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ru.linux
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From : Sergey Lentsov 2:4615/71.10 26 Jan 2001 11:45:40
To : All
Subject : URL: http://lwn.net/2001/0125
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Here is the [39]permanent site for this page.
See also: [40]last week's LWN.
Leading items and editorials
Who's afraid of the big, blue wolf? One can always count on the
[41][IBM] Gartner Group for fun pronouncements on Linux. The latest
comes from [42]this vnunet.com interview with Gartner analyst George
Weiss, where he tries to get us all scared about what IBM might do.
From the interview:
Weiss said he could see a day when "80 per cent of the revenues,
indirect or direct, attributed to Linux will go into IBM coffers
unless companies like HP, Red Hat and VA Linux smarten up their
act. IBM will have a stranglehold on the community"
Mr. Weiss also says:
The biggest problem IBM has is it that appears to the Linux
community that it is trying to take over the Linux momentum and
grab what this OS has to offer
It is interesting that Mr. Weiss has such sense of the Linux community
- Gartner has, in general, kept its distance from that community. From
LWN's viewpoint, IBM has not yet frightened all that many people. One
can always find those who will complain about corporate involvement in
Linux, of course. But, in general, IBM's Linux moves have been seen as
good news.
The more interesting question, though, is this: should we be scared of
IBM? Those who look can certainly come up with reasons to worry:
* IBM dominated the computing industry for much of its history; the
company really only lost its grip around the beginning of the
1980's. For much of the time before then, it owned the market in a
way that Microsoft can only dream about. And, needless to say, IBM
did not always play nice.
* IBM is clearly interested in Linux and free software. A company
does not publicly commit to investing a billion dollars in a field
without seeing some commercial potential there.
* The existing players could prove highly vulnerable to an IBM
offensive. An IBM Linux distribution, if well done, could be a
powerful contender in the corporate market. IBM already has
service offerings and preinstalled Linux systems aimed at that
market. It also has a large array of add-on proprietary software
(WebSphere, DB2, etc.). IBM, if it wanted, could look much like
the IBM of old, whose customers bought everything they needed from
one source.
IBM, thus far, has taken great care not to upset the Linux community.
It is careful about free software licenses, has been careful to work
with multiple Linux distributors (and has not created a distribution
of its own), and, in general, has avoided looking like it wants to
take the whole pie. These efforts have paid off; IBM's image in the
Linux community is pretty good.
But IBM is a company like any other, beholden to its shareholders. IBM
executives have been very clear that they see free software as a
disruptive technology. One can be sure that, given that they believe
free software will be highly successful, they want to own a large part
of that success. If other Linux companies look like they are
threatening IBM's success, IBM will certainly respond in a competitive
manner. Companies can not ignore competitive threats and survive.
So IBM is likely to work harder, compete harder, and do its best to
own a large part of the Linux market. Should the Linux community be
worried about a future that is more blue? Certainly Linux companies
should be worried - they will face no end of threats over the next few
years. But even they could find themselves better off: IBM, in seeking
its piece of the Linux pie, has a good chance of making that pie much
larger. Billion dollar investments and high-profile deployments will
grow the market for everybody. In a few years, many Linux vendors
could find themselves with a smaller market share, and a lot more
business.
The Linux community should have little to fear, as long as IBM
continues to play by the rules. Free software will remain free, and
nobody will ever be forced to do business with IBM, or any other
company, to use it. IBM bears watching, as do all companies working
with free software. But it is not a particular threat, even if it is
big and blue.
Zend launches its PHP products. For years, the PHP language (once
"Personal Home Page," now "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") has been the
engine behind a great many web sites. Its C-like syntax, performance,
and database interfaces have all combined to make it, arguably, the
most popular server scripting language available.
Also for some time now, a company called [43]Zend Technologies has
been contributing to the PHP project. Among other things, the high
performance "Zend engine" powers the (relatively) recent PHP 4.0
release. Zend has done much to advance the PHP state of the art.
Now it's time for Zend to make some money from all this. The company's
plans became clear with [44]this press release, which came out on
January 23. Zend is offering a [45][Zend Cache] whole range of
products and services oriented around PHP, including:
* The "Zend Cache." This product, aimed at very high volume web
sites, caches the intermediate, compiled versions of PHP scripts.
If your traffic is high enough, this caching can make a real
difference.
* The "Zend Encoder" works like a Java bytecode obfuscator. Using
the encoder, a proprietary software vendor can distribute "PHP
scripts" in an unreadable form that is resistent to reverse
engineering.
* The "Zend IDE," an integrated PHP development environment. Among
other things it includes a debugger which allows the debugging of
PHP scripts remotely. One can only hope they have thought through
the security implications of remote server script debugging.
* The "Zend Launchpad," which appears to be an FTP site allowing the
download of "Zend certified" versions of PHP.
* A subscription plan which provides regular PHP updates, access to
technical support, and "special offers and exclusive offerings
throughout the year."
* A web-oriented support offering.
A couple of aspects of these offerings jump out at the reader. The
first is that the support offerings are clearly not at the core of
what Zend is up to. The offerings are minimal, and, at the given price
levels ($50/year for "non-commercial" customers, $70/month for the
rest), will not generate large amounts of revenue. There are no
expensive "we'll do your web site with PHP" offerings, consulting
services, or PHP enhancement services. Unlike Great Bridge, NuSphere,
and others, Zend is not centering its business around services for
free software.
Instead, Zend is a proprietary software business which is supporting
PHP as the loss-leader platform on which to base its (expensive)
products. Those who are in doubt can check out [46]Zend's software
license which has the usual proprietary stuff in it - including a
prohibition on reverse engineering of the product.
It is, of course, entirely within Zend's rights to offer its work as a
proprietary product. And even if Zend has not embraced the "all free
software" view, the company has certainly done much to support a
highly successful free software product. It will be interesting to see
if this approach to running a (partially) free software business is
successful.
Meanwhile, the all-free competition is not standing still. Digital
Creations has just put out [47]a press release announcing the
(forthcoming) release of Zope 2.3. Among other things, this version of
Zope includes its own caching system for dynamic content. It also
includes a number of ease-of-use improvements that are intended to
mitigate the notorious Zope learning curve. Digital Creations has done
well with the pure services model, and thus continues to put its
developments under a free software license.
LinuxPPC goes non-profit. [48]LinuxPPC, the organization behind the
popular LinuxPPC distribution for PowerPC computers, was originally
founded in 1997 as a for-profit company. However, their intent was
always to become a non-profit organization, with the goal of
supporting Linux on the PowerPC platform. Filing as a for-profit
company was initially just easier and less expensive.
Then came the Linux stock phenomena and the "dot-com" craze. The
hoopla distracted them from their original purpose for a while. They
turned down a lot of offers, listened to people who told them a
non-profit couldn't survive in that kind of environment and slowly
build a solid, small business.
Once the stock market hype died down, their original plans looked more
promising than ever. As a result, LinuxPPC is moving ahead to file as
a non-profit corporation. Why? In a word, "Control". No venture
capitalists, angel investors or stockholders to drive the mission of
the company. The control rests with the users and developers of
LinuxPPC.
For more details, please check out our [49]interview with Jason Haas,
who, along with Jeff Carr, founded LinuxPPC.
And don't worry, the LinuxPPC distribution will be here for a
long-time to come.
On the joys of copy protection. For those who haven't seen it,
[50]this posting from John Gilmore on copy protection is certainly
worth a read. It is a clear discussion on how numerous companies are
attempting to use technology to take away rights that are otherwise
guaranteed, and how there's a better way.
It's no coincidence that the open source, free software, and Linux
communities are among the first to become alarmed at copy
protection. They are actively making their livings or hobbies out
of eliminating scarcity and increasing freedom in the operating
system and application software markets. They see the real
improvement in the world that results -- and the ugly reactions of
the monopolistic and oligopolistic forces that such efforts
obsolete.
The full posting is long but worth the trouble.
LinuxWorld and Linux Expo Paris happen next week. The [51]LinuxWorld
Conference and Expo is happening next week in New York. Expect the
usual: suits and ties, loud music, corporate hype, wild parties, and,
of course, lots of Linux. LWN.net editors Liz Coolbaugh and Michael J.
Hammel, as well as LWN.net team member Dennis Tenney will all be
there. Stop by and [52]see our talks or look for us in the Exhibit
Hall. And keep your browser tuned to LWN, of course, for news from the
event.
Also happening next week is [53]Linux Expo Paris in, well, Paris. LWN,
alas, will not be there, a mistake that we intend not to make again
next year.
Meanwhile, if SuSE CTO Dirk Hohndel looks tired, be nice to him: he is
currently listed as a speaker at both shows...
LWN turns 3. The very first LWN weekly edition came out on
[54]Thursday, January 22, 1998. Three years later, we're still here -
though, hopefully, we've improved a little on the way. We're looking
forward to many more years...
Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
* [55]Security: Real damage from the Ramen worm, MySQL, sash, micq,
webmin, kdesu, crontab, icecast and bing vulnerabilities.
* [56]Kernel: Ways of speeding up data copies; 2.4.0 and USB module
autoloading; moving kbuild to SourceForge.
* [57]Distributions: Good news for SPARC, Microwindows 0.89pre7
packed with new features.
* [58]Development: The Open Source Development Lab opens, GIMP
flurry, MySQL 3.23 MSQL 3, Bind and Python updates.
* [59]Commerce: Linuxcare Managed Services, LinuxWorld
announcements.
* [60]History: bob@redhat.com's new web site, the Netscape source
release, and more.
* [61]Letters: Dell laptops, Linux pronounciation, NFS and
journaling filesystems
...plus the usual array of reports, updates, and announcements.
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
* [62]Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
* [63]Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh, Managing Editor
* [64]Michael J. Hammel, Senior Editor
January 25, 2001
[65]Click Here
[66]Click Here
[67]Next: Security
[68]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Щ 2001 [69]Eklektix, Inc.,
all rights reserved
Linux Ю is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
References
1. http://lwn.net/
2. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/pageid=001-012-132-000-000-001-000-000-012
3. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/security.php3
4. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/kernel.php3
5. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/dists.php3
6. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/devel.php3
7. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/commerce.php3
8. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/press.php3
9. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/announce.php3
10. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/history.php3
11. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/letters.php3
12. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/bigpage.php3
13. http://lwn.net/daily/
14. http://lwn.net/cgi-bin/webcal.pl
15. http://lwn.net/stocks/
16. http://lwn.net/Reviews/
17. http://lwn.net/Gallery/
18. http://lwn.net/archives/
19. http://lwn.net/op/headlines.phtml
20. http://lwn.net/op/Contact.html
21. http://linux.tucows.com/
22. http://news.tucows.com/ext2/
23. http://unixthemes.tucows.com/
24. http://lwn.net/2001/features/LarryWall/
25. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Momjian/
26. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Timeline/
27. http://lwn.net/2000/features/ESR/
28. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Comdex/index.php3
29. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Comdex/RansomLove.php3
30. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Guido.php3
31. http://lwn.net/2000/features/PaulEveritt.php3
32. http://lwn.net/2000/features/ESC/
33. http://lwn.net/2000/features/ESC/ELC.php3
34. http://lwn.net/2000/features/OLS/
35. http://lwn.net/2000/features/CBunks/
36. http://lwn.net/2000/features/pcb/
37. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Axis/
38. http://lwn.net/2000/features/FSLCluster/
39. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/
40. http://lwn.net/2001/0118/
41. http://www.ibm.com/linux
42. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1116627
43. http://www.zend.com/
44.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-23-200
1/0001409552&EDATE=
45. http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-cache.php
46. http://www.zend.com/store/products/cache-agreement.php
47.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-24-200
1/0001411213&EDATE=
48. http://www.linuxppc.com/
49. http://lwn.net/2001/features/JHaas/
50. http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40c2.net/msg04532.html
51. http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/
52. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/a/lwn-lwnyc2001.php3
53. http://www.linuxexpoparis.com/EN/home/
54. http://lwn.net/1998/0122/
55. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/security.php3
56. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/kernel.php3
57. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/dists.php3
58. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/devel.php3
59. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/commerce.php3
60. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/history.php3
61. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/letters.php3
62. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
63. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
64. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
65. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=lwnbutton125top
66. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=125-001-016
67. http://lwn.net/2001/0125/security.php3
68. http://www.eklektix.com/
69. http://www.eklektix.com/
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URL: http://lwn.net/2001/0125 |
Sergey Lentsov |
26 Jan 2001 11:45:40 |
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