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Linux Market: Absolutes / Percentages / Trends
vincecate writes "In their 10-K filing, Microsoft says that
Linux server units
rose slightly faster on an absolute basis
than Windows server units in fiscal 2004.
To project the trends it is helpful to
look at the percentages.
Some
Gartner Inc. statistics
report Linux server unit shipments are up 61% giving it 9.5% of the overall market share.
Windows has a much larger base, so it can get
the same absolute unit growth with a much
lower percentage.
Gartner expects Linux to continue growing faster and have
more than 1/2 of the new server shipment market
by the end of 2008."
When is the percent of Linux servers going to reach that of the Windows machines?
- Frist psot!
But what I find most stupid is the philosophy behind it. Why make something so complex for free? I'm an excellent software engineer, good software is hard to make, it's beyond art, takes incredible amounts of education, hardwork and talent, and it should be kept proprietary and one should be paid to make it.
You say that good code is like a work of art - if it is, then why don't you do what an artist does? An arist creates a small number of great paintings(programs), has a showing (creates a company website), and sells them to the highest bidder, and sells each painting only once. The artist does not care if that painting is subsequently copied by another artist - in fact, it is seen as a compliment by most!
Your age shows in the post (first tried RedHat 8.0 in University), so let me educate you a bit on the history of programming. Before Microsoft came along, it was common that software (and a whole lot of its code) was free. Why? Because most programmers worked for hardware companies, who were interested in selling hardware.
Does IBM make any less money if it ships a server running Linux or Windows? No, in fact they likely make more money since they don't need the Windows license markup and can thus charge less.
Personally, *my* wish in life is that eventually, all "software companies" are abolished; programmers will either work for hardware companies customizing their OS/driver platforms, or they will work as consultants, customizing existing open source software to the business, with the end product from both of these endevours going back to the public.
Really, if I as company X spend some time customizing an application to by business, what harm does it do to release the code? None, other than it may save someone else time and money in the long run. God forbid it be a compeditor - but what if it saved a non-profit like World Vision millions of dollars??? Isn't that worth it? Are you really that greedy of a copany, that the chance that it may help a competitor outweights the chance that you could be saving people's lives? (Sze note: from the behaviour of most companies, the answer is a resounding yes.)
Just as a note, I say the above as a professional programmer with a software company as well. I know to some people like you it might seem weird for me to be advocating the elimination of my profession, but really, I am in it for the love of what I do, not the love of money. When you do something for the love of what you do, you will always find a way to make ends meet.
Can anyone track down the original Gartner report that indicated 50% of server sales would be Linux by 2008? The linked article just mentions the Gartner report (and all-important statistic) in passing, but doesn't provide a proper reference for fact-checkers. Google didn't do the trick for me, it did turn up an article about an IDC report released in June 2004 that predicted Linux server shipments would rise to 29% in 2004, a fairly significant difference.
Novell's stock is looking pretty attractive at $5.80, given that they're trading close to their 52-week low and now own SuSE, one of Red Hat's only commercial competitors. Mind you, Red Hat is actually earning a profit these days, even though their price::earnings ratio is about 100.
So is it time to invest in Linux stocks (again), except this time with an eye for the long-term instead of the wild ride of the late 90's?
As you state, this will work best if the result of the work is returned to 'the community' for others to find and improve upon or adapt. Right there is the core of the argument for encouraging the use of free (GPL-ish) over open (BSD/Apache-ish).
depends on which part of the corporate world. The last company I worked for downloaded the ISO or did ftp installs of BSD (depending on the application). The current company I work for has serveers where they download the ISO but bought the service. So, either way they didn't buy machines with linux on it from the get go. And neither company is small or meduim in size.
Evolution or ID?
Be fair, some of it IS downloaded ISOs. I know, because I have done it.
It all dependes on organisational culture and the attitude of local management.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
I wonder if they count SOHO (small office home office) network appliances in the count. Many of the small easy to manage small network storage and connectivity appliances use Linux or OO software. Examples that come to mind are some of the broadband routers, the ActionTec dual PC modem, and the Buffalo LinkStation net attached storage and print server.
Windows OS prices and bloat keeps MS products off these embeded OS items, even though MS markets their embeded Win CE as a capable product for the embeded devices market.
The truth shall set you free!
While it is news that even Microsoft admits that Linux is making inroads in the server market, there shouold also be a warning here.
Microsoft is almost certainly not going to take this lying down. Their biggest development effort right now is Longhorn. Some of the things that they say about Longhorn (the fact that they need to roll it out on clients and servers at the same time, in particular) makes me think that they will modify the networking protocols enough that Linux servers will no longer be able to play with Microsoft desktops.
Many large companies out there are running Windows on the desktop and connecting them to Linux servers. I think when Longhorn is released they may not have any choice about what server software to use anymore.
Excelent point. I know that all of my linux boxes are installed after the server is already rackmounted. That means that there was probably windows already on it, or that client need different functionality (you mean I can put my web and mail on one server and use the windows machine that were doing that to augment the SQL cluster? Cool!), or whatever.
I'm pretty sure that none of the linux boxes that I admin will get counted in any linux survey. Count support contracts from Redhat et al? Nope, I'm the support. I'd wager that any broad count of linux deployment is under by at least 50% and probably 75%.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I especially hate the service pack/documentation CD's etc. They look just like the installation CD's except for some tiny text. But hey, the holograms are cool.
How many home users (you know, those who can't figure out out to install an anti-virus program) have that much IIS and vbscript stuff?
As for the rebooting part, just pop up the usual "Windows has detected you moved your mouse. You must restart your computer for changes to take effect" dialog, then the user will do the rebooting part without any unusual interruption. Noticeable? Depends on how you define noticeable. The user will notice the reboot, but he may not notice that something's wrong.
Although I do believe he will notice upon booting, Linux still needs to be made much more confusing to make it familiar enough to win-people that they won't notice.
...XPSP2 and decide that longhorn just isn't worth it-the risk, cost, headache, bugs, etc- and switch the desktops to some linux instead of the servers back to MS.
Honestly, the only thing I can see coming with MS is for them to go completely on the offensive with patents and copyright lawsuits and hope to scare and bully and maybe even legislate their way to staying topdog. I don't see them being able to do it on just quality/price and a normal market scene for much longer. The only people left who aren't considering Linux are very casuasl and unsophisticated home users, anyone more technologically savvy above that level is at least thinking about linux now. At some time MS will feel threatened enough to start using their portfolios very agressively, think SCO type action times 1,000. They could carve out a few billion just to start the lawsuits and not break sweat. Then they could start lobbying. We have the easiest bribed legislature and executive branch and probably judges evah now. This is the most high level "consultant fee" friendly government I can remember going way back. Those who already have the coin to spread around are not hesitating to "share the wealth" with those charged with maintaining what passes for "law" nowadays.
I must question your comparison of RedHat (I presume Advanced Server) vs. Solaris license costs. We have the opposite situetion: solaris costs us significantly less than RedHat, even though it's a bit appleas and oranges, as the two OS run on different hardware - mostly (we do have some x86 servers).
Sigged!
I am aware of large financial firms moving to linux big time. In fact, linux has pretty squashed the hopes of Microsoft ever getting into mid to large corporations for backend stuff. By moving, I mean buying thousands of rackmount servers with or without windows. I'm sure there's lot of fudging of statistics and system that are actually running linux are being miscounted as windows. The situation is most likely getting worse as time goes on. Many of the shops that traditionally run Sun have been screaming for Sun to sell x86 boxes, so I suspect fewer sales loss to windows in the future. Most of the losses by Sun were to linux and not windows as Microsoft would like everyone to believe.
Just out of curiosity, how much did it cost the company? Last time I called about an Exchange issue, it was $250 for them to even hear me out. Not sure if they then charged by the hour or something(dont think they did). But still, thats a bit ridiculous for a product under 1 year old that crashed due to a flaw in their system. And personally, I didn't find the support all that good, although much better then their consumer division. Good tech support really depends on what time of day you call and what country your forwarded to. I've never called MS Support again. One company worth mentioning for amazing support is Dell. One of the harddrives in my RAID array failed last week, they flew me a new drive through SonicAir, I had it in an hour and a half, they also had a guy call me and ask if I wanted him to install it. I happened to be busy so I definitly said yes. The whole issue was cleared up in under 4 hours, I was floored at how well Dell handled it.
Regards,
Steve