[lug] MS Apps ported to Linux???

[George Sexton]

Well, I will take a stab at it.

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-admin at lug.boulder.co.us [mailto:lug-admin at lug.boulder.co.us]On
Behalf Of J. Wayde Allen
Sent: 08 February, 2001 11:31 AM
To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
Subject: Re: [lug] MS Apps ported to Linux???

   ... "While we are threatened by the Linux business model, where
   companies give away free software, we are not at all worried about that
   operating system from a technological standpoint," Miller told eWEEK
   before heading off to the conference. "There are no earth-shattering
   technological innovations in Linux -- actually, there's a lot less than
   can be found in the Windows and Unix platforms." ...

This is pretty much true from a technical standpoint. It does kind of miss
two points though.

1)	Linux is more reliable and that's important to people.
2)	He's disregarding the whole open source arena. I.E. LDAP, Apache, Tomcat,
PHP, Zope, Postgresql, etc. He's purposely using a narrow definition of an
OS when looking at Linux. Windows has AD, which Linux doesn't, but Linux has
LDAP. 4



   ... I think the shine is dulling around Linux as people scramble to
   find a business model based on free software that actually works," he
   said. "Ultimately, there's no such thing as a free lunch -- someone has
   to pay for continued innovation and support." ...

The someone is IBM, SGI, and the other vendors who are making significant
investments. I haven't heard of companies leaving the Linux market in droves
yet. More FUD.

   ... While there has been much talk about Linux as an operating system,
   there hasn't been nearly enough talk about how it is solving customer
   problems through a full suite of business applications, Miller
   contended, adding it has a "long way to go" to solve the range of
   business problems that companies like Microsoft solve today. ...

Note that he doesn't really say Linux can't solve customer problems, he says
there hasn't been enough talk about it. I think this is pretty much an
uninformed opinion. When you have stories about Google, Home Depot,
Burlington Coat Factory, and many others I think it shows pretty much that
Linux is solving the problems.

   ... "Linux is many, many years away from being an enterprise-ready
   operating system that can compete with, and challenge, the Windows
   platform," he said. "There is also no vision or driving force around
   it. We are already in very good shape on the enterprise today and are
   leading the charge on the Web services front and in new ways of looking
   at delivering value. ...


There is significant debate about Windows readiness to compete in the
Enterprise market. They are shamelessly speaking as though they are in the
data center. For a look at this read:

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/02/07/010207hndatacenter.xml?p=b
r&s=5

As far as vision or driving force goes, that is in my opinion a good thing.
What we have with MS, is a vision that overrides our needs and desires. I
can live without  the vision thing.

In general my feeling is that there are no honest criticisms. The whole
thing is a hateful piece of FUD designed to intimidate people who are
considering Linux. The bottom line is that they are worried, and this worry
is translating into action.

>>I'm looking for honest, thoughtful discussion here as opposed to Microsoft
>>bashing.  Can these criticisms effectively be addressed?  What hard
>>examples/evidence can we provide?

>>It seems to me that a little serious introspection can't hurt the Linux
>>community.  I also think we need to expand our list of arguments from the
>>old standby of Linux generally being a more stable platform.

- Wayde
  (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)

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