[Am-info] UNITED, WE STAND

[Fred A. Miller]

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UNITED, WE STAND

ON MAY 30, four Linux vendors, SuSE, Caldera,
Conectiva, and TurboLinux jointly announced
UnitedLinux. They intend to create a commonly branded
OS base that will become the foundation for their
various corporate server offerings. Each vendor will
incorporate its own added value, and all will partake
of the UnitedLinux brand.

The basic concept is strong. The UnitedLinux
environment will be built around standards set by the
Linux Standards Base and the LIN18UX
internationalization effort. It pools the development
efforts of the underlying distribution, thus reducing
costs and allowing each company to focus on its
particular added value.

This gives the business consumer a common Linux brand
to rely on. If one considers that the consumer might
eventually want to move to a different Linux
distribution to take advantage of different features
or services, one would expect that migration from one
UnitedLinux-branded distribution to another would be
reasonably quick and painless.

ISVs and OEMs will undoubtedly find that a common Linux
platform will greatly reduce the time required to
verify and support their products. Because of the
identical underlying structure, any piece of hardware
or software that works on one UnitedLinux distribution
would work on them all. This is especially true for
software that relies on having certain versions of
libraries in certain locations. Under UnitedLinux,
these dependencies would be identical for all
UnitedLinux-branded systems.

And the UnitedLinux participants could find the effort
profitable -- extremely profitable. Of the four, only
SuSE has the immediate potential to match Red Hat in
worldwide recognition. By establishing the UnitedLinux
brand, Caldera, TurboLinux, and Conectiva each can
grow in market recognition and gain critical ISV and
OEM support.

The only glaring gap in the strategy has to do with the
open-source community. Because the community created
and continues to develop most of the software that
will be included in the UnitedLinux system, I would
advise the new entity stay on friendly terms. Although
UnitedLinux will publish the sources to the base
distribution, it currently has no intention to provide
binaries.

Since the announcement, SuSE said it intends to make a
developer's version available. This is good news. But
while the members of UnitedLinux try to forge a brand
as recognizable as Red Hat, they would do well to
remember one reason Red Hat has thrived: Nearly all
Linux developers and administrators have worked with
Red Hat at one time or another, largely because they
had easy access to the binary software. As UnitedLinux
is interested only in business clients, providing
binaries to open-source developers should not endanger
revenue.

UnitedLinux can succeed as long as it remembers where
it came from.

Does UnitedLinux have a chance? Let us know at
http://www.infoworld.com/os  or tell Russell at=20
pavlicek@linuxprofessionalsolutions.com.

- --=20
Fred A. Miller
Systems Administrator
Cornell Univ. Press Services
fm@cupserv.org, www.cupserv.org
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