jaymzter ( 452402 )

    A Linux conversion is not for the faint-hearted. Companies must install new hardware and software on a large scale and prepare for bugs and hardware incompatibilities galore

    What a crock, so as soon as you put GNU/Linux on a system it might explode?

    This article is full of misinformation, the worst being the focus on "free"! How many times have we read here on Slashdot that PHB's don't want free (gratis)? You can't give anything away, you have to charge for it. Sun showed us that with Star Office. Am I happy Fortune did a write up on GNU/Linux? Sure, but I think articles like this do more injustice to us than anything. At least thanks to IBM (per the article) GNU/Linux didn't die a death of neglect!

    By the way, is granolaed a word?

    • This article is full of crap like that. They mention halfway through that Intel based machines only run Windows (other than Linux)! These starched shirt morons don't realize that all their bloated, boring Powerpoint files have probably been stored on a Netware or OS/2 box at some point in their pathetic careers, not to mention some other free or commercial *nix. It's not that you couldn't run something else on x86, it's just that management doesn't care.
  • "A Linux conversion is not for the faint-hearted. Companies must install new hardware and software on a large scale and prepare for bugs and hardware incompatibilities galore."

    Then later the article reads, "Levanon says the hardware and software savings are nice, but what has really made the conversion compelling is that his labor costs are down 10% to 20%."

    If there are so many bugs and incompatibilities then why does administration cost 10% 20% less?

    • If there are so many bugs and incompatibilities then why does administration cost 10% 20% less?

      I think it makes the statement more impressive. The Linux hill is easier to camp on even when it rains.

  • Tying Linux to proprietary hardware? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday September 26, 2002 @04:23PM (#4339210) Journal

    The article says a few stupid things (and a bunch of interesting things), but I think this part is just silly:

    Companies like Sun, HP, and IBM could derail Linux if they co-opt it--that is, modify it enough so that their versions run well only on their own hardware systems. That is exactly what Sun executives plan to do. They believe the profit motive will prove too strong for IBM, HP, or anyone else to resist making such a play either. "The reality is that profit-making companies like to get paid," Sun's Schwartz says.

    How can you possibly tie Linux to a proprietary platform? Sure, you can make weird hardware that requires specialized drivers and whatnot to run, but if you want the large volume of Linux software in the world to run on your machine you have to keep the kernel APIs the same, which means that your customers still have the option of swapping your hardware and customized Linux for someone else's at will. Unless, of course, your hardware is just vastly better, in which case you have no need to try to lock people in, 'cause your boxes will win on their own merits.

    If you choose to change the kernel API, or wrap it in proprietary utilities and libraries that provide a substantially different application interface, which you then use to implement your applications, well, you've just managed to tie your applications to your version of Linux which is tied to your hardware, but you have to convince *other* application developers to do the same to have achieved any significant lock-in. Either that or you have to create some truly killer software that is so good people will buy your platform just to run it.

    And even if you achieve that, as soon as someone else ports your kernel modifications (which you had to publish, Yay GPL!) to your competitors platforms, or as soon as someone else reimplements your killer app on a standard kernel/OS, your lock-in quietly evaporates. You can also try to lock people in with contracts, licenses and marketing approaches, but that pisses customers off and, if you're very successful, it also pisses off the Department of Justice. Not to mention that all of this customization of Linux will cost you a crapload of money both to do and then to maintain.

    Finally, as for Schwartz's assertion that Sun's competitors will opt to find ways to lock their customers in, I think he's on crack. Not only do the customers not want to be locked in (they've been there, done that and got the scars to prove it), many of the vendors have also learned that strategy doesn't work as well in the long term. IBM, in particular, found that you can make huge amounts of money for a while that way, but eventually it comes back to bite you.

    Nope. Open Source operating systems make sense precisely because they allow hardware and applications to compete separately. Sun can't change that no matter how hard they wish they could. And IBM, at least, likes that fact, because IBM thinks the key to selling hardware is services, and they're much better at services than Sun, HP or Dell.

  • ... but there was no NT in the early days!

    oh wait, I'm old (over thirty), nevermind.
  • From the Fortune Article: Companies like Sun, HP, and IBM could derail Linux if they co-opt it--that is, modify it enough so that their versions run well only on their own hardware systems. That is exactly what Sun executives plan to do. They believe the profit motive will prove too strong for IBM, HP, or anyone else to resist making such a play either. "The reality is that profit-making companies like to get paid," Sun's Schwartz says.

    And you thought they were being nice...

  • Just a note. The article is dated for Monday, September 30, 2002. What day is today?

  • IBM & MCA (Score:2, Insightful)

    by __aadhrk6380 ( 585073 )
    Who out there remembers MCA? IBM thought they could dominate the hardware arena by closing off their source technology and introducing some proprietary performance enhancements that would compel companies to buy strictly from them. This was back in the day when hardware would never catch up with software.

    Here we are now, and IBM is the biggest backer of open source. Seems like they have a corporate memory, at least.

    Software is going through the same growing pains that hardware has already gone through. And the proprietary hardware vendors are choking because open standards have caused huge price drops along with huge performance gains.

    I'll be damned if I know where it will all end up, but the landscape 5 years from now will be a lot different than it is today.

  • The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the
    forest, hunting bear. They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took
    their backpacks off and put them inside. At which point the salesman turned
    to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
    Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down
    on the porch. Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest. The noises
    got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like
    hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and
    most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
    "Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
    The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door,
    suddenly stopped, and stepped aside. The bear, unable to stop, continued
    through the door and into the cabin. The salesman slammed the door closed
    and grinned at his friend. "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this
    one and I'll go rustle us up another!"

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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