| 2006: The year that changed Linux |
Dec. 19, 2006
I've been saying for years that Linux was well along on its way from being the tech fanboy operating system of choice, to becoming one of big business' favorite operating systems. Well, I was right all along, but in 2006, that progress smacked many Linux fans in the face.
This is my list of the five most significant changes in Linux this year. They are not changes, however, that many who have embraced Linux in the past will appreciate. Like it or lump it, these are the changes that I also think clearly predict Linux's future in the mainstream.- First, Oracle became the first top company to not merely use Linux or encourage its sales, but to actually produce its own Oracle Unbreakable Linux distribution. Mind you, Larry Ellison and his band did so by pasting an Unbreakable Linux stamp on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Oracle also dances around whether they're actually producing their own Unbreakable distribution, or merely supporting one.
What nonsense! Oracle, deal with it, you're a Linux distributor now. Mind you, I still think it's a really dumb idea.
- Next up, not long after Oracle made its move, came the biggest story of the Linux year: the Macy's and Gimbel's of operating systems -- Microsoft and Novell -- agreed to partner on making Linux and Windows more compatible.
The first blockbuster in these announcements was that Microsoft was finally acknowledging that Linux is a serious operating system. It could no longer ignore it, sneer at it, or play FUD games with it. Microsoft now has to deal with Linux.
The second part is that many old-school Linux fans rose up and denounced the deal. Bruce Perens, one of open-source's founders, proclaimed that Novell had betrayed free software and started a petition to try to make Novell remove the deal's patent clauses.
At the same time, though, Richard M. Stallman, author of the GPL acknowledged that the deal did not violate the GPLv2 open-source license. The next version, GPLv3... well, that's another matter.
While many open-source fans spit on the deal, however, Novell's move seemed to be paying off. Novell wanted to stop being the perpetual number two in Linux sales to Red Hat's number one, and business customers already seem to be paying more attention to Novell. In short, if it came down to a choice between keeping the community happy or making business customers happy, well, Novell knows who pays the bills.
- One of the people who denounced the Novell-Microsoft deal was Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony. Ironically, a few months earlier, numerous free software vendors wanted to tar and feather Carmony, himself. His crime against open-source political correctness? Linspire released Freespire 1.0, a free, Debian-based desktop Linux operating system that combines open-source software with legally-licensed proprietary drivers, codecs, and applications.
To some users, the very idea of letting any kind of nasty old proprietary software into Linux makes them ill. Linspire, along with leading open-source figure Eric Raymond, believe that the practical details of getting, for example, iPods, and the millions of users who use them, on Linux trumps free software idealism.
In response, some distributions have distanced themselves even farther from proprietary software, A prime example is the FSF-supported (Free Software Foundation) gNewSense distribution, which is based on Ubuntu and Debian.
I think, however, that if the Linux desktop is to ever have a future as more than a niche desktop operating system, Freespire is pointing the way. Novell and Linspire have taken very different ways to deal with the proprietary software world. The bottom line, though, is that both are dealing with proprietary companies.
- Another major story was the growing split between Linux's core developers and the FSF, as the FSF continued its work on the GPLv3. Once more I see this as a conflict between pragmatists who just want the code to be free, such as Linus Torvalds, and idealists who want to pepper the next GPL with anti-DRM (digital rights management) clauses.
- Ubuntu also spent the year growing both in popularity, and in moving slowly into becoming a business Linux power in its own right. Ubuntu may always be free, but Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial parent company, is making deals with Sun and working on commercializing Ubuntu support for business customers.
The Big Picture
While these were the major Linux stories of 2006, as I look back at the year as a whole, I sense that all this plays into a larger story: there are growing signs that the Linux community itself is forking.
On the one side, you have those who object to Mozilla's trademarked artwork for Firefox so strongly that they'd rather fork Firefox into IceWeasel than "compromise" on letting users modify the image. On the other side, you have Red Hat buying JBoss and joining the New York Stock Exchange to plant itself even more firmly into big business.
I expect we'll continue to see these trends play out in 2007. We'll see Linux stick with the GPLv2, leaving GPLv3 loitering awkwardly on the fringes of open-source. We'll see some groups -- Debian? -- denouncing all the commercial Linuxes -- from Novell to Red Hat to Linspire -- as betraying Linux's free software roots. We'll see the crack between free software idealist and commercial open-source pragmatists grow into a true gap. But, at the same time, Linux is going to grow to new heights in popularity both for individual and business users.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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