Servers with a Smile

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?."

Comments

Journalism has never been a hard science.

[drhairston]

'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.

Most disturbing quote

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

[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."

Canibalizing

[ivanandre]

I just cannot stop thinking that the great growing of Linux is because is eating Unix share, not microsoft...

Re:Canibalizing

[miffo.swe]

"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.

Ballmer's "Linux is cancer" pitch misfired! Great!

[dpbsmith]

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).