16.04.2005 17:57

Dangers to be faced by Linux

George Weiss from Gartner had a talk about dangers for Linux (I can't find more official statement) on the enterprise market. He thinks that SCO and MS can't slow it.

What's more interesting, he shows 5 dangers Linux faces.

First one, fragmentation, has been mentioned for years. I don't know if he talks about Linux (kernel) or Linux (GNU/Linux - the whole system), but it's probably the second meaning. As I see it, most apps come from one source, sometimes projects divide. Kernel in nearly all distribution is heavily patched, but you can laways get the whole list and build your own, customized version.

Second, higher support costs. I don't think there's danger. Support prices going higher means more people getting in the field and doing support. Training for basic support doesn't take much time and there are enough people (IMHO) to deal with more compilicated cases.

Next problem - too many licences - may be really a problem. It requires people to know them and decide if to agree or find another program, with differnet licence. Also, the number of diffrent licences is going to drop.

Then there come problems with compatibility between versions. I don't experience this. If there are compatibility problems and many people want to stay with old version, someone decides to manage the old one (like with Apache 1.x and 2.x).

Last one is patent and copyright risk. It's mostly about patents (because all those crazy ones). It's hard to say which direction it's going.

Overall, Weiss thinks that there are no technological reasons to stop Linux and I agree.


Posted by Mara | Categories: Software