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Big Guns Unite To Unify Unix
MikeDartt writes "Wired reports that Compaq has just joined IBM and SCO in Project Monterey, which is an attempt to get a single UNIX distro that will run on Merced. Perhaps I'm naive, but why get behind a new *NIX as well as Linux, esp. when the latter is both more open and more fashionable? "
It's very simple to anyone who works in a business environment. Those in charge (be they Pointy Haired Bosses or cool dudes) require the one thing that Linux cannot deliver: Accountability.
If you buy a commercial *nix and it pukes on you, you have legal recourse with the vender for repairs. If Linux (or FreeBSD or any other "free" OS) pukes on you, you are sh!t out of luck. Maybe it can be fixed, and maybe that bug gets addressed in three years. There is NO ONE you can put pressure on to "get it fixed and get it fixed now!".
Businessmen (and women) know that with purchasing dollars comes the power to withhold that money. To many of them Linux is not an acceptable solution no matter what it's technical merits may be.
As someone who has been in the business sector (from computer sales to banking) it is easy for me to see the reasons why corporations act the way they do.
If I was setting up a non-mission critical server in my workplace (say an intranet WWW server or some such), or in a school I'd suggest Linux from the word go.
If I was setting up a mission critical server (or system) in a business environment I wouldn't touch Linux.
The needs of business are not the same as many of you. They can't afford to take chances.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
*thud*
Wow, haven't had a good laugh like this in a long time. I am not alone in that I thnk that -any- company that spends time developing Unix from scratch today, when there are such great open source ones like Linux available, are simply foolish.
Well, anyhow, later...
Chris DiBona
Evangelist, VA Research
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Because there is a long tradition of charging money for it.
Linux, for all it's strengths, is free, and thereby not a profit generating product. With companies such as HP and Intel investing in RedHat, they're getting on the good side of future UNInix developers, who will abandon Linux for a paycheck. They're willing to invest in a free unix as a proof of concept for technologies to be rolled into an 'industrial strength' unix later, complete with support from all the big names in the industry.
To them, Linux isn't really a contender, because end users have no time to learn it and deal with it's support model. Corporate clients NEED to have someone to sue if things go bad. So, these guys are willing to sink some money into Linux development, first to flesh out the hirable talent, and second to get some ideas off the ground for free.
They have no problem with pumping some money into Linux, to keep a lively grass-roots testbed for ideas, and to foster goodwill with people who are more than willing to write those pesky device drivers. But let's not delude ourselves, these big corporations are in business to make money, by selling products and support. They didn't get all this money that they've invested in Linux by giving money to non-profit developers and hobbyists.
They still don't get it. They are so in the habit of selling software, that they're willing to reinvent the wheel to keep on doing it. Why, oh why, can't they just sell hardware and free software? Well, hardware, being the only source of profit, would get real expensive, real fast. And with all those brilliant programmers out there, optimizing free software for the existing hardware, who would want to buy new hardware??
Really, do we need Merced?
Point being, as long as software can be sold, it will be sold. And if Linux could unify unix, why can't they - with the added bonus of support, accountability and $$.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
So the number of separate Unixes is decreasing.
We'll have Monterey, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, and BSD.
The corporate giants will do all they can to hang on to the Unix market, and providing a more unified front against NT and Linux is just another step along the way.
It's not about a meaningless number on a piece of paper. It's about real workloads.
I'm talking about doing online data wharehousing of terabyte-sized databases. Big I/O, and high availability.
You can tell me "well, Linux could have terrabytes of disks hooked up to it" but that doesn't mean it's actually gonna handle that kind of workload. It won't.
Do you think I'm picking on your favorite OS? I'm not, and it's my favorite OS, too.
We have seen this effort at least twice before. The Open Systems Initiavtive was one effort. Can't even rememeber who all signed on to that one, but I know it included at least two of the heaviest hitters in the Unix world...
It fell apart.
I really do think that Linux is a better place to hang our collective hat. Unless this new Unix is also free source. Then I say they can fight it out on their merits.
Not to stir up mud, but I have to admit that I still hope Hurd gets more developers and we see some of that out there soon... I am no more a Linux partisan than a Unix partisan -- all I know is Windows stinks. Linux doesn't stink. Windows is proprietary. Linux is not. I'm a programmer. Wherever I find it easiest to write software that solves problems is where I will go. Today, that's Unix at work (where my employer pays the proprietary price tag -- hey, if they want to!) and Linux at home and on my desktop at work where free, powerful, and source access are just what I need for maximum productivity.
So, Linux now! Hurd soon! Monterey? We shall see...
(I know NT is also not approved, but it is and will become the defacto standard before Linux does if there is no viable commercial UNIX competition.)
Can you say "There are some things Linux can't do yet?"
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The reason why they stay with SCO and don't move to another OS, even if they want to, is that their custom applications work on SCO, are only guaranteed to work on SCO, and (most importantly) are only _supported_ under SCO.
Never underestimate the power of legacy to shape current needs.
Well, we're here at the turn of the 21st century, and what OS is the world using? Unix, just as for the past 30 years.
Yes, it's true there have been other operating systems. Before Unix, there was Multics. After Unix came a plethora of others, with a few that became relatively widespread. There was VMS (and still is, but it's very niche), and later NT, as two of the most popular. Apple has tried to push MacOS as a server operating system, but until MacOS X (which is a real Unix) they've never made one.
Many Unixes came: AT&T Unix begat newer releases, BSD, eventually SVRx. SVRx and BSD splintered off into many different Unixes, including Solaris, Ultrix, UnixWare, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD to name some of the more prominent. Linux was created as a Unix clone, modeled very loosely on Minix, another Unix clone.
Why do we think of certain Unixes when we say "Unix"? There are certainly the most prominent of the industry, especially the free (not just as in free beer!) leading the way. Commercial Unixes also have their place, running on the latest and greates hardware from Big Name Companies making Big Irons.
But why did Unix make such a comeback? There's no revolution of computing freedom, but with FreeBSD and Linux leading the way, Free operating systems started making a buzz. It started as a "grassroots" movement back in the 80's with the GNU project, but before that came the true Unix communities over the Arpanet, campuses, the BSD project (a truely free Unix distribution), and various groups.
In all of this, though, we've seen death. The death of many proprietary Unix-alikes was partially due to the rise of the new Free ones. This isn't truely a bad thing, seen much as evolution, but has started negativity against commercialism. Nowadays, the best talent IS with the Free operating systems (and some remaining proprietary operating systems, such as BSD/OS, BeOS, MacOS X [still not Free]), so commercial Unix vendors, hawking their inferior wares, are disappearing.
Have commercial vendors stopped innovating? No, that would never happen. Have the free operating system groups' hackers innovated more? Of course. More great minds give birth to more great designs. The out with the old, in with the GNU (pardon the pun) is a good thing. It allows the companies that dealt mostly with selling Unix to concentrate on other things (Sun sells hardware, Java, Jini, etc), and work more well on them.
The only real problems are with the Unix vendors who base their entire business on selling the operating system, or support for such. Support is important, but not for a dying system. The last reach at life is upon the old commercial Unix vendors. The UDI is an example of this: since people aren't going to work on free drivers for [insert commercial Unix here], maybe they'd write drivers for UDI under the guise that it's open. The UDI design was made only for the vendors themselves, in hope that others would make drivers for UDI (and not any random Freenix). So vendors could now back up their bogus claims of superiority by also saying they have the best hardware support. This is not going to work; it's too transparent.
And of course, we have mergers! Mergers are the sign of a dying company more often than not. Sorry, commercial Unix is disappearing faster and faster. Commercial vendors for things other than operating systems are now again noticing Unix, and starting to move away from the horrid Windows platforms. Apple now even has their chance to beat Microsoft with an operating system _BETTER_ than theirs, including the "clicky clicky" administration tools that make NT the choice for braindead administrators and companies being coupled to a real kernel and API. I don't see exactly why Apple released the source, but maybe you all do.
Losers: commercial Unix suppliers, commercial suppliers of inferior operating systems (*cough Microsoft cough*)
Winners: the free Unixes, commercial software suppliers (programmers not having to use terrible tools, APIs, etc. anymore as they can work with something good), hackers having more code to work with and wonderful new projects all the time, users and corporations with better systems
What we are experiencing now is a true revolution to benefit US, not the titans holding business power.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
That is the main reason for this latest strain of Unix.
Do you think IBM/SCO/whomever is going to look at one of its customers and say "switch to Linux, but all of your custom software will break"? Of course not. Will Linus allow the kernel to bend over backwards for compatibility with AIX/SCO/whatever? Again, that isn't going to happen. For the moment there is no bridge between Linux and existing customized *ix software.
The goal of these companies is to reduce development costs, without losing customers or what they view as "value added" features. I doubt if any of 'em make money on the OS. I bet they'd all jump to any less expensive platform (Linux, *BSD, DR-DOS, CP/M) if they thought it wouldn't alienate existing customers. And that means that existing applications have to keep on chugging.
The thing I'd like to see is for them to push these custom libraries to be more Linux like, and then put a few people and adding layers on top of Linux to build compatiblity. If you need some funky AIX program that plays games and doesn't stick to POSIX specs, just add jfs support and an AIX kernel module and off you go. I'm not saying that this would be trivial, or even do-able.
But I doubt if they would do this. While IBM has started to work with Linux, I think that it is more of a anyone but Microsoft approach. IBM is too much of a control freak to allow something as important as an OS to be developped by someone else.
- doug
Will Linux ever get there? Of course! Fact is it's not now. Companies need to base their plans for the future on things they control, and they don't, can't, and never will control Linux.
We hope...
--
The horse is stolen! Quick, lock the barn!
Bruce Perens.
Right - this was an announcment from the hardware (Proliant) division, not DEC.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Corporate clients NEED to have someone to sue if things go bad.
This is a favorite piece of FUD and almost the most inaccurate. Companies very rarely are able to sue an information technology vendor over buggy or not up-to-spec hardware and software. Services, on the other hand, are quite prone to lawsuits.
A company wouldn't sue IBM if their S/390 came down--they would threaten to dump their $10 million support contracts and hardware lease contracts. Very rarely is the courtroom the place where customers resolve their operating system troubles.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Agreed. My father is a JOAT[1] on a large (1000 site) SCO application on point-of-sale systems around the country. To you give an idea of what SCO can do, they were running 50 COBOL developers on a three-way 486/33 system with 64MB of memory (this was an applicationDEC, which, BTW, is a nice piece of hardware). I would like to see any other system do that. This iss SCO SysV/386V3.2R4.2; they're working on upgrading to the latest version of UnixWare, but that is a lot of work and probably won't happen for a year or two. (The application here is using Micro Focus COBOL on 486/33 DECpc's with Maxpeed Maxtation terminals.)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
And to think I missed that when I was using preview.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
And, Linux applications are easily ported to the complete Monterey product line.
Actually, almost any decently written program (i.e. that uses autoconf) will run on GNU/Linux, the BSDs, SCO UnixWare 7, SCO SysV/386V3.2R4.2, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and probably OS/2 and possibly Windows as well. Monterey does nothing to change this other than add yet another operating system to autoconf's list of hundreds on the ash heap of computing history.
... will benefit both the Linux and UNIX communities at large.
Umm, GNU/Linux *is* the Unix community at large. There is more GNU/Linux on the desktop than any other Unix or Unix-like operating system (I consider Unix on the desktop to be running a Unix or Unix-like kernel, not NT or Windows or OS/2, on a desktop machine; Xservers on Windows PCs don't count).It would be far more useful for IBM and SCO to spend their time moving to a Linux kernel based (and GNU based) system, providing backwards compatibility with modules for SCO Uxware, SysV/386, and AIX backward compatibility.
Maybe I'll get AIX PS/2 binary support someday and be able to use my Image Adapter/A with X11R4.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Some really great beginning statements, but sorta sounded like you changed minds 2/3 of the way through...
/. seems to indicate that they are a dead/dying company, and I don't know how to argue that.
They didn't get all this money that they've invested in Linux by giving money to non-profit developers and hobbyists.
They still don't get it. They are so in the habit of selling software, that they're willing to reinvent the wheel to keep on doing it.
I would just like to continue the argument by sayin *do not* underestimate IBM. Their AIM alliance produced the PowerPC to good effect for them, even if they haven't used it to penetrate the home/desktop PC.
Likewise this strategy, while not apparently a Great Thing, could still have very much a use for IBM.
Anyway, IBM pushes a lot of new technology and capability that Linux just doesn't have the support for. Yet, as always. Eventually perhaps, and perhaps with some help from IBM, but for really huge enterprise level deployments, IBM needs something it can really depend on and can market for it's dependability. Something with their name on it, and not just for legal litigation purposes. They will be supporting things like hundreds of processors in a box, which Linux has no support for now or even in the near future. IBM deals with millions of transactions daily, and with extremely high performance technologies, and with extremely reliable servers.
Linux is fine for individuals, small businesses, even most average businesses.
But IBM's market is *worldwide* business models. 24/7 year round operation. Scaleable and redundant and reliant systems. Extremely process intensive business models.
I can't speak for SCO except they only gain by leeching off IBM here. Every comment on
Intel is big, but not nearly so big as IBM, I think, and this alliance gives them entry into much bigger markets with much higher profits than just desktop PCs and suck.
My 2 cents
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
What we need is the ext3 filesystem. This will support, among other things, integral distribution across volumes (which is something the LVM does quite nicely), resizing of partitions, possibly while the system is running (to add new fixed disks on the fly, as I am wont to do), and journalling. Journalling will banish the dreaded hour-long fsck from computing forever more. (The JFS is so good I use it exclusively when I work on XFree86 in OS/2, because when the Xserver kills my OS/2 box, I just poke the power and the UJFS.DLL CHKDSK takes about five seconds to run, as opposed to the five minutes HPFS CHKDSK took.)
I need to get involved with the ext3 project. I've got too many things to do right now, but I need to learn serious kernel hacking one day here.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
This project is NOT a plan to unify UNIX in general, but rather a plan to make a new UNIX for IA-64.
SCO has experience with x86 (and owns UNIX) and long ago announced that they will port it to IA-64. Now Compaq and IBM (and Sequent) announce that they will help with SCO's UNIX for the platform and ship it on their IA-64 servers. IBM also plans to port it to their RISC hardware. Compaq sees Monterey as a way to move Digital UNIX (or whatever they call it this month) forward.
In other words, Compaq and IBM don't want to spend a huge amount of money to port their UNIXes to IA-64 to compete with everyone else on that platform. If it works out, then they have a foot in the door. Otherwise, they can just dump it and move on. This is NOT a vote of confidence in IA-64's future!
Sun announced that they will port Solaris x86 to IA-64 and Fujitsu and NCR (if I remember correctly) jumped on their ship. HP will, of course, have HP-UX on IA-64. And Linux is also in development for the platform.
I'm sure Compaq, IBM, and everyone else will ship Linux pre-installed on their IA-64 servers when they come along. They're just covering the "proprietary UNIX" base at the same time in the cheapest possible way.
Note that I'm saying IA-64, not Merced. I've long believed that Merced would never ship in volume because of production delays and poor performance. Only the second-generation IA-64 part will have a chance of success. I'll stand by that prediction...
Linux is great. But enough dogma; it's not a high-end OS, and it won't be for quite some time.
The fact that it's the best OS for your PC today does NOT mean it's the best OS for an enterprise server today. Open source will eventually move into that space, I'm sure, but it isn't in there yet. (And no, a quad xeon isn't even close to high-end.)
Saying "why not Linux?" when it's perfectly obvious why not only serves to make Linux, a great OS, look like little more than a bunch of hype.
I don't think this is exactly right: If the software vendor had absolutely no obligations whatsoever, the contract between the vendor and customer might be considered "unsupported by consideration" (ah, legal jargon) and therefore unenforceable as a contract.
More common, I think, are limitation of liability clauses which state that the vendor's liability is limited to a refund of the purchase price of the software license. Such limitations are common in many other industries as well, and are regularly enforced by courts.
[You might feel that such limitations are unconscionable, and should therefore be ignored by the courts. The standard reply is while courts can readily tell whether a contract is supported by some valuable consideration on both sides, it's not a court's job to evaluate whether a contract is a good deal -- it's the market's. If you don't like the terms of the software license, you should find another software vendor. That's the argument, anyway.]
Incidentally, contrary to evilpenguin's comment, it is not at all uncommon for businesses to sue their software vendors; in particular, many vendors have been (or anticipate being) sued as a result of the Y2K problem. Read a recent 10-Q or 10-K from any major software vendor for a discussion of this issue. It's relatively rare, I think, for ordinary consumers to sue software vendors, but you can read about one such case at the web site of the Milberg Weiss law firm (search with the keyword Issokson -- it's a Y2K case).
There are a number of reasons why UNIX vendors would not be unifying behind Linux as the "unified" UNIX.
1) These vendors have invested huge amounts of development effort in putting together their own implementations. They will not just walk away from their own design decisions because of Linux's rising market share.
2) Despite the increasing popularity of Linux, newer, high-performance commodity and custom hardware devices are driven by proprietary UNIX implementations first. This may be changing but it still has a ways to go before it changes (if it ever does IMHO).
3) Culturally, Linux is NIH (Not Invented Here). This may sound silly but its very pervasive and there are some convincing arguments why it will continue. The developers and customers for a given UNIX, even it they are closet Linux hackers, will take product to market with an in-house solution over Linux first because it has a critical mass within the organization that allows faster time to market.
4) Linux may incorporate many very modern OS features and implementation designs but other UNIX vendors will always believe, justified or not, they have a superior design. In such a case it may incumbent on Linux to adapt to their design rather than the other way around.
All of these factors may wane over time, but I doubt they will disappear completely. The short history of operating systems has never seen a single UNIX spec and I'm unconvinced it will happen now.
Later,
FM
Frank W. Miller