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?

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.