[Gllug] Discussion: Is Enterprise Linux a lock-in

[Ian Northeast]

Simon Morris wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read a good trade-rag yesterday with an article about Enterprise Linux and
> I'd be interested to hear the lists comments.
> 
> Some of the points raised in the article.
> 
> 1. RMS suggested that "all the companies that distribute GNU\Linux also
> distribute non-free software, which is unethical. Some even develop
> non-free software which is worse"

I don't see the logic there. What is unethical about it (unless of 
course you consider all non free software to be unethical, as RMS 
appears to)? I don't see what's unethical about the likes of SuSE 
selling some software and giving some away. It's better than their 
charging for it all.

> 2. There was a suggestion in the article that the large recruitment of OSS
> developers by Linux vendors had drawbacks:
> 
> "A drawback of direct commercial involvement [in Linux] is clear.
> Developers who are based within corporations are unlikely to support a
> project that is run by another competitor unless there is material benefit"

I disagree with this too. Without the efforts put in by paid employees 
of companies like SuSE Linux would not be where it is today. While some 
people may be prepared to/able to work for free, most of us aren't. Much 
of the work by SuSE etc. is returned to the public domain. This is good IMO.

> 3. The cost of deploying "Enterprise Linux" distributions (RH, SuSE) is too
> high. Bruce Perens quoted: "The very aspects that made Linux desirable are
> under attack by Linux vendors bent on increasing shareholder value"
> Organisations are paying more and more for Linux as distributors demand a
> per seat cost and a service lock-in that withdraws support if the customer
> alters the source code

For companies like mine (which started using Linux about a year ago, 
having used only proprietary UNIX systems, mainly AIX, beforehand) the 
cost is still low compared to what we're used to. 5000UKP for an IBM 
Intel server and 800UKP for a copy of SLES is a lot less than 20000UKP 
for a p Series (RS/6000) and 1400UKP for AIX (last time I checked). The 
major cost saving comes not from the software costs but the fact that 
Linux will run on cheap hardware and AIX will not. Of course we could 
use Solaris, but Solaris Intel doesn't have good support from the 
software vendors (no Oracle 9i for instance) and SPARCs are quite expensive.

Also a lot of things are easier with Linux than with AIX (or Solaris). 
The latest and greatest versions of such things as Apache, PHP etc. are 
often bundled with Linux but not with the proprietary systems, making it 
more effort and therefore cost to deploy a proprietary platform in many 
cases. It must be said that the proprietary platforms are improving here 
- a few years ago AIX did not include perl for instance. It took me a 
week to build it:) But without the competition from systems like Linux 
shipping with perl, would IBM have bothered to add it to AIX?

The inability to change the kernel source or use sources which aren't 
from SuSE is a bit of a problem. We have some systems running SLES 7 
(one version old) deployed less than a year ago because at the time 
Oracle didn't certify 9iAS on SLES 8. Now we want to put fibrechannel 
adapters (as supplied by IBM) in them, and cannot because these adapters 
need at least 2.4.20 and SuSE only supply 2.4.18 for SLES 7. So we will 
have to upgrade to 8. But similar things happen with proprietary systems.

Regards, Ian (using SuSE at work and Debian at home)

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