| UserLinux: An Important Step |
by Tom Adelstein (Aug. 17, 2004)
In an article on Vnunet.com, entitled "Perens readies old-school Linux, but who wants it?" readers get another look at mainstream media bias toward the open-source community. Credit the Vnunet author for doing what many journalists do -- jump on a topic about which they know little.
Last January, on my flight to LinuxWorld, a nice married couple sat next to me on the plane. We exchanged pleasantries and went back to our magazines. I glanced over at one point and saw the young man reading my then most recent article in Linux Journal. I did a double take.
Soon, we began trading war stories. The gentleman, who will remain unnamed, would present a round of lectures at the LinuxWorld Conference on Linux Clusters during that coming week. He managed many at a laboratory for the Department of Energy.
One of the stories held a particular interest for me. The DOE planned to move from their commercial enterprise Linux servers to Debian. They had spent too much money, he explained, with SuSE and Red Hat on support contracts and decided to do what Doc Searls calls Do It Yourself IT -- DIY-IT.
If anyone believes that the world is full of people who have no Linux skills, think again. At one of the most important DOE Labs in the US, a department decided they could spend their money more wisely by using their own staff to build their own distributions and cluster them. Why? Because SuSE lost the kernel source to the commercial cluster they supplied the lab.
How's that for a war story at which no one wants to look? Companies may be pre-supposed to signing lavish contracts for support. Those agreements have big margins because Linux rarely needs much maintenance. But sell a big maintenance agreement to a major enterprise and they might just decide the loss of the kernel source might not demonstrate a strategy to achieve customer satisfaction. If journalists think Bruce Perens doesn't know about customer satisfaction, then writers need to give him a call and ask him.
The title used in the VNUnet article portends to suggest that something "old" exists in place of something "new". Since when has Red Hat and SuSE become new? Linux originated as a skunkworks project by a bunch of people whose Universities couldn't afford the cost of upscale UNIX platforms. AT&T stopped giving the code away because University of California at Berkeley had started selling their own version and legal action ensued. If you wanted to have and learn UNIX, someone had to step forward and "Do it Themselves".
Bruce Perens happens to be one of those people who saw the need at the start of the GNU/Linux movement and brought himself to the project. He's never stopped. UserLinux is not Bruce's ego trip as some journalists have implied. He's a sincere human looking around for what is wanted and needed and bringing it to market as free software. What's new about that?
Do It Yourself IT
Before IBM became a Linux advocate, they were adversaries. They were not opposed, however, to providing my little company with a call center. The first 1-800-pay per incident call center was outsourced to AIC who put it in an IBM support area. That was five years ago.
Some staff had put together a few Linux User Groups (LUGS) inside the IBM network. Of course, the user groups helped provide a database of answers for the technicians handling our phone calls. This occurred long before IBM decided to even install Linux for their customers' computers. That was one of my early specialties.
I recall a discussion thread on one of the IBM LUGS that demonstrated some dissatisfaction on behalf of the LUG members. To keep Linux on their laptops, they needed a Lotus Notes mail client. Several engineers ported the AIX version to Linux. In the discussion thread one of the engineers said that instead of waiting for someone to build it for them, they would join the Linux paradigm, and do it themselves.
In a nutshell, that comment reflects the character of Linux veterans. If some writer at Vnunet believes that SuSE and Red Hat will corner the market on Linux enterprise distributions, that writer should think again. One of the obvious things missed is something you can't buy: Vision and ingenuity. That's why UserLinux will succeed and plenty of enterprises will use it. You cannot transfer the spirit of the community to people who have nothing but profit to motivate them.
UserLinux
The mission statement on the UserLinux web site says they want to:
Provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options designed to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs.
The site further states that:
UserLinux will be complemented by a worldwide network of (generally for-profit) service providers offering certification, support, and professional services.
In his Vnunet article, the writer states that "HP and IBM have no plans to support the distribution. [And] according to HP, too many distributions could confuse users. 'Having too many competitors is not good for the market,' said a spokeswoman for the company."
Well, I guess that should be the final word on it. Bruce, please shut down the project as an unnamed spokesman for HP made a new rule that too many competitors is not good for the market. Also, as Vnunet reports, "And Gary Hein, analyst with the Burton Group, expressed doubt that there would be much demand for the product. 'What is a justification for an enterprise to run UserLinux over Red Hat or SuSE? I don't think cost is a factor,' he said." Well, I guess that's the nail in the coffin.
This reminds me of a quote from a movie by Rob Reiner -- A Few Good Menwhere one of the characters referring to an opinion from a Marine to transfer a soldier off the base says sarcastically,
"Yes I suppose you're right. I suppose that's the thing to do. Wait. Wait. I've got a better idea. Let's transfer the whole squad off the base. Let's -- on second thought-Windward. The whole Windward division, let's transfer 'em off the base. Jon, go on out there and get those boys down off the fence, they're packing their bags... Get me the President on the phone, we're surrendering our position in Cuba."
UserLinux has an important place in the Linux Ecostructure. Small businesses have difficulties starting up and competing against larger firms. The costs of licensing and attaining partnership status is always prohibitive. Linux allows many firms to bid on -- and win -- important contracts they could otherwise never win. When Government Requests for Proposals begin to require Enterprise Software with Common Criteria certifications, small firms will be sidelined without a UserLinux.
By gaining Common Criteria certifications and FIPS 140 validations (things in which Bruce has involved himself), smaller firms will be able to compete with UserLinux. One of the goals of any US Administration is to encourage small business formation. Small businesses create jobs, large businesses too often put people out to pasture. That's why small businesses qualify for so many federal projects.
Do you think Red Hat and SuSE will give away partnerships when they can collect fees from resellers. I recall a time when IBM asked me to see if I could get one of my products listed with Red Hat. "Sure," the Red Hat people said. "Send us $10,000 and fill in this massive wad of paperwork and we'll talk to you."
Does a Place for UserLinux Exist?
UserLinux has a place in the market and for a community of people willing to contribute to it. When a DoD project decides to spend its money on certifications instead of vendor products containing open source software, UserLinux will get attention. People like HP and IBM have already come out of pocket to get open-source projects validated and certified. If their customers want it, they will do it.
UserLinux also provides an interesting platform for someone like Sun Microsystems. Since Sun users a version of SuSE Enterprise Linux as the underpinnings of their Java Desktop System, why wouldn't someone see Peren's project similarly. I wouldn't be surpirsed if Sun hasn't already considered UserLinux an option. UserLinux under the Java Desktop System has a nice sound to it.
Rather than seeing a hurdle by users, I have only one concern regarding Bruce Peren's project: The general open-source community does not understand the need for enterprise Linux. Gaining an understanding of the difference between popular and enterprise Linux will require some education. Other than that, UserLinux appears as a viable project and one which will see major adoption.
About the Author
 Tom Adelstein lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Yvonne, and works as a Linux and open-source software consultant locally and nationally. He's the co-author of the upcoming book Exploring the JDS Linux Desktop, published by O'Reilly and Associates. Tom has written numerous articles as a guest editor for a variety of publications on Linux technical and marketing issues. His latest venture has him working as the webmaster for JDSHelp.org.
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