Re: [fw-wiz] MJR on Linux/OSS

From: Crispin Cowan (crispin_at_immunix.com)
Date: 03/13/05

  • Next message: Marcus J. Ranum: "Re: [fw-wiz] MJR on Linux/OSS" 
    To: "Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr@ranum.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 11:43:47 -0800

    Marcus J. Ranum wrote:

    >Aside from ego-reasons, who needs 60 different versions
    >of UNIX? Scott McNealy was right when he suggested, "all
    >the wood behind one arrow" - I suspect that most UNIX
    >users would be thrilled to death if there was just one darned
    >UNIX again. I wouldn't care which. I can adapt O/S knowledge
    >in a couple weeks. I just don't want to do it every week. :)
    >
    >
    Uhm ... two, please. I have had enough experience with OS monopolization
    from Redmond, thanks.

    Fortunately, going down to one distro is unlikely to ever happen to the
    FOSS UNIXes. As soon as someone got a monopoly lock on Linux, they would
    start acting arrogant, people would start to hate them, and someone
    would feel motivated to fork. Some say this has already happened :)

    I think there is a nice dynamic stabilization effect here. Business
    pressures tend to cause convergence; business only supports a very small
    number of distros, and wants that number to get smaller. But when that
    number gets too small, fragmentation happens and the number gets larger
    again.

    If you go look for Linux distros, there are at least a hundred. But if
    you go look at what enterprises are using, you see a *much* smaller
    number. In my travels, I have encountered Red Hat, SuSE, Debian (once),
    and Slackware (once). Business is effectively defragmenting the Linux
    market quite nicely, thanks.

    Crispin 

    -- 
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.  http://immunix.com/~crispin/
CTO, Immunix          http://immunix.com
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