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Commercialization of Linux

Posted by Roblimo on from the little-bit-of-history dept.

m3.142 writes "Author J.S. Kelly in his LinuxWorld article says [summarized] 'In 1999, Linux became the Next Big Thing. Linux grew in market share and mindshare, in users and in servers, in support from hardware companies, software companies, and software vendors, in media coverage and in stock valuation. J.S. Kelly isn't convinced that the people who so badly wanted Linux to become the Next Big Thing knew precisely what they were wishing for, and thinks they may be in for an unwelcome lesson ...'"

13 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Size doesn't matter... by prizog · · Score: 3

    It's all about freedom. The night I found gnu.org, I changed forever. I sat for hours, reading the philosophy section. And the next day, I started installing Debian. It's not about a bandwagon. It's about choice, and freedom. That's why I use Linux, and that's why I think many others do.

    --
    Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
  2. Misses the point - we can't be hurt by AdamT · · Score: 3

    Somehow I think he's missing the point of open source.
    We're not here to get big, make money and go home with the girl. No the folk who are acutally making a difference.
    This guy is talking as if open source was a scarse resource.
    Its only exists /at/all/ becuase the people who made it wanted it. The corporate raiders can come in, strip the land scape bare, and when they leave open source will still be here just like it was before.
    I guess sucks if you were looking to get rich out of linux. But if you just wanted an OS that got the job done - no ones taking that away.
    Moneys nice - but it's not really the goal is it? If it's your goal you deserve what you get. :P

    --
    ... with eskimo chains i tatto my brain all the way...
  3. What I want from Open Source by Dacta · · Score: 5

    I want software that doesn't suck. It's as simple as that.

    Open source, while it has philsopical points that I think are important, main attraction is that it is the best long term means of accomplising that - for me at least.

    Who cares is Linux is just the current "big thing", and in a years time all these companies that have jumped on the bandwagon have gone?

    Provided they have open-sourced their stuff, the source will still be around to integrate (licence allowing) into things that we/I will find useful.

    Not only that, but no longer do we need to put up with crappy software and feel powerless to do anything about it. Hate Windows? Contribute to Gnome/KDE. Think ASP sux? There's PHP for you.

    Remember back in say '93 or '94 how bad Windows 3.11 was? Remember the first time you tried Linux and - after installing everything you could find, then deinstalling half of it - that it still didn't crash!

    That's what it is about for me. I don't care if all these companies abandon Linux - provided the source is still around, no company can afford to put out crappy software anymore.

    1. Re:What I want from Open Source by jfunk · · Score: 3

      Pretty much my exact thoughts.

      I'm not one of those people (cough-journalists-cough) that simply sits around wondering if Linux will become the #1 OS while browsing Slashdot with IE under Win98. I've been using it since 1993. It wouldn't really make sense to just drop it and start using Win2K. I can actually get work done on my computer. I remember working for a while at an NT shop and discovering that Linux has spoiled me. If I try to use it in the same way I use X, the damn thing crashes, running less applications at the same time, with more memory.

      There's also little things, like the way Windows resets the position of a document when I'm dragging a scrollbar and let the mouse stray a dozen pixels to the left or right. Windows users are used to that. I'm not.

      Though the major reason why I'm sticking with it is that the apps can only get better. I've been playing with KDE2 cvsups, and Konqueror is the first ever filemanager that makes me rethink using mc (not the disappointing gmc) for absolutely everything (wow, I remember when it was called 'Mouseless Commander," I feel old).

      Ok, so I have a small W98 partition on my hard drive. It's not bootable, though. I'll never actually use it. It's there just in case I need to use Wine for something and want to use the MS libraries, which appears to be very rare for me. I had to use it to get some some entries from someone's address book application when his power supply failed. I plugged it into mine, and ran the app. Then I backed up his data. It didn't screw up my system, my "drive letters" didn't change, it used the registry on his Windows partition, not mine.

      I'm not a zealot or anything. Linux simply makes more sense for me. I'm not deleting it from my desktop anytime soon.

      Now all I have to do is get this Kurta 12x17 digitizer I just got sans documentation to work in X...

    2. Re:What I want from Open Source by Elbereth · · Score: 3

      I agree with the above post. After all the fame and fortune is gone, Linux will still be the same as it was before the fame and fortune. There really isn't anything to lose here, except lots of converts. While having an influx of new users is nice, we're not a commercial operation that survives by how popular it is. As long as the source code is out there, someone will be hacking it.

      I sure like having Creative Labs write drivers for their high end sound cards, but I could live without it. I lived without for many years. Back when I first ran Linux, it didn't support anything but a handful of IDE, SCSI, and Ethernet adapters. Now, I can't find a single adapter that isn't supported unless I try very hard (ie, esoteric USB hardware and off-brand UDMA/66 chipsets).

      Whatever happens to us, we can learn from and become better as a result of it.

  4. This is how it works by SerpentMage · · Score: 5

    The business community works by making it interesting to make money. Regardless of how it is spun, in the end everyone needs money.

    The reason why many open source projects work and continue to survive is because they offer

    1) better quality
    2) respect the business community
    3) listen to their clients

    Here are examples of this in action, Linux, Apache and Perl. Each of these three projects do not attempt to force the world to open source. They do their thing and let the business community be as it is.

    To be quite honest I would think a VAT or Open Source society tax should be started. Companies that profit from Open Source should be required to donate some money to the Open Source community. The Open Source community would then spread that money to developers working on Open Source projects.

    I know this sounds socialist, but I think the Open Source community as a whole would benefit. I would even ammend the GPL as follows.

    "If you intend to not distribute the sources to this project, then you are required to donate a reasonable amount of the profts back into the Open Source community."

    As much as the Open Source community hates this, but it makes a business of Open Source. Instead this will make interesting for the business community to use the vast number of sources available. And if the business community does use the sources then the Open Source community will benefit. The Open Source community can then continue and do their favourite thing, hack at code...

    I think it is a very attractive business model. A small business could compete against the big players. To be quite frank this is a great way of breaking the hold of the big software companies on the software community.

    If you think that this will only attract leeches and pirates, think again. Developing a product is one thing. Making it stable, creating effective documentation, creating a marketing campaign, providing extensive support is quite a bit of work and should not be underestimated. And as we all know, this part of the work sucks!!!

    --

    "You can't make a race horse of a pig"
    "No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
    1. Re:This is how it works by akey · · Score: 3
      "If you intend to not distribute the sources to this project, then you are required to donate a reasonable amount of the profts back into the Open Source community."

      I don't think that this would work for a number of reasons:
      • 1: Define "reasonable". Look at MP3, for example. Because it is used in an international standard, Fraunhofer/Thomson are required to license their patents on a reasonable basis. Yet if I, as an open source developer, want to make use of an international standard, I have to fork over a minimum of $10000 up front, based on per copy distribution. A company, on the other hand, when deciding what is "reasonable" to return to the open source community, would probably go the other way and pay as little as possible -- they're out to maximize profit.
      • 2: For a company to use code in a product, it has to either own the copyright or have a license. One of the guiding philosophies of the GPL is that every user has the right to the source code. If you give companies a loophole, you may as well throw away the entire license.
      • 3: The software itself can be lost. If a company takes GPL'ed software, modifies it, distributes the modified copy, but does not provide the changed source code, then those changes are lost to the community at large. If the company changes it sufficiently to prevent interoperability between the original GPL'ed version and their own, then everyone loses. Either the maintainers of the original GPL'ed software are forced to reverse-engineer the changes, or accept the loss of interoperability.

      No, I really believe that it is a bad idea to allow any sort of loophole, even for money, to the concept that the source code must be available.
      --

      ---
      "Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
  5. Even if the "gold rush" ends, you loose nothing. by caolan · · Score: 3
    Seems to me that the worst case scenarios are that

    1. all the nice linux companies go completely bust.
    2. huge nasty companies attempt to take over and their marketing machine convinces the public that linux == some uglycorp software.
    3. the public interest falters and dies.
    It would be nice for the interest to maintain and the existing "nice" companies to retain their ethos and go from strength to strength, that way we get ports of commercial software easier, some games say, and a much easier ride in convincing bosses to allow us to use linux at work :-).

    But even take the worst case scenarios and examine them for a while, its still a win win situation. You still have your free linux, that source is stil free to use, you loose nothing. Whatever you had before the "commercialization" doesn't get erased when the "gold rush" ends. Sure a period of die back while the companies run away as fast as they can, but those of us who only wanted an os that they could afford that didn't suck and allowed them to plink around with some code don't loose anything.

    Just rein back that panic and general frothing at the mouth and get on with it. Write some code it's very soothing and actually achieves something constructive. I'd recommend it to anyone.

    C.

    --
    I sometimes write stuff
  6. Oh shut up! by kevin+lyda · · Score: 3

    Here's what the "commercialisation of Linux" means to me: I can offer a solution based on Linux and not have to fight *political* and *non-technical* battles tooth and nail. Three months ago an AIX consulting crowd claimed we were "brave" to use Linux. Our management told them it fit our needs technically and to shove off.

    *That's* what commercialisation means.

    As for loyal employees, ethical companies, etc., well I doubt you'd see those whether or not Linux even existed. I hate to rain on anyone's parade but employees and companies are out to make cash. The rest is just frosting tomake everyone involved feel all warm and cuddly - and quite a few people don't care for warmth or cuddles.

    The current state of Linux and free software is that it has a wider range of acceptance, it has a license that keeps it free (speech not beer), and beyond that I don't much care. If you *really* are concerned about free software do the world a favor and send your two cents to somewhere useful: http://www.fsf.org/

    --
    US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
  7. VA/Linux to buy Andover.net! by ajs · · Score: 4

    How's this for commercialization: Hot off the business wire: VA/Linux is buying Andover.net for 0.425 shares of VA per share of Andover. This is good news for me, being that I like VA enough to own them and already bought into Andover at 37....

  8. Linux is everything to all people by jd · · Score: 3
    That's because it doesn't enforce anything other than the GPL. You can interpret the GPL, taking it completely literally, and apply it to any and every economic, political or theological philosophy that has ever been devised. And it will look exactly the same.

    Why?

    Because freedom is model-neutral. As such, you can bung freedom into any model and it will still work in exactly the same way as if you'd bunged it into any other model.

    All this talk about commercialisation of Linux being bad for it implies that the model is greater than the substance. Whilst this may be true for individuals ("power corrupts"), it can't be true of concepts. Concepts can't be corrupted, because concepts have no physical existance -to- corrupt. You might as well corrupt "pink".

    You can throw orange paint at pink wallpaper, and "damage" the wallpaper. Sure. I could equally go in and delete the Makefiles from the Linux source on my hard-drive. What does that corrupt? Nothing! All it does is make a mess. In the paint example, "Pink" remains exactly the same, no matter WHAT you do to that poor, wretched wallpaper. Likewise, the GPL and Linux aren't affected by what I do to the contents of my hard-drive.

    You CAN corrupt people, because people exist in the real world, with minds of their own. You cannot corrupt a concept or a vision, because these have no physical components to attack, or minds to destroy.

    Any journalist who argues otherwise is having troube seperating physical reality from their imagination, and should take up a career as a senior Government official.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  9. JS Kelly has some facts wrong by blakestah · · Score: 4

    The author clearly has some facts just plain wrong.

    He claims Andreesen used the Mosaic code to "float netscape". Wrong. The Mosaic code was, in fact, the most valuable piece of code around at the time. It was licensed - to Microsoft. They then gave it away making it totally worthless to the people who invented the graphical browser.

    Netscape rewrote the browser de novo.

    Kelly makes other errors as well, but he misses the important commercialization point made at Linus' recent keynote. Big companies have done a LOT to make linux end user friendly in a short period of time, They've done a lot of menial bug chasing - the kind of code writing that is easiest done by paying someone. Redhat and VA linux especially do a lot. SGI is bringing some nfs work to linux, as well as the best file system in existence. IBM brought its (closed source) Java implementation. And on and on.

    Yeah, big business is really affecting linux. Just not as JS Kelly thinks it is. Maybe he should actually try using it sometime.

  10. Why Linux Has Reached Its Plateau by SamBeckett · · Score: 3

    People! You need to wake up and smell the coffee! This article was entirely wrong because in the not so distant future, everyone and their brother will realize that the *BSDs and NTs run their server software better.

    In test after test, Linux has been shown to suck at networking after a certain threshold. This threshold is what seperates the men from boys, IMHO.

    And IT professionals know about this.. They are very leary to use Linux for anything less than a print manager because of the headaches, hassles and slow downs it will cause due to scalability.

    What Linux really needs, and I mean _REALLY_ needs, is dedicated developers to the kernel that will make it more suitable for larger purposes. Granted, it's already reliable as all get-out, but it needs to be fast.

    Then, and only then, will the rest of the server market wake up and smell the coffee. (this is the portion of the market that actually have $$$ to spend) When this happens, there will be a great windfall for all.

    Another key problem that could make or break our favorite kernel is the desktop usability factor. Even with Gnome/KDE/Your favorite WM it all still reeks of a bad hack. (no offense to the developers, but you need to consult UI experts)

    Please note- I am not BASHING linux in anyway.. I am just restating what has been said numerous times-- the programmers need to take heed and make their software useful, the Kernel developers need to take heed and make it faster (this will probably involve changing the scheduling process around etc), and the Linux user group needs to stop making asses of themselves. (i.e., Slashdot posts)

    So, in the words of the worst computer movie ever, "Hackers of the World Unite!" (or give up and switch to BSD)

    Thanks