I live on the other side of all of that. I 'work' for a company that is of
course a Microsoft solutions provider. Man has to make money to buy toys. But
the fact of the matter is, Linux isn't a toy anymore. For the past year I've
been implementing firewalls and VPN's using linux for the likes of Lucent,
AT&T, and SUN. Quietly. Linux is the 'quiet storm', and ALL of the other guys
know it. If that were not true, then there wouldn't be roughly 200 pc's
running linux, and 80something programmers of the famed Microsoft utilizing
Linux to further gain market advantage of their current monopoly.
I hope you all can get a handle on this, Commercial Linux is creeping up our
backs, and that is good and bad. Good in the sense of the relation of a dream
of a 'global desktop', and being part of that. But if it shall, as a product
of that success, fall to the whims of the marketeers and be stripped from this
community, well, it will still be great, but it will not be ours. The human
element will be gone, the names Alan Cox, Linus Torvalds, David Miller, and the
like might appear on the cover or 'People' once, and then resign to the shadows
of society.
I've been accused in the past of being a little over dramatic here, and I'll
accept such an accusation graciously, so long as what I say makes you think for
just one minute what level of dedication so many people have given to the
'Linux project', as Linus so aptly put it in 1991.
Alright, closing, let's just stay 'open', and not worry so much about "the
other guys". Really.
Russell
On 04-Feb-99 Alan Cox wrote:
>> The time has come for Linux to grow up. The time has come for Linux
>> to leave the playground and join the office crowd. It is certainly a
>> sad day for some, but I think every single person on this list wan't
>> Linux to succeed. I know I want Linux to be a real thorn to the Evil
>> Empire in the Pacific Northwest. But to do that Linux must grow up;
>> Linux must act like a commercial OS; Linux must be STABLE.
>
> Linux 2.0.x has almost perfect source level kernel compatibility.
>
> I've seen binary level compatibility. I've had to wait 18 months for sun
> to ship a bug fix because it had binary compatibility issues. I had to
> start posting exploits to bugtraq in the end. This wasnt just a 'get root'
> level bug this was an 'any user can take out your local lan' bug.
>
>> Currently, this model of changing kernel interfaces within supposedly
>> stable releases DOESN'T WORK. It must change, or Linux will
>> inevitably lose.
>
> No the model of binary kernel modules doesn't work. Thats not my problem.
> Binary only compatibility is the cause of many of the problems in windows
>
>> I hope you can see the necessity of true stability.
>
> Its not your fault you have a binary only problem. I take source
> compatibility
> very seriously. During 2.0.36 and the like I drop random 2.0.3x drivers from
> older trees into a .35 or .36 and check they still build and run. Thats
> extremel
> important.
>
> If I have to change a short to an int to fix a security hole (eg the mm based
> exploits about .34 or so) I will. I refuse to let 7 million users suffer
> because
> IBM have a problem with source code releases. I don't gratuitiously change
> binary compatibility in 2.0.x trees. But if it needs doing it gets done.
>
> Linux is solid because the Linux community puts quality and bug fixes ahead
> of IBM corp.
>
> Alan
>
>
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It's very inconvenient to be mortal -- you never know when everything may
suddenly stop happening.
russ@berrex.com
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