Where UnitedLinux Got It Wrong

An Anonymous Coward writes "A story on NewsForge [ed. note: part of the keiretsu] suggests that the lack of binaries for UnitedLinux shows disrespect to the community which created most of the software. The author suggests a better way for handling the business problems that a lack of binaries is supposed to solve. Some particularly clueless reader comments say that UnitedLinux has no responsibility to cooperate with the community. The thought that UnitedLinux won't even offer a development distribution to the community does not sit well with me."

Comments

keiretsu... for the english speakers

[whydna]

In case you didn't know what keiretsu meant either:

A network of businesses that own stakes in one another as a means of mutual security, especially in Japan, and usually including large manufacturers and their suppliers of raw materials and components.

And this is bad because....?

[Daemonik]

If the source code is available, then why do the developers need binaries? Aren't these the people most likely to recompile the system from scratch?

The only reason I can see at this stage for a binary distro would be for demo purposes.

Re:And this is bad because....?

[Chris Johnson]

RMS cannot be expected to understand every possible limitation of freedom. He's an uber-coder and to him, the source is the program. What we're seeing currently is a situation in which businesses are looking at Linux and free software, and going, "it's nice that you people want to share with each other and give to each other. Now we're going to come in and make money off it, and we deserve your respect because we're going to make your work profitable- and we're not going to violate the letter of your licenses, we're only going to make sure everyone understands that we will not give the slightest bit more than that."

"Because how can you possibly succeed through giving and sharing?"

This is why these developments are repugnant to a lot of free software people: speaking for myself, I think it's wonderful if these companies are prepared to abide by the letter of the licenses, but they're setting up a situation where they'll be saying, 'the reason you should give us money while we avoid doing more than the minimum we can get away with is, you can't go around being altruistic'.

This is not an argument that I feel needs additional support. To me, the argument, 'great things can happen when people cooperate on something altruistically' is the one that deserves the support. It's true, it's produced the body of open source software, and it's challenged every single time some bozos at a company decide to do Their Special Thing on top of open source, and combine their proprietary software with the free stuff.

Because they will ALWAYS say, 'we're value added', and they'll say, 'You have to expect to pay for the added value, of course', and they'll say 'you can't expect to be given things for free', which is exactly what was done for them. It's ingratitude, and it's distracting, and it's capable of confusing people as to what's really going on- even to the point where they think all the IMPORTANT work must be done by companies for money, and the more important it is, the less anyone will be willing to give it freely for the general betterment of all.

And that is why these business guys are a problem, even if they are obeying the letter of the rules. It's wrong to discount generosity and cooperation. And having examples out there of 'no, you can't have that, shame on you for wanting to deprive us of profit' is bad. They should just write proprietary operating systems if they want to go there- oops, no, they can't! They should take a hint from this.

What I dont understand...

[gamorck]

Is why everybody seems surprised by this. Did the readers here actually think that GPLed code was immune to being hijacked by commercial interests? Specifically thats not whats going to happen here - but its pretty close.

Version 1: United Linux creates a Distribution that uses mostly open sourced code available to anybody on the net. This doesnt sell well except for the few coporations who like their support options.

Version 2: United Linux creates alot of inhouse closed-source configuration and system management apps that give it the leg up on the open source only competition. The appearance of increased system integration with none of problems associated with Windows Systems is appealing to alot of IT departments. Some more will jump on the UL bandwagon - most will wisely wait for it to mature a bit more.

Version 3: The Windows 2000 of the UnitedLinux distribution. This time UL will get it right. By leveraging their point and click configuration utilities and by "borrowing" the efforts of the Linux community to update core system components (kernel 2.6, gcc 3.0+, KDE 4, Gnome 1.5) they will have a product unmatched in the corporate Linux arena.

Eventually guys we knew somebody would figure out how to accomplish the above. Maybe UL won't succeed, maybe they will. Eventually somebody is going to pull it off though. Not to mention the fact that while free distributions such as debian will always exist, eventually their will only be one corporate distribution.

Some Linux people will be able to live with this and they will stick with the operating system they helped build. Most however will probably move to some other fringe OS like AtheOS, OpenBEOS, QNX, or most likely a BSD variant.

Some of UL's methods may be questionable - but Linux really needs this kind of kick in the ass from a standardization standpoint. I guess you've got to take the good with the bad though. Either way it will interesting to see how this all plays out.

J

What's the big deal?

[RevAaron]

So they don't want to provide binaries. Big deal- someone will compile it- some member of the community, and pass the ISO along to someone at linuxiso.org. Problem solved. I would argue that they aren't obliged to compile it for you, why should they? Because they use software harvested from the community? Ooooooh. Those UnitedLinux guys owe me lunch! Everything you could need from there is in the source.

Jeeze, get over it.

(No, this is not a troll. I just can't comprehend what is so terribly hard to comprehend about this.)

Re:What's the big deal?

[rant-mode-on]

• someone will compile it- some member of the community, and pass the ISO along

Compiling source to binaries, yes that's easy. Turning it into an iso...? Well, who's going to provide the installer? That's a non-trivial piece of code if ever there was one.

So?

[Burgundy Advocate]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's legal.

Whether it "sits well with you" or not doesn't matter. What matters is how they handle their company and corporate image (as in: how other businesses see them). If they're within the GPL/LGPL licence bounds then quite frankly I don't see what the problem is, and I doubt any corporate United Linux customer will care if the distro offends a few sensibilities.

If they can come up with an innovative way to sell Linux, more power to them. They'll be doing something nobody else has been able to do.

Repeating Caldera's mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Caldera was the first major commercial distribution, it never achieved popularity. Caldera distanced itself from the core Linux community, always remaining something of an outsider.

Red Hat, despite occasional faux pas, has been an intregal part of the Linux community from its outset. Where Caldera was primarily a consumer of OSS technology, Red Hat was at the forefront as a producer, giving back millions of dollars in professionally developed software. Most of all, Red Hat has made their distribution easily and freely accessible to anyone with a net connection.

SuSe, Caldera, et al, appear to be ready to board a doomed ship. Folks at work will recommend what they use at home. And most of the time that will be Red Hat. The others, by cutting off the community, also cut off a future pool of admins and consultants--who is going to administer their "United Linux" systems?

Good news for Red Hat. Bad news for the rest.

The potential damaging effects of this strategy

[hillct]

While there is no technical violation of the GPL here, there is a deterrent to contributing to OSS projects, as you say, with the knowledge that your software will be subverted in this way.

On the other hand, all we're really talking about is filesystem layouts and perhaps makefile adjustments. The actions of the UnitedLinux group will simply cause developers to state that their software is explicitly NOT CERTIFIED (by the developers) for use on UnitedLinux, which would be particularly damaging to the distro companies, if enough large projects made this statement. Realistically though, these companies will come to their senses. There's no valid reason to anger developers in this way, because there are enough steps the developers could take to prevent use of their software on any particular distribution.

In not, this will be a big win for Microsoft, as large numbers of developers abandon OSS projects in favor of other hobbies.

--CTH

Ransom Love's Brain Bites Again!

[peterdaly]

This would be a non-issue if Ransom Love understood Linux PR. If he answered the question differently, with the same "content", we wouldn't be as pissed. Something along the lines of:
"The United Linux organization will assemble the source code of the product, which will be available to the public. We have decided it is the responibilities of the vendors to compile the product for their specific distributions. Since the raw code is not indended for end user use, UnitedLinux will not expend the resources to compile and maintain a binary distribution of the raw codebase, that is the responsibility of each UnitedLinux vendor..."

The "public outcry" may have been different. Same answer, same question, different spin.

-Pete

Re:Binaries and GPL

[Grax]

So lets release Untied Linux and use only the GPL'd content.

Re:This is kind of naive

[Lumpy]

Oh cripes.... please show me one common distro that is named hacker linux Leet-dude linux or I 0WN J00 linux.... get real. slackware and redhat are well set in the business world.. as well as Mandrake has made it along with for embedded white dwarf linux and Midori... Please oh Please... STOP this FUD campain... the entire decision of accepting linux into the workplace is based completely on the one person that bring it up for a decision.. if that person has any management and sales abilities it will get accepted... if they are the typical, refuses to wear anything but a t-shirt, pierced everything, over-tattooed, wannabe "hacker" they will ignore any suggestion or reccomendation they place on the table... and finally you have the typical Unix-lord.. hair and beard to the floor and wearing an ORIGIONAL Commodore Vic 20 T-shirt.. will get his suggestion to use linux accepted because he will let the board know "WE've been using it for 4 years.. It's saved the IT department tens of thousands of dollars already.. and it runs your pet project from last year.."

Corperations dont want to feel secure... they want to feel money... lots of money, profits, lower operating costs, greater profit margins...

If you go to your boss and say, "I can save you XXX dollars this year in Server software." he will do it if you have your presentation well thought out and shows all costs involved... he also will hold your butt to it and will gladly fire you if it fails... so if you dont have the guts to stand behind your reccomendations then don't do it...

Me? I have Linux infiltrating over 30 offices next month.... why? because I said it will work and they can have my ass on a platter if it doesn't.(exact words in the regional board meeting) Taking ownership of your decisions and reccomendations not only get's linux in the door really fast.... but it also get's you up the promotion ladder a whole lot quicker...

As for wanting support, where have you been? linux has more and better support than any microsoft product or OS. I can make a call and pay LESS than a microsoft tech support call and get faster,better,competent results.. When was the last time you had one of the IIS developers answer your question instead of a non-trained lackey responding from a canned support script? I have had answers from the apache developer responsible for the section I was having trouble with... WITHIN 24 hours... unlike MS support (I still have an SQL server issue open with MS... it's been 3 weeks now... I could have switched the entire system to linux+oracle in that timeframe.)

please, if you dont have the strength to stand behind your decisions and reccomendations... DO NOT reccomend linux or anything other than a nice safe MS product.. something you can point fingers at when it fails, something to transfer blame to... Installing an Open source solution takes strong leaders that are willing to say "It's MY fault the server crashed. It's my fault that we cant recover the data, It's MY FAULT that the new system failed and let hackers in/ a virus in/porn floods in....

and Yes, It's MY FAULT that we haven't switched everything to linux when the next virus wave rips throught the outlook hole and cripples the network.. and that is EXACTLY what I will say at that meeting... use everyopportunity to get linux in.. but only if you have the ability to.

sorry about my crusade-rant here.. but I am sick of people claiming they know what corperations want... they dont and until they get off their butts and learn what corperations want they will sit all safe in their cubicle making assumptions..

you want to be your bosses boss? you cant be comfortable.

Re:big friggin deal

[pjrc]

If you look around the world of free software (or open source, or whatever you want to call it), you'll see that there are a LOT of projects that aren't included in distributions.

One good example, and a project that I've made some small contributions into, is SDCC - Small Device C Compiler. Like many projects, there's a CVS server, nightly snapshots (source tarballs), and even nightly binary builds for linux and win32.

Do the linux builts work on Redhat 7.2? Yes, I have Redhat 7.2 on my system, and so do other active developers.

Do the win32 builds work on Windows 98SE and 2000? Yes. None of the developers uses windows, but many users regularily download the win32 builds on these 'doze systems. When bugs have turned up one these systems, the developer mail list and bug tracker have filled with bug reports.

Do those win32 builds also work on windows XP and windows 95? Good Question. A number of non-developers have probably tried it on XP by now, but are any users really still running it on '95? Who knows.

Long ago, the code could compile with Borland C. Developers using linux-based systems started cross compiling and building under Borland was broken for a very long time until someone reported it. Borland support has never been restored (no active developers care, and mingw as a cross compiler can be fully automated by the nightly builds)

Does the code compile and run on PPC? Yes, one of the developers has a PPC box, so this definately works. Which distro works for PCC... better ask Michael.

Does it work on Debian? Yep, several active developers use Debian... and there was recently an announcement that it's available with apt-get. Debian and RedHat 7.x are the only two distros that are really gaurenteed to work.

Does it build on MacOS-X? Nope, but a couple of OS-X users have joined the developer mail list and it's probably a matter of time until the OS-X issues are worked out, but at least it is know that there is a problem on OS-X (I think someone submitted a patch but it hasn't found its way into CVS).

Will it work on UnitedLinux?? Who knows? Nobody involved with this project has UnitedLinux, and it doesn't look like anyone will. RedHat 7.2 works great for me, and since these "business oriented" linux vendors aren't going to provide me with a cheap/free cdrom or network install, why would I bother. They're focused on serving the "business server market", so there won't be anything interesting about UnitedLinux to make it worthwhile for me to bother installing (not to mention paying for). I'm certainly not going to waste my time to compile an entire linux distribution. I'd much rather spend the time getting to understand the register allocator code better and make more significant contributions to SDCC. I'd be very suprised if any other developers lifted a finger to test UnitedLinux.

So the subject, "big friggen deal" couldn't be more appropriate. As a developer (primarily firmware, using tools like SDCC), I'd say "big friggen deal" about UnitedLinux. Caldera, TurboLinux, et all probably say "big friggen deal" with respect to SDCC, since their customers aren't developers, and they certainly aren't developing firmware for low-end 8-bit microcontrollers.

So if with want something "business oriented", supposedly with "world class support" from the likes of Caldera (or you just want to pay them a lot for something that's roughly equivilant to Redhat), then maybe UnitedLinux is for you.

But, if instead, you're interested in using the linux distribution with the most "third party" software that's tested and known to work, your best best is going to be with RedHat or Debian. (FWIW, you might pause to wonder why Windows is so popular).

By not building "mind share" among software developers, how can they ever expect third party software to be tested with their distrbution?

Re:Why worry?

[zangdesign]

One: They're following the mandates of the GPL, so there's no cause for beef there. The GPL doesn't say anything about a binary distribution being available.

Two: Where do you get off assuming United Linux owes you anything? And what precisely do they owe you?

If you release your software under GPL, then you have no further control other than what is explicitly stated in the license. I can take your code and mangle it, distribute it, rewrite it, tie it to a log and throw it in the river, as long as I leave the license intact. I owe you nothing.

Now, that may be a violation of the spirit of GPL, but that is, in and of itself, not an actionable cause. You can, of course, pull the source back to some proprietary license, but the source code up until that point is out there for the world to see.

As I see it, you have no one to blame but yourselves. You signed onto the GPL, with full knowledge and understanding that this sort of thing could happen.

As for the second part of my question - what does United Linux really owe you? Money - not likely. Binaries? They're giving you the source. Respect? By sticking to the rules of the license, they have maintained what they were supposed to do. Return something to the community? They have. The're helping to raise the visibility among corporations and providing a distro that corporations can understand, which helps to further the acceptance of Linux.

Eventually you are going to have to grow up and realize that even more of this is going to happen as Linux becomes more and more mainstream. Today, it's four minor corporations in very real danger of being wiped out; tomorrow it could be Microsoft, with $40 billion in pocket and lawyers that make Genghis Khan look like a Sunday school teacher.

Here's a cold brutal fact for you: not everyone has the same belief or faith in community that you do. For better or worse, you collectively built a product that has escaped from it's hacker haven and is being used by people who are less concerned with driving the state of the art than they are selling it.

This is your reality check. Mod me down as a troll or flamebait or even consign me to the Hell of Upside Down Microsoft Marketroids, but somebody needed to say this.

test case reveals predictable slashdot behaviour

[rifter]

Okay, so for ages now, free software advocates have pointed out Micorosft's claim that GPL software must be distributed free as in beer is false. In fact, if someone (like HP recently, and now UnitedLinux) wants to release GPL software and charge loads of cash ($3000 in HP's case) it is just fine and dandy, and legal according to the GPL, so long as source is distributed with binaries.

Yet, lo and behold, here a company releases a linux distribution which will tie together several others, and releases source for free, but charges for the binaries, including support with the package, and is immediately lambasted by this site and several who claim to represent the "open source community." Of course, this plays right into the hands of those who claim all the open source people want is software for free, ergo linux is NOT a viable market. Sadly, there seems to be more and more ammo for this insidious view.

First off, I think we should remember the story specifically states the original distributions (Caldera, Conectiva, Turbolinux, SUSE, et al.) will not necessarily cease to be, in fact they will probably go on, probably in their current form, e.g. downloadable, available on Cheapbytes, etc. These distributions would contain UnitedLinux at their core, with unspecified value added changes. It is reasonable to assume applications written for these would work on UnitedLinux, unless some relevant library were changed, given the kernel, libs, and filesystem would be close if not identical.

It has been pointed out that a real developer will have no trouble compiling binaries, but heck, honestly, real developers are used to paying for tools and even os software. Usually OS vendors make it easier for developers to get hold of betas and even finished copies. For instance, Apple tends to give OS copies away at dev conferences and sell the OS cheaper to developers. MSDN cost about $1200 a year last I checked and included with such subscription a copy of every OS they sell, mailed to you in nice little CD packages. If developers will pay that for Windows, how much are they willing to pay for a real OS?

Most importantly, there has been no mention of how much this new linux distro will cost. If you buy Mandrake or Redhat outright, they cost anywhere from $25 to $2000+ depending on support, bundled commercial apps, etc. Obviously they are also available for free, without support, by download. It is possible we are getting up in arms about a distro with a similar pricing scheme, though without the "free download." Besides, even if they did have free downloads, who would pay for the hosting? In the real world, providing such things cost money, you know. In any event, it is possible, even likely, that whatever the cost there will be a low-priced version for developers, and unless they copyright the layout of the CD as OpenBSD rightly does (I am certainly agreeing with Theo here...), there will be versions on cheapbytes in approximately 5 minutes.

I will admit I myself am a cheap bastard and a major reason I like linux us its freedom (as in Beer) and because of the freedom in licensing which means I don't have to worry about software police. I also have not contributed a line of code to linux, and though I would like to, it is unlikely as I am not the best programmer in the world. But I certainly think this wonderful system will not enjoy the success it has had of late if there is this kind of backlash to all commercial efforts in this field.

Folks, a lot of companies are pouring money into this, and they are in business to make money. A lot of development hours, both on and off record (off record meaning people working on linux while they are being paid to do something else...) are being shouldered by companies who have been, if you haven't been following the stock market for three years, struggling. Now here we have an effort to help linux on several fronts, by making a new commercially viable product, by unifying disparate distributions, and it is even in keeping with the spirit and letter of the GPL, and you tear it down because you can't download free copies. For shame!