HackFUD

There’s an interesting phrase, and this short article isn’t about any kind of FUD at all, just a quick response to an interesting article I stumbled across, and felt I needed to just make a point about it;

Interesting, just nomenclature eh? Imagine this situation:

1. I buy a license for RHEL
2. I find a bug or want a new feature
3. Lucky for me, I have the source code to RHEL
4. I also have the technical skills to pay the billz
5. I fix the bug and add that new feature to my copy of RHEL
6. I no longer have RHEL, I have RHEL*

Can I get support for RHEL* from Red Hat? A candy bar to readers who answer, “nope, you’re out of luck, Red Hat won’t support you on anything other than RHEL (i.e. RHEL* != RHEL)”.

Which makes sense for Red Hat, when you think about it After all, anyone with the ability can make changes to programs, utilities, and kernels within the paid-for Red Hat distribution. Red Hat allowing its full support facilities and help desk access for any old randomly customised versions of that distribution would be an absolute nightmare for the company, so it makes sense for Red Hat to support only its one - known - distribution.

I suggest that perhaps the better alternative sequence of events Savio Rodrigues could follow would be this;

1. I buy a license for RHEL
2. I find a bug or want a new feature
3. Lucky for me, I have the source code to RHEL
4. I also have the technical skills to pay the billz
5. I fix the bug and post a bug report to Red Hat with the patch which sorted the bug.
6. Red Hat acknowledges the bug and either accepts my patch or writes its own.
7. A patched version of the software is released by Red Hat.
8. I had a fully supported RHEL. I still have a fully supported RHEL.

Q.E.D.

The above diagram, originally made available to Mary Jo Foley on her blog , appears to be what Microsoft has in mind as a strategy to overcome its personal monster, otherwise known as Linux.

Microsoft wants to have all the Free and Open Source Software goodness for itself, wrapped up in its Closed Source, Proprietary “candy”, and in so doing, hopes to starve GNU/Linux of the oxygen of FOSS.

It’s mistaken if it believes that strategy will succeed in usurping Linux as the base from which FOSS grows, and the reason is this : GNU/Linux’s candy - the flavour of Freedom, tastes sweeter than Microsoft’s proprietary and expensive “Stack”. It’s a combination of philosophy, perception, and server back-end suitability in which GNU/Linux will win all the way.

This strategy is typical Microsoft “embrace, extend, extinguish”. It’s an old, worn-out strategy which people are by now wise to (finally, after decades of being taken in by this), and it’s a sad, desperate move by an old dinosaur which is now slowly realising that its reign and power over the IT industry is coming to an end - slowly, but surely.

I’d write a much longer and more detailed article, but frankly, I’m not that concerned.

(Oh and sorry for not having more articles since the last one - I’ve been extremely busy for the last month or so.)

I smiled when I read the title of this item in InterOp News, written by Jeff Gould.

There are a number of things I find wrong with this particular article, lets go through it, starting with the title:

Linux needs to try harder if it wants to catch Vista

Nice one! In one fell swoop the title alone makes some assertions:

1) That “Linux” is “behind” Vista.

The implication is that desktop use of Linux distros is behind Vista. How does he know this? Does he have concrete evidence to back this assertion up? Are there comparison figures which have definite Linux distro desktop use and the actual amount of desktops running Vista? I sure can’t find any definite numbers, therefore I am not prepared to make any assertions one way or the other. But I do suspect there is much greater use of Linux on desktop systems than is implied in that title.

2) The connotation in the title is that “Vista is superior to Linux”.

Perhaps I read too much into titles. Perhaps I’m paranoid. Perhaps I am merely suspicious when I see titles like that, but if you’re going to create a certain amount of doubt then your skill and use of language in your article title is important, and this one is very sly because of its wording. If the author meant to write it this way then that was quite clever. Perhaps I’m giving him more credit than he deserves.

Lastly, I was going to make this as point 3 - but it’s really just an amusing observation - well it amused me anyway. The title to me makes Vista look like some of disease to catch. I sure as heck don’t wish the Linux distro I use on my desktop to catch Vista! Sounds positively fatal!

Let’s get to the article itself; Read the rest of this entry »

I noticed that eweek has run an article “Linux Community Questions x86 Server Numbers”.

It’s not a bad article at all, in fact, and counteracts somewhat the previous article it published that I discussed on this site.

The only problem I have with it is the rather large Microsoft advert on that page which specifically targets Linux, but, I suppose you can’t have everything.

So the latest IDC quarterly server report is saying that shipments of servers with Linux on them are on a downturn, compared to shipments of servers with Windows Server on them.

Game over, Linux, you are defeated.

Not. Read the rest of this entry »