[SATLUG] Dell Hope

[Brad Knowles]

On 6/3/07, Daniel J. Givens wrote:

>  I'm just sick of all of the FUD that seems to drive this industry. There
>  is always an undercurrent of doom and gloom when you (the collective
>  you) start talking about business and F/OSS.

I'm sorry guy, I wish life was different for you.  But the reality of 
it is that Microsoft would not be still in business if they weren't 
the best in the world at creating FUD.  That's a simple fact of life 
that you and I and everyone else just have to live with -- despite 
all our desires to the contrary, there is absolutely nothing that you 
or I or anyone else can do to stop them.

>  There were then and still are significant roadblocks besides FUD that
>  are affecting the commercial uptake of Linux and F/OSS as a whole. As
>  more people offer enterprise support ala Red Hat, Novell, and now
>  Ubuntu, you will see businesses becoming more interested and less afraid
>  in it.

Is Ubuntu offering the enterprise support, or is that Dell?

Frankly, I don't see that Ubuntu owns any of their underlying 
infrastructure, so they are inherently limited in this area.  The Red 
Hat & Novell folks have made sure that they own everything they 
possibly can, all the way down to the kernel, so they have at least 
some control over their destiny -- and some ability to actually make 
a reasonable profit when trying to provide enterprise support to 
businesses.

If the Debian folks were to decide one day that they wanted to pull 
the rug out from underneath Ubuntu, there's not much that Mark 
Shuttleworth or anyone else in that camp could do to stop them.  So 
long as you base your product on a product created by someone else, 
then you give them a great deal of control over what you can do with 
your product.

>  There is also the fact that the talent pool of qualified folks that can
>  provide in-house support is relatively small.

That's true for any and all OSes, regardless of who created or supports them.

>  ....because they have Windows on their computers at home. Not Linux, not
>  *BSD, not Solaris, and most don't even have OS X. Of course there are
>  exceptions, but by and far, all they see and know is Windows and they
>  have little interest (right now) about anything else.

True enough, but I don't see that situation changing any time soon. 
And executives are risk-averse enough when it comes to things like 
being sued or criminal charges filed against them that all it takes 
is a little FUD from Microsoft in the right place, to keep these 
sheeple in place for a very long time.

>>  It doesn't really matter.  The US or Europe, either way this kind of law
>>  suit is hugely damaging, win or lose.
>
>  There are more places in the world besides the US and Europe. Canonical
>  is based in South Africa after all. Also, I didn't think you could
>  patent software in most of Europe (yet).

As Thomas said, it doesn't matter where the lawsuit happens.  It will 
happen, sooner or later, in one jurisdiction or another.  And there 
will be massive amounts of FUD created and damage done to our 
community, even if the only thing that happens is that Microsoft ends 
up pissing away a few hundred million dollars by funding yet another 
SCO -- only to give them up to the wolves once the dust has settled.

>                               Expect it and begin prepping your arguments
>  to counter the FUD. The tone of this thread has the tone of a lot of
>  Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt and it sounds like we've already started to
>  play into it.

The problem is that we need a little help from the Dells of the 
world.  We need them to make sound business decisions with awareness 
of these factors, and not just choose the latest shiny-shiny thing 
and run with it.

When companies like Dell play directly into the hands of companies 
like Microsoft, there's very little that us Lilliputians can do to 
try and stop or redirect the Brobdingnagian competitors.

>  That stuff has been there for a long time, just like there have been
>  non-free repositories for Debian for years, and third party repositories
>  with this stuff available all along.

And people have been stealing software and music for a very long 
time, with relatively little consequences -- until they get a dawn 
raid by the BSA or the RIAA.

That's the basic rule of all theft, or even questionable conduct -- 
it may persist for a very long time, until the jackbooted thugs show 
up and throw everyone in jail.

>  I think I do. I am just choosing not to fall into the FUD. If, and more
>  likely, when it becomes an issue, then the community will have to rally
>  against whoever shows up as a threat with lawsuit in hand.

It doesn't matter.  Just by filing the lawsuit, they will have 
already won, and achieved the real goals that they set out to fulfill.

If anyone ever actually has to defend against such a lawsuit, then 
the community as a whole will already have lost that war.


The key to winning these things is to make sure that you don't fight 
on their terms -- you change the rules so that you fight on your 
terms.  However, that requires a certain level of cooperation from 
the likes of Dell, which they are obviously unwilling to provide.

>                                                             If you really
>  think Canonical and the Ubuntu community have made such a major misstep,
>  why don't you let your concerns be known to them.

I'm sure they've already been told this by multiple parties.  But 
they don't care what we think any more than Dell or Microsoft does.

>                                                    Remember, this is
>  community built software, so we can all offer our opinion.

Opinions are like ...

Well, I think you know how that one goes.  Let's just say that all 
the hot air in the world isn't likely to change the opinion of any of 
the major companies involved here.

>  If companies such as Canonical, Red Hat, Novell, MySQL, et al decide
>  they want to bring F/OSS to the business world, they had better expect a
>  fight from the competition, and they aren't going to be fighting fair.

Yeah, I think they know that.  The problem is that many of them don't 
seem to care.

>  If we as a community want to support it, we need to let the FUD roll off
>  our backs and continue to push forward. Am I idealistic? Probably, but
>  my glasses aren't entirely rose colored.

The problem is not whether we "experts" allow the FUD to roll off our 
backs.  The problem is how many people are prevented from ever trying 
anything out, because of the FUD?

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>

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