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The benefits of Open Source or Free software to its users are undeniable. If the software has a bug, or the software does not do something you want it to do, you can change it. There are many advantages, and they have been explained at length by various people. If you are going to be using software, you are definitely better off if you have access to the source code.

Trust

The fundamental difference between open source software and closed source software is the level of trust required. For a business to use closed source software, the level of trust required is enormous. It is not simply a question of whether the money spent purchasing the software is a good investment. The time invested using the software is far more significant. Almost inevitably your own business information becomes tied up in a format that is specific to the software you are using. In order to buy software from a closed source company, you have to take the following on trust:

• They have not left gaping security holes in the code.
• They will fix bugs in a timely manner.
• They will eventually add the features you want.
• They are not using your computing resources to do things which are not in your interest.
• They will not increase the price unreasonably once you depend on them.
• They will not go bust.

Business Models Having access to the source code makes good sense to the users. However the business case for the software vendor is far less convincing. In fact, the dangers of closed source from the user's perspective can be considered opportunities from the vendor's perspective.

The open source foundation proposes "4 ways to win" which is reproduced here: Four Ways To Win

Now for a higher-level, investor's point of view. There are at least four known business models for making money with open source:

1. Support Sellers (otherwise known as "Give Away the Recipe, Open A Restaurant"): In this model, you (effectively) give away the software product, but sell distribution, branding, and after-sale service. This is what (for example) Red Hat does.
2. Loss Leader: In this model, you give away open-source as a loss-leader and market positioner for closed software. This is what Netscape is doing.
3. Widget Frosting : In this model, a hardware company (for which software is a necessary adjunct but strictly a cost rather than profit center) goes open-source in order to get better drivers and interface tools cheaper. Silicon Graphics, for example, supports and ships Samba.
4. Accessorizing: Selling accessories books, compatible hardware, complete systems with open-source software pre-installed. It's easy to trivialize this (open-source T-shirts, coffee mugs, Linux penguin dolls) but at least the books and hardware underly some clear successes: O'Reilly Associates, SSC, and VA Research are among them.

In fact, the number of companies that have had success with any of these models is miniscule. This is hardly surprising, they are simply not very good business models for software companies.

Taking each in turn... Selling Support The better documented and more reliable the product is, the less support it needs. A business model where the more perfect your product, the less money you can make has got something fundamentally wrong with it. Loss Leader The very fact that this can be advanced as a viable business model for OpenSource shows desperation. What it comes down to is an admission that the best way to make money from software is by selling it. Widget Frosting This makes perfect sense if you are a hardware company, or when the software is a side issue. However, its no use at all for a business whose main product is software. Accessorizing Selling accessories is fine, but there is no pressing need to actually develop the software when one is in the accessories business.

There are of course other business models for Open Source. For instance, the one adopted by the Perl foundation and several others is begging. This is not a business model that many companies would find appealing though.

The basic problem is that for a business whose primary function is to make software, then the primary reward has to come from selling the software. We need a business model that actually works and we have one, it's called capitalism. It works like this: make something that people want and sell it to them. This model works for software too, and there is no reason why this model cannot work even when source code is available. Closed source vendors are relying on something a little closer to the business model of a heroin pusher. It starts off like capitalism, but there is the added feature that the user gets addicted and has to carry on buying the same thing even if he does not really want to. The more he uses the same vendor, the more reliant he is upon it.

The Solution Community software is software where the vendor can be paid a fair price for the software he creates, but where the buyer does not end up in a similar position to a junkie.

Community Source is software that guarantees the following:

1. The right to see what the software is doing, ie access to unobfuscated source code.
2. The right to add enhancements.
3. The right to fix bugs.
4. The right to sell his enhancements to other companies. This does not mean the right to the sell software without the original vendor receiving any money. The buyer still needs a license from the original vendor, but he does not have to rely on a single vendor for upgrades and enhancements.
5. The right to buy enhanced versions from 3rd parties.

Hey, I don't like the VA Systems->Linux->Software scam.

They never were called "VA Systems."

I still have VA Research in my bookmarks. I get all nostalgic and weepy when I click on it. Oh how things have changed.

va research in my bookmark file.

• Australiasia
  
  • Japan
    
    
  • ftp://ftp.netlab.is.tsukuba.ac.jp/pub /XFree86
  • ftp://ftp.iij.ad.jp/pub/X/XFree86
  
  
• Korea
  
  • ftp://ftp.kreonet.re.kr/pub/Linux/xfree86
  
  
• Australia
  
  • ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/XFree86
    
  • ftp://x.physics.usyd.edu.au/pub/XFree86
  
  

US

• ftp://phyppro1.phy.bnl.gov/pub/XFree86
  
• ftp://ftp.rge.com/pub/X/XFree86
• ftp://ftp.varesearch.com/pub/mirrors/x free86
• ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/XFr ee86
• ftp://ftp.calderasystems.com/pub/m irrors/xfree86
• ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/XFree86
• 
  ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/mirrors/xfree86
  
  

Europe

• Austria
  
  • ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/hci/X11/XFree86
    
    
  
  
• Finland
  • ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/X11/XFree86
• France
  • ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/X11/XFree86
  
  
• Germany
  • ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/xfree86/XFree86
    
  • ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/X/XFree86
• Italy
  • ftp://ftp.unina.it/pub/XFree86
• Norway
  • ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/XFree86
  
  
• United Kingdom
  • ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/XFr ee86

There's a company called Lodgepole in Washington state (USA) that sells brand new alpha systems. VA Research used to sell them. There are other places out there...

See also: my previous comment

1. Big companies like Dell and IBM have staff that remember what happened when some uncareful deals were made with Microsoft.

   If it hadn't been for some real sharp intellectual property lawyers, Microsoft would probably have been a bit of "IBM toe jam."

2. It may be cheaper to keep several Linux vendors alive and kicking than to commit to one.

   After all, Macmillan Publishing was "devoted" to Red Hat Software until they became "devoted" to Linux/Mandrake...

3. Playing the My Kernel Developer Is Better Than Your Kernel Developer game is none too safe.

   Look, for instance, at the VA Linux Systems Ubergeek List. Note that they've "got" Ted T'so and H.J. Lu, amongst quite a list of important "Kernelmeisters."

   Red Hat has some notable kernel hackers, notably Alan Cox and Stephen Tweedie; it is not vastly apparent that they have infinite clout in this regard.

4. The Only Works With RedHat Linux label came long ago, and can't afford to stay.

Take a look at the more recent knfsd's from varesearch. The newer versions have kernel patches for lockd as well as NFS filehandles to fix problems with non-Linux clients. I have 2 Linux servers running 2.2.10 and knfsd-1.4.7 and have no problems with a Solaris 7 client (or Linux 2.2.10 clients for that matter).

We have our own load (based on Red Hat) that has some kernel tweaks provided by our engineers to optimize performance on our systems. The only way you can get this version of Linux is with a VA system.

Ouch, you make that sound like a GPL violation! Before anybody flames them, they do appear to have the modified kernels on ftp.varesearch.com. Maybe you should have left off that last sentence?

I'd also like to say that VA has been doing great things to support the community. They're supporting a number of developers full time, and the services they provide through on.openprojects.net are just wonderful. Way to go, guys!

I say with relative authority: Puh-leez!

MS would like people to believe that Exchange is an enterprise-level communications tool, when it fact it is a buchered and bloated decendant of a mediocre 1992 X.400 email system from Data Connection Limited (check out http://www.datcon.co.uk/press/messserv.h tm) Don't believe the version number; Exchange is in its second major release (4.x really is 1.x, 5.x = 2.x, etc) and still has significant stability problems.

In my experience, Exchange can support 300 users per server happily on commonly acceptable x86 corporate server hardware (say, a 2 processor PII with 512mb ram). It seems that (in my limited experience, lest MS lawyers take this to be a declaration of fact, which it is not) once you've reached this level, doubling the ram and adding more cpu's has only a minimal effect, which means that you really have to add more servers to add capacity.

Let's do the math. 25,000 users at 500 users per server (to be quite generous) means that you're going to need a Windows NT server farm of about 50 systems just to do email. Again, being generous bargain hunters, let's say you can buy one of these servers for $10kUS. That means you're out $500,000 just for hardware. In my experience, you can support 500 POP users easily on a SPARC 2 or IPX, which can be had these days for about $500 decked out (including a 17" monitor). You could support the same (probably many more) on a $500 x86 box running any of the free *nixes. Assume you blow $500 on disk storage for these boxen just to level the starting line, bringing the total cost to $1000 per. That's still only $50,000.

One less zero usually gets the accountants' attention on an expenditure like this.

But let's talk about administrative support. IMHO you're going to need 1:1 admin per NT server at that usage level, given that remote admin of NT is difficult, and 500 users per server is going to prompt more than the occasional pretty blue interface. (Nevermind the security team you're going to need for a major NT installation.) Say a cheap NT admin costs $50kUS including benefits & overhead. You're looking at an HR budget of $2,500,000us. On the other hand, say you splurge and spend $150kUS per *nix admin. If they couldn't handle 10 little boxen apiece, I'll eat the electrons this was posted with. That's an HR budget of $750,000us.

That's 1/10th the hardware expense and 1/3 the maintenance expense of using Exchange. And that's (a) making some wild assumptions that benefit the Exchange argument, and (b) assumes that you're running *nix on shit hardware. Spend 5 times as much on hardware for new, supported stuff (say $250,000us, which would buy you a couple of well-outfitted Sparc 4500s, or 10 really gorgeous systems from VA Research). Your downtime will become next to nothing, you'll still have spent only half of what you would have for NT and Exchange, and your ongoing yearly administrative cost will be 1/3 of the other option. The *nix administrative savings alone will pay for the *nix hardware in a few months.

Oh yeah. I forgot the expense of 50 copies of Windows NT, 50 copies of Exchange Server, and 25,000 client licenses... (*erk*!!)

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/6.1/
SuSE's FTP server in Germany (SuSE 6.1)

Otherwise look at http://www.suse.de/e/ftp.html for mirrors, etc.

Enjoy. :-)

Ye Olde Webdesigner

I think varesearch hosts opensource projects for free as a community service.

VA Research is based in Mountain View California (why the heck is it called VA Research? Anyone know?)

Some tech firms actually headquartered in Virginia: AOL, Circuit City...umm maybe someone can come up with some better examples :).

I have seen articals about a few tricks that are needed to make Celerons into Dual'able. So, that may be a bit of bang. But I don't know if it's possable HERE Pricewatch shows it's dual boards, and they ain't cheap, and it seems only Xeon boards are listed.

I would tend to say, go with the dual Celeron tricks if your very technically inclined, go with dual PII's if your not, and if you want more, look at non-Intel options.

VA Research is definately going to be the place to go to see just how much you can get an Intel box to do. They are running at the commercial limits of possabilities with Intel systems. If they don't have it, I would be doubtfull of it's existance. But if you notice the prices (*Which are reasonable considering the quality of componants*), they start playing into the SUN/SGI price range with thier bigger systems.

All the Slate article proves is that it is difficult to install a new OS on a computer with an existing OS for a beginner.... I'd like to see them try this experiment:
Get a computer pre-configured with Linux. (from VA Research or a similar place)Then install Windows on it.... Ok, step one, repartion the hard drive. Oh, wait, there is *no* documentation for fdisk in the win 98 manual, is there! And if you know how to use it, you are still stuck cause MS-fdisk won't even see your Linux partition to delete them.... Looks like you have to boot Linux again to run it's fdisk to set up your windows partitions! I bet we would find that it is a ton easier to add linux to a windows system than it is to add windows to a linux system. And I haven't even gotten to the whole win-overwrote-my-MBR-and-now-I-can't-boot-linux issue.... This article was pure FUD, plain and simple. The depressing thing is, people will believe it.

The note that the Windows contract is between OEMs and the end user doesn't bode well for this protest. If this is in fact the case, MS can, and probably will, just tell those involved to go deal with the company from which they purchased the computer.

This is a great idea, but I think it should be directed at OEMs, the ones who are actually bound by the contract. I'd recommend using the LFD site and its resources as a way to put extra muscle on OEMs for customers, perhaps organizing concerted efforts against specific suppliers. They're the ones who're ultimately responsible for this mess for agreeing to MS's licensing terms, and they're the ones who're going to have to protest to Redmond directly.

Another way of protesting, which could do more to get OEMs' attention is to take advantage of our semi-free market and vote with our dollars by buying preinstalled Linux machines. Two of my friends have computers from the wonderful folks at VA Research; the machines are great, and I'm planning on buying my next desktop computer from them.

For those for whom VA's prices are a little high (i.e. buying those bargain Compaqs and the like), I'd encourage them to, even if the response is negative, ask that all MS software be removed/not installed and try to get the refund right away. If they won't get rid of Windows, perhaps you can save some cash on Works, Office, McAffee, or whatever they're pushing on you.

That said, I wish everyone luck. May you get your refunds.

You may want to Check thier Pricing/Configuration before you say it's out of line. I see a heck of a lot of hardware there for under 1/2 of the $50,000 you mention.

Buy from Penguin Computing or VA Research. These two companies have done much to support the Linux community, including sponsorship of slashdot. When you buy a PC through one of these two companies you are skipping the Microsoft tax (although VA Research will put it on if you really want it... and Penguin Computing refuses to touch Windows) not to mention they will in turn give back to the Linux community a bit of the prosperity that the community brought to them.

Dell could care less about Linux. Them, Gateway 2000, Micron, you name it... all these guys have been in it just for the $$$ and could care less about making Linux better for you and me. All these years they snubbed us. Support companies that were early adopters and help support a new world order based on Linux.

VA Research's VArBook comes with Win95, but not installed. When even a Linux specific dealer has to bundle an MS OS with their notebooks, that's a monopoly.