I agree for the most part. But there is still one very large question mark, what will the ISV's do? Like it or not, software availability drives the OS, not the other way around. Most large businesses are looking for prepackaged applications, either not having the resources, or the time to write from scratch. So the dilemma for ISV's is what distro do I write to? For a while there was hope that controlling the LINUX kernel would reduce fragmentation. Instead now the market becomes even more fragmented, with some applications running only on SuSE, some only on RedHat. Until LINUX solves this problem, we will be forever in the OS wars, even between LINUX and LINUX. Large businesses will stay away for the most part, and LINUX will be relegated to a much smaller portion OS than it deserves.
With the IBM and Novell news, unfortunately LINUX is in EXACTLY the same position UNIX was almost ten years ago. IBM, and Microsoft/Novell have effectively fragmented the LINUX industry, and potentially weakened Open Source in general. Following history, both Novell and Red Hat will continue to add value, and further distance their distributions from each other, and other distro's such as Ubuntu, Debian, etc...
Didn't we learn anything from the UNIX/Windows wars?
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I agree for the most part. But there is still one very large question mark, what will the ISV's do? Like it or not, software availability drives the OS, not the other way around. Most large businesses are looking for prepackaged applications, either not having the resources, or the time to write from scratch. So the dilemma for ISV's is what distro do I write to?
For a while there was hope that controlling the LINUX kernel would reduce fragmentation. Instead now the market becomes even more fragmented, with some applications running only on SuSE, some only on RedHat.
Until LINUX solves this problem, we will be forever in the OS wars, even between LINUX and LINUX. Large businesses will stay away for the most part, and LINUX will be relegated to a much smaller portion OS than it deserves.
With the IBM and Novell news, unfortunately LINUX is in EXACTLY the same position UNIX was almost ten years ago. IBM, and Microsoft/Novell have effectively fragmented the LINUX industry, and potentially weakened Open Source in general. Following history, both Novell and Red Hat will continue to add value, and further distance their distributions from each other, and other distro's such as Ubuntu, Debian, etc ...
Didn't we learn anything from the UNIX/Windows wars?