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Linux Feels Growing Pains
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "As Linux enters the mainstream, adopters 'are demanding many features found on commercial software, including a large variety of add-on application programs and management tools that are easy to use,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'How quickly open-source programs can narrow the gap with commercial software is a hotly debated topic in the computer industry. The transition may determine whether the technology will continue its momentum, or stall in the face of tougher competition at the heart of corporate computer networks.' Eric Singleton, chief information officer at retailer Tommy Hilfiger Corp., which recently switched its e-commerce site 'Tommy.com' from Linux to Microsoft software, calls Linux 'a great product,' but adds, 'it's got to get the final tier of reliability and predictability that I'm going to bet a multi-billion dollar corporation's future on.'"
Did slashdot axe some editors and hire some new ones?
Please tell me this one will actually edit and proofread articles or maybe check for dupes before posting.
Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft.
Shouldn't high-demand, nitty-gritty backend server stuff be where linux shines the MOST? Am I missing something here?
Since god knows linux certainly hasn't caught up with even Microsoft's subpar efforts in desktop end-user experience...
Who cares what they demand then?
:P
Microsoft and others, for starters. I know the average F/OSS dev won't take notice, but hopefully IBM will. The door swings both ways, people - you want Linux on the desktop, well with power comes responsibility. Are we, as a community, prepared to handle it? With responses like that, I am not sure...
And, before you mod, I have been using Linux since 1999. I was first in line at March Of The Penguins at my local theatre, too.
Perhaps Mr. Singleton has been unable to find talented SysAdmins and Devs to maintain his systems and write his code?
Yes, Windows is easy enough for any reasonably talented monkey to configure (poorly). If I were running a multi-million dollar company, I surely would want some talent in the revenue stream, though.
Yeah, right.
I've seen Tommy's internal operations (I interviewed with them a couple of times), and they have to be just about the most clueless fashion company in dealing with technology out there. They've had so much turnover that they've switched platforms on average about once every 6 months, and somehow they continue to choose worse solutions. Good god people, it's not that hard, eluxury does it, polo.com does it, what makes Tommy's opinion so worthwhile when it's their own fault they can't suceed?
Having someone to sue? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most commercial software packages basically include in their legal terms a clause that amounts to "This software will do as it pleases, if it blows up all your computers and kills your grandmother, don't come crying to us"? Or is that only the case for home consumer products?
Exactly. But to many of these managers who have spent the last 15 or so years in a Microsoft (or even MS/Novell) environment, Linux is black magic - and hiring "long-haired, bearded linux gurus" scares them.
They don't understand the system and are afraid that if something goes terribly wrong, they'll get blamed for chosing 'free' software as opposed to Microsoft. IBM used to play this game a LOT and win big contracts because people were so afraid to try new technologies from other vendors.
To be fair, Tommy Hilfiger is not exactly a minor player in its field. However, I can't believe that its web revenue is more than a small percentage of its overall income - 'betting the company' is as absurd as 'multibillion-dollar corporation'.
And I can believe that the switch was because of larger lunch (and after hours) budgets, having seen it in operation too many times before. And, from his remarks, he was obviously well prepped.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
The ability to customize an OS is *EXACTLY* the type of criteria important when "betting" a "billion dollar company" on an OS.
If you're "betting" a "billion dollar company" on anything less than the ability to control whatever you're betting on, you're an idiot - and Singleton certainly sounds like he fits the description for using that phrase.
For Tommy Hilfiger, the thing that they actually "bet the company" on, I guarantee you they have the ability to control their destiny. For example, to make changes in the formulas of their fragrences. With an attitude like his, I assure you that Hilfiger's board wouldn't let Eric anywhere near anything they actually bet the company on.
It should come as no surprise that the WSJ should take the side of large corporations on this issue, and even less surprising that they lay possible blame for the slowing adaptation of technology to OSS.
The lager corporate model spends ridiculous amounts of $$ on R&D every year, only to milk the products, that they already have the assembly line in place to produce, for every red cent that the public will pay for. (This is why the HD/blue ray dvd format battle was even an issue. If they release them both, but with the lower spec discs first, they 'force' the public to re-purchase players and media all over again, creating a greater revenue for R&D already paid for.)
Blaming Linux and OSS for the possibility of slower tech adaptation and progress is a new trick though, I wonder what the take for the W$J is?
Curiously, I wonder if there is a possibility that Linux could stagnate progress? what do other /.'ers think?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
The guy at Tommy Hilfiger who was quoted in the article says at the very end that Microsoft jumped through hoops to make the switch happen. Boy, we've heard this one before. At the very least, these guys didn't leave that part out. It really tells the whole story.
It's all more of Microsofts multi-million dollar marketing campaign against GNU/Linux. Wasn't the Microsoft guy quoted as saying something about changing their customers "perception"????
More smoke and mirrors and WSJ.COM bought it or was bought...
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
First, you shouldn't apologize at all. That's the whole point of posting online: arguements/discussions.
I stand by my opinion, however, that in general, the Wall Street Journal has a difficult time understanding FOSS, and continues to try to cast into the mold they know well: competing proprietary products.
And this is really something that the OSS community has to overcome. They're advocating a completely foreign way of doing business, releasing products, etc. To everybody not involved in the OSS community (the vast majority of people), there's no reason to think that OSS is any different than traditional software. And yes, that's a huge hurdle to overcome, but ultimate if Red Hat or any other OSS vendor wants to sell software (or services), it's Red Hat's (etc) job to inform potential customers about their products. The WSJ is comparing OSS to proprietary software because that IS the alternative. It doesn't matter that they're different. They both serve the same needs. *Why* they are different is largely irrelevant to a business person. They want to know what piece of software is going to solve problem X.
History is full of good products that have come and gone because they were simply too foreign to their market, and the company's way of doing business was simply too strange to people. I don't think that it's either right or wrong, but that's the way it is. Expecting people to seek out OSS, and take time to learn, what is to them, just another software package, is unrealistic.
If the WSJ doesn't understand that OSS may have value even after the death of the founding person/company, then what that says to me is that OSS companies have not done their marketing job.
Case in point: My business is unusual. I own a pet supply shop/online business that does business very differently than anything else I've seen. It's OUR job to educate people how and why we are different than either mega-stores or traditional "pet shops", and we do it every day. I, in no way, expect people to simply seek us out. We have to do our legwork. We have to explain to people how and why we do business the way we do. Hell, even most of our vendors don't understand us. And of course, once our customers do "get it", they tend to be customers for life. My business is continually growing by leaps and bounds, but it was a hell of a struggle explaining it to customers. And, after all, most people don't come to us because we're different. They come to us because we're better than the competition. Most people don't care how or why we're better as far as our philosophy goes. They just know that we have the best products at the best prices with the best service.
I don't respond to AC's.
Also, there are many problems with MS software which have been unaddressed for years and have no patch yet. You can find them if you are willing to look. These mean that even a patched machine can be exploited.
Patched merely means that some of the known problems are repaired. However, given the combination of poor quality control for the patches and the demonstrated willingness to bundle non-security related changes into patches, it occurs from time to time that the MS patches can occasionally break more than they fix. The latter is worse, patches should only repair what is broken nothing more. Save "upgrades" and re-configurations for a separate download. In reality most of what MS calls patches are really sneaky upgrades and or reconfigurations. That's fraud and perhaps grounds for a class-action suit.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What netcraft stats you checking?
I think you may be looking at ones that measure network performance, rather than specifically server performance or reliability.
There aren't any pure Windows solution in the netcraft longest uptime top 10, the first when I looked was in 26th place, II5 on W2K. There are some highbred solutions (IIS on BSD) presumably firewalled or proxies (we have IIS on Linux due to squid accelerator being used at work) further up the list.
Of course BSD dominates because they didn't have a roll-over in the reported uptime counter, unlike a certain OS from Finland.
Of course stats only tell half the story, whilst we had some kernel trouble with our Linux firewall, a reboot and a head scratch is nothing as to the mysteries that W2K3 has thrown up, including two known Microsoft bugs, for which there is no fix. Microsoft code written by people who don't understand the Microsoft user model (not surprising given how complex it has become under ADS).
No way would I willingly trust big Enterprise systems to W2K3, it just doesn't look ready to me. My employers small enterprise is depending on it, but then all it is doing is being a file and authentication server. If we had a Linux box doing that role, I'd be very surprised if we tripped over major bugs like we did with W2K3.
"If you are having anything like multiple hangs per day you should REALLY audit your code."
I wish I could have, but it was a fresh install of NT 5 using nothing but Microsoft software (NT 5, IIS, Microsoft ODBC driver). It was impossible to audit since Microsoft doesn't make its source available. There was nothing else but a simple query+display ASP script. Everything else was simple static HTML. The NT 5 machine would plateau at 100% CPU (both CPUs) 2-3 times per day, and leak 1GB of RAM at those times. This was with only 4 simultaneous web users on a barely tapped T1. We had many other problems with it that eventually broke the Director's will to use it any further.
We replaced Windows with an old version of Red Hat, I rewrote the one ASP script in PHP, and all of our web problems evaporated. Once we got away from Windows, and onto a stable platform, we were able to provide web services that were never able to get past the, "wouldn't this be great" stage on Windows.
We have since been putting all new services on Linux boxes. Linux has been, and will continue, replacing both Windows and Unix in our server room.
Just like Windows Security, Windows Stability is a bad joke. Every single one of our Windows machines (up to and including XP and NT 6 [Win2003]) has to be rebooted at least weekly, while our Linux machines keep running until either kernel upgrades or hardware failures require a shutdown.
Meanwhile, the FC4 box sitting right beside it, with no firewall installed on it since day one, keeps on chugging with no such problems.
Frickin' Microsoft.
No. Linux fails not because of this attitude (which is just a loud minority among the community). .Net, and another one developing filesystems etc etc etc. I bet that if some Microsoft executive is reading this he's gonna have shivers.
It fails because of its development model. Many problems of Linux comes from the fact that it ain't monolithic at all. It is founded over a large number of independent projects that, even if they do their best effort to tie things together, still have great problems in this.
Suppose for a second that Microsoft just programs the NT kernel, and lets another software house, that is completely independent from Microsoft, develop the graphic interface. And another one develop
Said that, I'm not going to say that Linux development model sucks. But it surely has its advantages (one over all, high modularity and scalability) and its flaws (integration etc etc).
Also, the fact that many marginal projects are run by people who does that only as hobby is a main handicap in terms of reacting to users request.
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet