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  the Software View: Linux, open sorcery. (Part II)

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CHARGE OF THE LINUX BRIGADE

But no matter what activity swirls around Linux, the person in charge of the software kernel is still, to this day, Linus Torvalds. Although he's got a "real day job" as a software engineer working at start-up Transmeta Corporation in Santa Clara, California, he continues to devote a lot of time every day to Linux. "He's very devout about keeping that software kernel as small and compact and utilitarian as possible and not putting in bells and whistles. Torvalds is living proof, in the flesh, that even in today's modern world, one man with a vision can still make a difference.

Everything about Linux goes against the grain. This operating system environment even has a mascot. Tux is the whimsical penguin that serves as the universal symbol for Linux. It was originally drawn by Larry Ewing (lewing@isc.tamu.edu) using GIMP. How many technologies that you know have their own mascot? That's just one of the things that distinguishes Linux from the crowd. Torvalds has said, "The reason for the penguin is there was pressure to have a logo. I've always liked penguins. I was in Australia a few years ago and was bitten by a fairy penguin. They're shy, so I was very happy to have been bitten by one. I just find them to be very sympathetic creatures. This fat penguin who just sits there, very contented with itself. You can see it has eaten two pounds of herring and couldn't eat another thing." From its cartoonish penguin mascot to its free-spirited user community, Linux has never been the domain of conformists. For example, instead of trying to get rich by selling his new product, Torvalds gave it away, posting his source code on his university's server and inviting contributions from programmers around the world.

He was then a University of Helsinki graduate student frustrated with the limitations of Microsoft DOS and too poor to purchase another operating system. As stated already, Torvalds began experimenting with Minix, a tiny Unix-like operating environment for Intel 80386 machines, which he eventually completely rewrote. In keeping with the hacker tradition, Torvalds posted his software kernel to the university's server - thus making it available for peer review and modification. Before long, other hackers from around the world began downloading Torvalds' source code and submitting back their improvements that he could incorporate into his next release. Thousands of volunteer programmers eventually pitched in to refine the kernel, which was later combined with large portions of a free operating system environment called GNU and dubbed Linux.

Much of Linux's success is due to Torvalds' skill in recognizing good ideas and making contributors feel appreciated. He eventually copyrighted Linux under the GPL license, which means that anyone could sell a version of Linux, but the source code or any changes or improvements must remain public. The decision to make it open and free created a virtual support and development group. One reason Linux has quickly become one of the most robust and stable operating system environments around is because more software developers support it than any other operating system environment, including Microsoft's Windows.

This collaborative development project has produced a particularly stable and reliable operating environment. Unlike proprietary software whose vendors like Microsoft reveal only the binary executable files - machine language versions of executable programs - open-source software (OSS) like Linux allows users and software programmers to examine the source code, enabling them to repair flaws and customize the program. With so many people scrutinizing the software source code, bugs are located, fixes are created, and features are allowed to evolve much more rapidly.

RED HAT'S RED HOT

The pursuit of profit from Linux technical support has created a cottage industry around the operating system. Some companies put Linux on a compact disc, bundle common applications and an instructional manual, shrinkwrap everything in a box and sell it for fifty dollars. One of the more notable distributors is Red Hat Software, Incorporated (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina). This company, as well as other independent software vendors (ISV's), is generating revenue by packaging applications with training and support. Red Hat recently introduced three Linux compact disc-based packages.

When Marc Ewing, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, lost his grandfather's red Cornell lacrosse cap while a student at Carnegie-Mellon University, he searched everywhere for it. The manual of the beta release of what was to become Red Hat Linux contained a plea asking readers to send him the cap if they found it while in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

MAD HATTERS

TRYING RED HAT ON FOR SIZE

While Linux has traditionally been a download-as-you-go operating system, those who don't want to search the Internet for components can turn to one of several companies that packages Linux distributions for end users.

Red Hat is one well-known Linux distributor, whose Red Hat Linux is a popular choice among Unix developers. The product is available for Intel, Alpha, and Sun SPARC platforms and includes configuration tools, a recovery disk, DHCP support, the popular Apache Web server, and a caching server. The product also enables users to create a boot disk.

Red Hat provides ninety days of installation support - an absolute must for enterprise users who are inexperienced with the operating system. You can't get support if you install Linux on your own, so this services is an added value that Red Hat believes is crucial to attracting and keeping corporate customers.

"We're giving customers all the components they need, and we back up our product with technical support," says Paul McNamara, Red Hat's vice president of strategic relationships. "Customers feel more secure going this route rather than just downloading Linux components on their own. Enterprise customers want to have a relationship with a vendor since that's what they're accustomed to with other types of products, such as network hardware."

RED STORM RISING

Red Hat views the enterprise user as so distinct from the traditional Linux user that the company has created a new enterprise computing division. "We are acknowledging that enterprise users have different needs, and we want to be able to support both them and the early adopters," McNamara says. "Enterprise customers aren't as interested in fiddling with the operating system; they want reliability and low cost of ownership, which is what they get from Linux."

McNamara adds that because of Linux's inherent flexibility, enterprise customers can download components from the Internet if they want to. But many information technology professionals don't have the time or expertise required to do this, so for them a relationship with a vendor makes more sense.

Red Hat focuses on providing wholesale technical support to such organizations as Austin, Texas-based Collective Technologies, which provides Unix and Linux system administration for Merrill Lynch. Red Hat's Young says selling Linux is a brand management exercise. "We have to produce a better quality of Linux and we have to support that version of Linux better than our competitors do," he says.

Red Hat is working on its own brand of certification, the Red Hat Certified Engineer program. "The program focuses specifically upon Red Hat Linux, but someone familiar with this particular distribution should be able to work with other Linux versions," says McNamara. Training programs and certification are important steps to legitimizing Linux as an enterprise operating environment.

In late 1998, Red Hat struck deals with value-added reseller channel distributors, Ingram Micro Incorporated and Tech Data Corporation. They agreed to sell Red Hat Linux to retailers. The retail pacts boosted Red Hat's desktop sales. These deals between Red Hat and the distribution community cemented Linux's position on corporate Web servers and beyond.

LINUX TAKES STOCK

Do you own any Linux stocks? Thinking you might buy some? Sorry you didn't? I have some information you might want to hear. Maybe you accept the prevailing view that stocks of Linux companies can't be valued on any kind of normal basis. That's okay - I believe that myself. These companies truly are revolutionary, and who can predict what will happen in a revolution? What's more, they're in a new kind of business that defies old rules of industrial capitalism, a business with meager capital requirements in which everything - winners, losers, the future - can change in an eye blink. Why even try to create a five-year earnings forecast for a Linux company? It's fantasy.

You can't say what the companies are worth. Hey, these companies are changing the world! Who knows what they'll be worth? You wanna talk about risk? The risk is not owning them! As of early January in the year 2000, Linux distributor Red Hat Software was worth more than British Airways, Japan Airlines, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines combined. After all, the world is changing fast, and our ideas about what makes a company valuable need to change with it.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Linux has entered the mainstream. Who's using Linux? You are, you just don't know it. Many business managers seem content to genuflect toward Redmond and pay allegiance to a Windows-centric universe. But information technology departments have a subversive plan to wrestle back control of their operating environments. Fed up with the notion of building applications on proprietary Microsoft operating systems, a quiet revolution is underway in corporate information systems shops around the world. It's led by information systems managers and technical staff who have been smuggling in copies of Linux to run everything from Web servers to supercomputers. If you were to crack the hood of your Web and e-mail servers, you might be surprised to find that more than a few are running Linux - and they're probably the ones with which you've had the least trouble.

Linux is now running everywhere from 3Com's hand-held PalmPilot personal digital assistant, to the Los Alamos National Laboratories, which used sixty-eight Digital Equipment Alpha chip microprocessors to build a Linux-based super computer that cost only $150,000, yet in benchmarks performed more than nineteen billion operations per second. Linux has even gone to Hollywood, handling all the special effects renderings for the movie, Titanic.

Linux is being used to support mission-critical applications inside companies like Mercedes Benz, Southwestern Bell, the Sony Development Corporation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cisco Systems, Collective Technologies, Merrill Lynch, Frontier Communications, Reliance Mutual (a United Kingdom company based in Kent), Excellent Systems (a New Zealand company based in Auckland), St. John Knits (a high-end retailer and manufacturer of ladies fashion merchandise), the British Broadcasting Corporation of the United Kingdom, Heartland Engineering, Kenwood Corporation, Partner Bank in Croatia, WaveTop, LogicalNet Corporation, Unique Systems Incorporated, and the Boeing Company. Indeed, fourteen percent of all business sites today use Linux, according to a Gartner Group survey. More than fourteen million copies of the operating environment are installed. And Linux expands its market share from year to year.

Until now, a number of companies offered distributions - complete packages of Linux components - to the developer community. Now, realizing that their customer base is broadening, these vendors are repositioning their products to cater to the enterprise customer. The operating environment turned the heads of enterprise heavyweights such as America Online's Netscape Communications Corporation, IBM Corporation, Intel, WordPerfect, Oracle Corporation, Informix Corporation, Sybase Incorporated, and Computer Associates, just to name a few.

TOOLS RUSH IN

Linux has attracted the attention of the biggest computing companies. Giants in the software industry are doing something that would have raised eyebrows just a year ago: They're releasing products to run atop Linux. Application vendors are stepping up to support their products on Linux. A recent flurry of announcements by vendors promising to port their applications and databases to Linux has made information systems managers sit up and take notice.

While Linux distributors have been shifting their marketing and product strategies to appeal to a broader audience, mainstream high-technology vendors have been scrambling to tap into this emerging market. These companies' reasons for embracing open-source development are sound. Without question, when companies share the code of works in progress with the developer community at large, their collaborative efforts can result in more reliable software, faster development, and lower research and development expenses. Says John Wolpert, manager of emerging technology development for IBM's AlphaWorks division, "This is glasnost for IBM. Open-source speeds up the time it takes to get from research to product by a factor of five to ten."

Database vendors, who've been flocking to Linux since mid-1998, are among these newer entrants. Databases have traditionally been considered mission-critical applications; after all, companies store all kinds of sensitive information on them, from payroll numbers to sales forecasts. It's no surprise, then, that customers want to run their databases only upon tried-and-true platforms, which typically means some variant of Unix.

ORACLE: TAKING THE LINUX PLUNGE

Now, Linux's growing reputation as a stable platform is increasing market demand for database products that support the operating system. Among the many database vendors responding to this need is software giant Oracle, whose Oracle8i supports a variety of Linux distributions. Oracle has formed partnerships with Red Hat, TurboLinux, S.u.S.E., and VA Linux, all of which will distribute Oracle8i on Linux from their respective Web sites.

One reason Oracle is taking the Linux plunge is to give software developers a more price-friendly platform than Microsoft's Windows. Also, the open nature of Linux gives software developers more flexibility when working with Oracle's software.

Tim Payne, director of database marketing at Oracle, says many of his company's corporate customers have made large investments in Linux. When Oracle announced in July of 1998 that it would be offering 24 hour by 7 day support for Oracle8i on Linux, he says three hundred customers called the next day asking about availability. "It's reliable, it's proven, it runs on commodity Intel boxes, and it's a really low-cost alternative to Microsoft's Windows," says Payne. "The fact that you are going to be able to get enterprise quality support from Oracle to deploy upon the Linux platform will help customers adopt Linux."

Another major database vendor supporting Linux is Informix (Menlo Park, California), which announced the availability of Informix-SE on Linux in July 1998. (Informix-SE is an SQL database for small and medium-sized businesses.) Informix has made several products available for downloading (free of charge), including a developer's kit that contains Informix-SE, an SQL toolkit called ESQL/C for Linux, and a run-time version of ESQL/C called I-Connect. The company has also posted information on the Informix Linux developers program.

Database vendor Sybase (Emeryville, California) has also recognized the benefits of Linux and is offering its Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) for the operating environment. The software, aimed at the developer community, is being offered for free. Red Hat, Caldera, and S.u.S.E. are all distributing ASE.

Not to be left behind, Computer Associates is also making noise about Linux. In October 1998, the software company announced it was beginning an open beta program for its Ingress II Linux Edition. This program, which let more users participate than a traditional beta program, gave users a sneak peek of the company's relational database upon the new platform. Ingress II Linux Edition included the Ingres II database engine and was compatible with other iterations of Ingres II.

With major database vendors making Linux products available, it wasn't surprising to see other business software vendors follow suit. Inprise Corporation (formerly Borland) ported its Interbase database to Linux. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) products such as SAP's R/3 and PeopleSoft's human resources and financial packages reflected the trend of putting mission-critical business applications upon Linux.

Besides database vendors, several other high-technology companies expressed support for Linux. One of the more vocal companies was America Online's Netscape Communications, which led the open-source movement by releasing the source code to its browser and beta testing a Linux version of its Communicator 4.5 browser suite. It also shipped Linux versions of its Netscape Messaging Server and Netscape Directory Server.

But the company didn't stop at mere platform support. It also sunk some cash into Red Hat Software. In September 1998, Netscape announced it had taken a minority equity position in the company. Netscape sees enormous potential in Linux, having supported the operating environment in its browser for some time.

Another company that invested in Red Hat was Intel, which possesses a 64-bit microprocessor called Merced. Because Linux supports both 32- and 64-bit hardware, the platform should be able to take advantage of Merced's processing power.

At Comdex/Fall of 1998, IBM Corporation (Armonk, New York) unveiled plans to give away DB2, its database application for Linux. The version supported SQL-J and net.data, two features that help build Web-based applications. For technical support, IBM provided a moderated discussion group on the Web, said Jeff Jones, IBM's program manager for data-management marketing.

Besides technology vendors, Linux is garnering attention from other industry players. International Data Group (IDG, Framingham, Massachusetts) has produced the LinuxWorld Conference and Exposition.

As Linux matures, it will continue to gain acceptance. As more commercial vendors such as Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Corel (WordPerfect) get on board, and as Linux's own developers continue innovating, Linux's penetration into markets dominated by other operating systems will increase. Red Hat, Caldera, and other commercial Linux distributors will expand their product lines and add development and technical support staff. As a group, they will grow to major contender status, inspiring confidence in those who are now reluctant to put Linux to serious use.

To be continued ...

Sincerely,
Mark Kuharich

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