1) Academia does not drive corporate computer technology choices. In fact, it seems to be a contrary indicator. I remember this same argument being used by the Apple fanatics in the late '90s, as us in industry were phasing out our Apple software platforms.
Gee, we must have been in different industries. I (who was in the industry for quite a number of years ending in the late 90's) never thought of Apple after 1982 as anything but a niche player for graphics designers and publishers. Their forays into everything else were widely viewed as jokes. They couldn't even overcome the abomination that was DOS. Industry has been keenly interested in Unix since the early 80's, but the suicidal Unix 'industry' obliterated itself by petty software wars and paralysis by analysis resulting in a lack of standardization, the thing that REALLY scares corporate IT. Linux is Unix with the counterintuitive additional attribute that by opening its source it is quickly standardizing itself.
2) Open source doesn't mix with corporate mission-critical apps. Open source implies the ability for people to make 'custom' versions of OS apps & utilities, intrinsics, even kernels. This scares the holy heck out of the corporate IT world; can you imagine the support matrix that would be generated by all these 'variations' of core components.
Trailing-edge argument exactly opposite reality. Reliance on this view might be one of Sun's problems. Open-source most definitely does NOT mean that everybody goes into the private O/S and private DBMS business; the proprietary Unix vendors believed that before IBM broke the code. This old-red-hat view is discredited (in part) by the very Gartner report that was cited. Open Source means that knowledge of the code is widespread, software is free and usually of high-quality, and there are many sources of support. Companies have to be responsible for their own mission-critical applications no matter what platform they use. Open source is not a panacea, and not without its problems; business models for open-source companies are hard to come by, etc. But its problems are getting fixed at a rate that should (and I'm certain does) alarm Sun.
3) Academia and corporate have completely different views of the priorities of software engineering. If Linux is viewed favorably by academia, by definition it will be out of favor in the corporate world. Sure, there are instances of adoption, but corporate is very risk adverse. People have lost jobs and ruined careers by making 'risky' choices. Linux's only hope is to give themselves completely over to IBM, which won't happen because it runs contrary to the 'spirit' of Linux.
Hey Kev, send me a lid of that stuff<g>.
--QS |
