On Jun 12, 12:16 pm, Jon Harrop <j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Is anyone else finding that there is more money in the Linux market than
> anywhere else?
Definitely. The big money of course is in the companies that USE
Linux as a strategic part of their services. Google is the best known
example. Amazon, Yahoo, E-Trade, even Wachovia Bank uses Linux for
strategic services. This doesn't mean they've banned Windows from the
server room, or that they have sent all of their UNIX servers to the
computer graveyard. On the other hand, using Linux, LAMP, and Java is
a good way to get a lot of bang for very little buck. In some cases,
the same "feeds" used to load the corporate database can also be used
to load MySQL databases, making it easy to provide low cost high speed
retrieval of less volitile information at a fraction of the cost of
Windows/SQL Server or Unix/Oracle based solutions. On the other hand,
when you need a high performance UPDATE system, with very high
reliability, most CIOs still opt for Oracle or DB2 on Solaris or AIX.
HP_UX offers a nice hybrid solution, and does a really nice drop of
OLTP and complex transaction services. HP was very clever and
provided a CICS transaction manager for the UNIX server. It's an
interesting solution and has been very popular for one of the Stock
exchanges, and several publishers. Even some of those systems are now
being replaced or upgraded with Linux systems.
Consultants do better with Linux as well. Linux provides an excellent
infrastructure that can be customized to the needs of the client. The
consultant can create a solution that allows the corporate management
to define and model their business plan, workflow, and business
logic. Compare this to a Microsoft "One Size Fit's All" solution,
where the assumption is that if you want to go from a spreadsheet to a
document, you will have to either import the spreadsheet to a database
and then export to a document (not such a good plan for cells
containing large amounts of free-form text) or you can "copy/paste"
for hours at a time. Doing a 20 minute/person copy/paste routine once
a week for a team of 5-10 people isn't so terrible. On the other
hand, if that team grows to 100,000 people, your 20 minute operation
will now take 2 MILLION minutes/week. That's about 20 staff-years of
labor just to copy/paste a trivial bit of information. Even if you
only figure 2 staff-years/week, that's about 100 staff-years, or about
$5 million/year wasted on Microsoft's copy/paste procedures.
Bring in a consultant, have him configure a web site that feeds the
database, and you now have direct entry from user to system, with the
system able to report up to the minute statistics and/or summaries.
You've now saved the company about $4 million/year.
This money can then be reinvested into more money-saving projects.
The best example of a company with an excellent work-flow and business
rules system which strategically enhances the business is Dell
Computer. You order your laptop, customize it the way you want it,
and the work-flow software makes sure that the inventory, accounting,
and ordering are all coordinated. The Dell software can even provide
statistical analysis to help indicate trends and help manage paradigm
shifts.
Dell is better than most companies at watching, predicting, and even
anticipating these paradigm shifts. It's no accident that Dell was an
early adopter of Linux, and was also an early producer of Linux server
systems.
IBM's consulting organization has been providing these types of
solutions to customers for over a decade. Their very close-quarters
contact with customers, understanding the customer's needs, and
creating customized solutions designed to provide real productivity
gains and increased profits - has led IBM to focus more on Linux, OSS,
and Java, and far less on MVS, SNA, and COBOL. These still have their
place, but IBM has reduced the dependency on these technologies and
skill sets.
Sun was an Open Source Software producer before there was such a
thing. Even before the GPL was draften, Bill Joy had released vi,
csh, and sockets under the BSD license. He didn't do all of this by
himself, but as part of a group of students who were exploring UNIX in
the early 1980s, he and his class-mates were able to do outstanding
things with very simple programming techniques. Things that weren't
possible in the Microsoft environment until almost 25 years later.
In 1990, Sun was such a threat to Microsoft, especially in the
corporate desktop aka workstation market, that Microsoft deliberately
announced software that they knew wouldn't be available for years,
just to keep Sun from taking so much Market Share that UNIX could
displace MS-DOS and Windows. Microsoft didn't actually deliver most
of the capabilities of Sun's UNIX until almost 2001, when XP was
released. Even then, many of the best features of Sun were not
included, and haven't even been included in Windows Vista.
Ironically, Sun was a key contributor to Linux. When OpenLook failed
to prevail over Motif in the X11 desktop marketplace, Sun deposited
it's 80386 version of OpenLook, including OpenLook Window Manager
(OLWM), into the SunSite archive. The OSS software was recompiled
using the GNU compiler, and ran on Linux by late 1992.
The commercial internet, a technology which now generates nearly $2
trillion/year in revenues for companies all around the world, was
almost entirely based on OSS technology. The HTTP server was
developed at CERN, and then ported to an NCSA version. The Browser,
started out as Lynk, a GNU hypertext viewer patterned after the Emacs
InfoText and Mac HyperCard paradigm. Tim Berner's Lee was able to get
everybody to agree on the URL notation, and shortly after that, the
Viola browser was able to combine HTML text, Graphics, and photographs
into a single displayed "page".
The Opera Browser was patterened after the Project Athena EZ editor,
which stored and edited documents in SGML format, and stored a "style
sheet" and DTD. EZ was later adopted and adapted by the Linux
Documentation project, and even today, most Linux manuals and
documentation is stored in SGML using the LinuxDoc DTD. This makes it
possible to create output suitable for Postscript printers, PDF
documents, HTML documents, typesetting equipment, offset printing
equipment, and long-term searchable document archives.
The University of Cornel took the Opera browser and ported it to
Windows. This browser was called Cello. The biggest challenge of
Cello was that the entire application, including the GIF/JPEG
rendering, had to be compiled into a single application.
Marc Andreeson and a group of Athena programmers combined Viola and
Cello into a single source tree that could be compiled for either
Windows or UNIX/Motif. A toolkit was used to hide the platform
dependencies. This browser was called Mosaic.
The Mosaic browser was originally published under an NCSA public
license which was similar to the GNU public license. A company called
Spyglass realized that some companies would pay good money for
"Branding Rights" - the ability to place their logo, their bookmarks,
and their home page into a compiled binary. Several companies,
including Dow Jones, Prodigy, and AOL, paid a pretty chunk of change
to have their own "Branded" browser on the corporate desktop. When
Prodigy tried to eliminate the text bar, that allowed users to type in
ANY URL, making Prodigy users captives, limited to only Prodigy funded
sites, the NCSA contributors threatened to revoke their licenses.
When Microsoft purchased a branding license which had none of the
terms of the original NCSA license, there was open revolt.
The HTTP Server, originally created at CERN for Lynx, was also
enhanced and expanded at NCSA. When Microsoft announced IE, with
proprietary extensions, and the NCSA changed the terms of their
license, the contributors began releasing patches under a license more
similar to the LGPL. This became "A patchy server" and was later
named Apache. A new "Artistic" license was created, and all of the
contributors accepted the new license.
Microsoft galvanized the OSS community. Up to that point, Open Source
software was just lots of volunteers contributing software, with
little concern for enforcing the copyright licenses. Richard Stallman
enforced the GNU public license, but even then, most of these issues
were resolved through simple negotiated settlements.
When Microsoft attempted to set up a "toll booth" on the "Information
Superhigway", it unified the Open Source community. Linux became the
stepchild and was fed with all kinds of new features and
enhancements. When Windows 3.1 PCs were declared "obsolete" because
they couldn't run Windows 95, the old computers were sent to Mexico,
and configured with Linux. Miguel Icaza lived in Mexico and got
introduced to one of these Linux machines. He liked Linux so much he
wrote a new graphical user interface. At that time, there was the
Open Look Virtual Window Manager (OLVWM), and the Free Virtual Window
Manager (FVWM). others, like Tom's Window manager (TWM) were more
"bare bones"and mainly used only for low-resolution displays with very
little RAM.
Icaza was the leading edge of an effort to create a global internet
economy. Linux supported several spoken languages, including English,
Spanish, Portugese, French, Italian, and Eastern European. The Asian
languages were introduced by Turbo Linux, created to support Japan,
Tiawan, Singapore, and Hong Kong users.
Today, the GLOBAL economy is doubling every 5 years, and the GDP of
most "third world" countries is doubling eery 2-3 years. A gallon of
gasoline or LP fuel can cost as much as a Sit-Down meal at a nice
restaurant, but the "Purchase Power Index" is making it easier for
"Western" countries to sell goods and services to these countries at
reduced cost, and take the payment in "trade". Send them food valued
at $2/bushel and sell it for 25 cents/bushel, but get back X-Boxes for
$20 each, whch can be sold in the US for $400 each.
Microsoft buys X-boxes from China and pays for them with XP licenses.
Even though they report a "loss" on paper, there is a pretty chunk of
profit in "green dollars".
The big challenge today, is balancing this "purchase power index".
Today, an hour of skilled labor in India, China, or South America buys
nearly 4 times what it did 2 years ago. It still only buys about 1/4
of what the same hour of the same skill buys in the USA.
Yes, there is money in Linux. There are TRILLIONS of dollars (or
equivelent) at stake, and Linux is generating that new increased flow
of resources.
> --
> Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
> OCaml for Scientistshttp://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/?usenet
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