Community vs. Corporate Linux, The Coming Divide

tobyj writes "MadPenguin.org discusses the great divide that will separate corporate Linux (companies that are working with Microsoft) and community Linux (companies that haven't yet partnered with Microsoft) and their impact on Linux as a whole. Matt Hartley writes, "For Linux enthusiasts, the rules are simple and clear to interpret. But for Microsoft and its Linux partners, we will see plenty of them pointing to self-created loopholes, which will result in fierce debate, and perhaps even worse, blatant defiance. As a collective community, we'd like to think that this whole issue will just blow over, but with the massive migration of so many Windows users and companies that wish to capitalize on this migration, defiance of the GPL will happen and more so than ever before."

Comments

New Logo Needed

[artgeeq]

I think if someone could come up with a penguin with a Borg eye-piece, it would be very funny. Maybe give him a Microsoft T-shirt, too.

I like the link

[changling bob]

Click here to get the latest prices on Linux distributions!

Erm... free?

Re:I like the link

[skeeto]

Click here to get the latest prices on Linux distributions! Erm... free?

You can charge money to distribute free software. I am allowed to sell you a copy of the latest Unbuntu CD for a million dollars if I want. Remember that free refers to liberty, not price.

This comes right from the GNU website: "Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."

Ermmm....

[JamesRose]

(companies that are working with Microsoft) and community Linux (companies that haven't yet partnered with Microsoft)

Re:Ermmm....

[Entrope]

It's called "framing" -- as in framing the debate by choosing the terms.

This way anyone who might be sitting on the fence can clearly understand the consequences: If you think Microsoft is a stinky abusive monopolist but you are successful at offering large-scale 24x7 support to large customers, you're *community* Linux, not corporate, and your customers will leave you! Likewise, if you haven't upgrade to Shared Source Linux.NET, you will -- just as soon as Microsoft sends out the lawyers.

"community Linux"?!

[G3ckoG33k]

"community Linux (companies that haven't yet partnered with Microsoft)"

What?!

Rather think "When Microsoft writes an application for Linux, I've Won.", as said by Linus Torvalds

-

Re:"community Linux"?!

[an.echte.trilingue]

"corporate Linux (companies that are working with Microsoft)" ... "community Linux (companies that haven't yet partnered with Microsoft)"

Because, as we all know, RedHat and IBM are not corporations.

GPL will keep us free

[jshriverWVU]

No matter what companies buckle it won't break the stronghold that is OSS. We as users choose Linux and other OSS because it meets our needs, company deals won't break that. For developers we contribute to the OSS movement because it's something we believe in, and a way to pay back to for the wonderful work others have done.

I don't see that ending any time soon.

Re:GPL will keep us free

[syntaxglitch]

GPL will keep us free

Yes, one of the most restrictive OS Licenses will keep us 'free'. /laugh.

Yes, if by "restrictive" you mean "does not grant the freedom to deny other people the same freedom". Which is, you know, how most sensible definitions of freedom work out. Or do you think slavery should be legalized in the name of "freedom"?

Anti-GPL trolls are funny.

Re:GPL will keep us free

[_Sprocket_]

There are less restrictive licenses... true. But one of the MOST restrictive licenses? How did you put it... ahh yes... "/laugh".

I'm curious as to what license scheme you believe will guard freedom?

Where's the beef?

[asv108]

Seriously, how did this get to the front page? What is newsworthy about the link? 60% of the page is advertising/links bundled with a few small paragraphs of mindless speculation.

Re:Where's the beef?

[bubbl07]

I agree, but for those that wish to avoid the ads/links and still RTFA, here's the clean version.

Massive migration?

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

...but with the massive migration of so many Windows users and companies that wish to capitalize on this migration... Sorry, what? I'm not exactly in a corporate environment anymore but I haven't seen any signs of a massive migration to Linux. Sure there are switchers here and there at an individual company level but there's also no small amount of others going back to Windows. Did I miss a peice of news somewhere about big Windows to Linux switching or is that statement based solely on 2007 being (Yet Another) Year of Linux despite all evidence to the contrary?

Wow flaimbait summary.

[serviscope_minor]

So there are two kinds of Linux company:

• Those that have partnered with Microsoft. And,
  
• Those that haven't yet (i.e. will) partnered with Microsoft.
  

What about the kind that realise that Microsoft has screwed so many business partners in the past (Spyglass, for an excellent example) that a partnership with them is not sound buisness.

Game Over

[JeremyGNJ]

Another self destructive attitude with Linux.
"If they wont play nice, then we cont support their stuff"

good move. push Linux more into obscurity by not supporting modern technologies.

It kind of hints at something big missed last week though, when it comes to patents:
If Microsoft 0wnz Novell
and Novell 0wnz Unix
and SCO failed it's lawsuit against linux for the reason of "not owning Unix in the first place"
Could Novell now have an trump card when it comes to Linux?.....could it take the same patent lawsuit against Linux that SCO attempted, while using it's rightful ownership?

Think Freedom.

[twitter]

Rather think "When Microsoft writes an application for Linux, I've Won.", as said by Linus Torvalds

It's not that easy.

When M$ becomes a free software company, we will all win. If M$ becomes a free software owner, we will all lose. The whole point of free software is to avoid software owners - people who make you pay for the privilege of using and improving their software but who will restrict those uses and improvements so that you never get what you want.

Re:Think Freedom.

[einhverfr]

I can't recall if I've seen this around but: if nobody "owns" software, is it subject to tragedy of the commons?

Nobody owns the software as a whole. Lots of pieces are owned by lots of people with agreements between them. Think of owning a city lot where a portion of the lot is owned by you but is public right-of-way (i.e. the city is legally allowed to come and build a road or sidewalk on part of it if they want without further compensation to you).

There are probably arguments either way, but because software isn't a scarce commodity I don't know how that old idea applies.

No, but developer effort is a scarce commodity. Business models, whether open or closed source which develop software for the public use generally have to have a way to make back the costs of the use of that scarce commodity. Software license fees are one way. Charging customers for development they need is another.

Effective competition against software license models can only happen with the understanding of the real economic bottleneck-- software developers and engineers.

I would suspect that as long as there are enough people willing and able to create new software and / or modify what's out there the issues would be minimized. The big problem I see with no "owners" of software is that ensuring you had "the real deal" would be difficult, because there's nobody to go after for "shoddy" software. Essentially, without an owner there is no responsibility. This could be detrimental, because it would mean that every organization that wants to use software would then have to hire competent software folks to evaluate and analyze the software, or make it all proprietary in the first place.

Don't confuse code with trademark. Linus owns the Linux trademark. It is only Linux if Linus says so. He does not own all the code in the project, however.

PostgreSQL has taken a similar approach. As has LedgerSMB, but in both these cases, there is a core committee who retains ownership of the trademarks for QA purposes.

Sure the local crowd here on /. is capable of evaluating most small projects, but in an environment that really relies on software as a tool, you can't "guess" that it will do what you want, and having the luxury (yes it's a luxury) of a software "owner" on which to place responsibility is probably a good thing.

What exactly needs to be owned? The project as a whole needs to be managed by a small group of people at most. The trademark needs to be owned and managed. But this does *not* correspond with a need for ownership of the source code.

"The software" is a pretty vague term in the open source world. As is "ownership."

Having software so "open" that responsibility cannot be assigned is actually a bad thing.

Now, the balance between those two concepts - responsibility and freedom - is a tricky one to be sure. At the very least, I agree that software should be "open" in the sense that you should be able to change what you have locally to do whatever you want; responsibility only comes in when you distribute those changes to others (or the use of modified bits can affect others).

Not really. Most community-driven (rather than company-driven, such as MySQL) projects end up eventually with three levels of community:

1) Core team (sometimes called a Steering Committee or Project Management Team), most of which have commit rights, and all are involved in managing the project.

2) Committers who have earned the right to commit based on past performance. Their rights are granted and managed by the core team.

3) Other community members including both users and developers. Any contributions from them have to go through committers.

The key to making this work is the commitment to community and transparency of process. Sure, just anyone can't go commit to svn-- only those who have proven themselves.

Re:Think Freedom.

[einhverfr]

Having worked at Microsoft PSS, I will tell you that if a customer got angry enough and threatened to sue, we sent them over to people who sent them lots of free stuff.

I am not aware of anyone even trying to sue Microsoft. Hmmm... sue and probably lose, or drop the suit and get free stuff?

Note that this applied to threats both over quality of software and quality of support.

Ummmm, so where does Red Hat fit in?

[PCM2]

Last I heard, Red Hat was about as "corporate" as Linux got. (Before we start murmuring about Novell, why don't we check the size of Novell's customer list vs. that of Red Hat?) And, last I heard, Red Hat flat-out rejected a deal with Microsoft the likes of the one Novell signed. On the other hand, is Red Hat "working with Microsoft"? I don't have examples off the top of my head, but considering that it would be in the best interests of Red Hat's entire installed base, I would say that it is more than likely. I guess that's why they call it a line in the sand and not a line in the concrete.

Hasn't this already happened to some extent?

[thatskinnyguy]

I saw this coming after Redhat stopped making Linux for everyone and went corporate only. Sure there is Fedora; but it's not Redhat. The same thing applies to SuSE/OpenSuSE.

I, for one, like corporate Linux. The support is all there. With community distros, I can't tell you how many times my questions have gone unanswered or have been mocked. With corporate editions, I can actually call/email someone with and issue and get a response in a timely manner.

I understand the whole attitude about keeping Linux free; but alienation of community users by community users is a good way for community Linux to shoot itself in the foot.

Can't happen

[Tony]

...could it take the same patent lawsuit against Linux that SCO attempted, while using it's rightful ownership?

The SCO lawsuit was not about patents, it was about contract violation and copyright infringement. Patents were never mentioned by SCO.

Novell now has legal standing with respect to Unix copyrights. However, they distribute an entire GNU/Linux distribution, much of which (including the Linux kernel) is under the GPL. Therefore, they can't even attack Linux for copyright infringement. So Novell has no "trump card" when it comes to Linux.

Re:The community has to grow up

[rangek]

They also want to have their bases covered when it comes to liability.

Can you point to any instance where Microsoft, or some other comparable company has been held liable for defects in their software? People keep bringing up this argument, but I can not ever recall anyone actually using this in practice.

The problem...

[rehtonAesoohC]

I think the most obvious problem here is that the Linux community (not partnering with Microsoft) has an eye that sees things without a shade of green around everything. There isn't money to be made in every aspect of what it looks at, and is only interested in improving what they already have. Microsoft and partners looks at it with green tinted goggles (The goggles, they do nothing!) and tries to find ways to eke out money regardless of making improvements.

If they have to improve something to make money, then that would be their motivation.

I think the Linux community itself is divided, however. There are several companies trying to make money from Linux (Red Hat), and then there are other groups of people who are intent on making sure Linux remains open source and free for all...

I would think that either Linux needs to remain completely free and open source for ALL distributions, or Microsoft is going to start sticking its fingers into the pie, trying to figure out where the money drip is.

More out of the media beast babeling mouth.....

[3seas]

...is it a slow news day?

This persistent nagging as to how this or that or the other are issues the linux community has to deal with or they will fall and linux will be no more....bla bla blaaaa..pff pff spit..

This sort of shit out of the mouth has been going on since Linus first announced his plans to create linux. Perhaps it was going on before that even with article on Stallman.

I'd really honestly sincerely like to see the stats as to how many of these stories and anal-analists have actually panned out. And that includes SCO and Microsoft shit babeling about Linux...

what's the score? absolute BS __________________________________________ vs. Panned Out _
(space alloted for answers)

Missed story

[huckamania]

I thought this was going to be about desktop versus server linux. An Ubuntu vs IBM type of thing. Throw in some FUD about (un)fair schedulers and file access writes slowing things down, it would make for some interesting trolling. No takers?

Anywhile, tagging the companies that work with MS as 'corporate' takes some serious spinning. I'm sure IBM, Sun, Oracle, Apple, etc would all chafe at being left out of the 'corporate' segment. But then, all 4 of them might qualify to be 'corporate' under these terms since most are in bed with MS already, to some degree.

Free software isn't always great.

[maillemaker]

That's the conclusion I've come to.

What are the things championed here on Slashdot more than anything else? DRM and Free Software.

So why is it that I couldn't find a free solution to ripping and re-encoding DVDs? I must have tried 5 or 6 different applications with no luck - the audio and video were always out of sync. Even tried the much-ballyhooed Auto Gordian Knot with the same result. Reading the support forums is a joke. "Oh, you need to go pull it up in AutoDub or VirtualDub and adjust the sync rate". Oh, go download this and that codec to make it work.

It seems like you needed 5 or 6 independent "free" pieces of the pie to make it go, and none of them did the trick.

What did I finally do? I went and spent $80 over at Slysoft for a single software package that just worked.

Re:Free software isn't always great.

[Lxy]

So why is it that I couldn't find a free solution to ripping and re-encoding DVDs?

K9copy? On Debian I found K9copy very easy to install, very easy to use, and almost flawless at ripping and encoding. I have yet to find a mis-sync in my backed up DVDs. The hardest part is you have to add the contrib and non-free repos into Debian so it'll grab DeCSS. That's not very hard :-). If you're using Ubuntu, multiverse is the equivalent. I'm guessing on Fedora you can add livna and get the same results, though I haven't tried.

I have seen problems on many distros in having to build things together, and I agree, DVD playback and encoding has been painful until recently. K9Copy + [recent well supported distro] seems to be the quickest fix.

More like

[blueZ3]

Welcome to the world of free software, where developers write software for their own use, without reference to pesky things like interoperability, interface standards, or usability.

Let's face it, what's holding free software back isn't some evil conspiracy by a shadowy group of corporations working behind the scenes to subvert the moral goodness of the software ecosystem. It's the apparent inability of free software developers to make their code attractive at any level other than price.

In my opinion, the essential examples of this are gimp and Ubuntu.

Why is Ubuntu popular? Not because it's Windows-y, but because it installs painlessly (without the requiring obscure command-line incantaions that a lot if distros do). You pop in the CD and answer about five questions and you wind up with a box that has all the "standard" software (a browser and some basic tools) that's on the network and ready to go. The interface is clean, it generally works in expected ways (keyboard shortcuts do what you expect, it has a "trash can", etc)

The gimp, on the other hand, is a messy pile of usability errors looking for a home. Obscure names for common tools are only the start--the odd behavior of the separate application windows is also egregious.

Free software will only become a real competitor to close software when people espousing it come to the realization the price is not the only factor.

Sorry for the rant :-)