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<TITLE>Linux Commercial HOWTO: Linux for the Commercial Market?</TITLE>
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<H2><A NAME="s5">5. Linux for the Commercial Market?</A></H2>
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<P>Copyright © 1996 iX Multiuser Multitasking Magazin<BR>
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Courtesy of iX Multiuser Multitasking Magazin!
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<P>
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<P>People keep asking me ``When is Linux going to be ready for the
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<EM>commercial market</EM>''. I guess the first thing to discuss is
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what is meant by "commercial" in this context.
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<P>
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<P>Some CD-ROM vendors have put the word "commercial" in their name, only
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to have the technical people think their product is good only for use by
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banks and insurance companies. Other people look at their product with
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disdain and say that ``Linux is not <EM>commercial quality</EM>'', because
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it is missing some feature they need, or they feel it is unstable (usually
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without ever trying it even one time).
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<P>
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<P>To me, the word ``commercial'' has lost as much meaning in the marketplace
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as some of the other buzzwords:
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<P>
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<P>
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<UL>
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<LI>``Open'' vs ``Proprietary'' (People are now saying UNIX is ``Proprietary'')</LI>
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<LI>``Workstation'' vs ``PC'' (What is a workstation, anyway?)</LI>
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</UL>
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<P>In the old days of computing the commercial market was banks, insurance
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companies and business-oriented facilities where the use of COBOL or RPG
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was the mainstream. The technical market was scientific, engineering
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and manufacturing where FORTRAN and assembly language was used.
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Somewhere along the way the term ``commercial'' seems to have gotten
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twisted around to mean ``ready for the mass market'', versus ``ready for
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hackers''.
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<P>
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<P>For the purpose of this article I will take the second meaning, and
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address whether I think Linux is ready for commercial purposes rather
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than the hobbyist and hacker market, and ready for the mass market
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rather than limited markets.
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<P>
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<P>For those of you who hate reading long articles, or who are short on
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time, let me give you my conclusion right now. Then you can go out and
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drink beer or other fun activities:
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<P>
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<P>``Yes, Linux is ready for the commercial market...in some cases''.
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<P>
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<P>In order for an operating system to be ready for the mass market it must
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have several attributes:
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<P>
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<P>
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<UL>
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<LI>have lots of applications</LI>
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<LI>be relatively easy to install</LI>
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<LI>have lots of applications</LI>
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<LI>be relatively easy to maintain</LI>
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<LI>have lots of applications</LI>
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<LI>be relatively easy to use</LI>
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<LI>have lots of applications</LI>
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<LI>not crash (much)</LI>
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<LI>have lots of applications</LI>
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<LI>be economical</LI>
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<LI>have lots of applications</LI>
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</UL>
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<P>But you can eliminate all of these considerations in today's mass market
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if only one thing is true:
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<P>
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<P>You have lots of applications.
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<P>
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<P>after all, there would not be 170,000,000 DOS systems in the world if
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any of the others <EM>had</EM> to be true.
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<P>
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<P>I almost added that is has to be economical, but history has actually
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proven me wrong on that. If people added up the total cost of
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ownership, then Apple would certainly have won over the PC. But people
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ignore the human costs of someone else (or even themselves) beating
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their head against the wall trying to get something to work, or the
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system crashing repeatedly, or the fact that the one keystroke they can
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hit the easiest (through practice) is
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<BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
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<PRE>
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<CTRL><ALT><DEL>
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</PRE>
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</CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
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In the old days people were content to spend several hundreds of dollars
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on a simple ASCII text editor, or deal with a simple spreadsheet. And
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it took an act of mangement to get them, with lots of Purchase Orders.
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Today, they want multi-media integrated with their operating system, and
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have all the applications available that their neighbor (or boss, or
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compatriot) has available on <EM>their</EM> system. And they want to get these
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applications easily, certainly no harder than to call up on the phone to
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order them through a catalog, or go down to their corner store to get
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them.
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<P>
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<P>Now what causes this plethora of applications for an operating system?
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Ease of programming? Good software development tools? Features inside
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the operating system? Stability of the interfaces over time?
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<P>
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<P>The answer is ``none of these''. While all these attributes may help
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convince an application developer to port, the one overriding issue is
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volume of the operating system platform. Again, if MSDOS were compared
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to MacOS, or even to UNIX and volume were not taken into account, we
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know which two operating systems would have the most applications, and
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they would not be from Microsoft.
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<P>
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<P>While it is true that several Linux vendors are working on getting these
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applications for the mass market (read this " your mother and father"),
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the number of applications that run on Microsoft platforms have been
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estimated as high as 35,000. SunOS has an estimated 10,000
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applications, with other `commercial UNIX'' systems (including Solaris
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2.x) much lower in number. It will take the Linux vendors a long time to
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get the number of applications necessary to hit the really large mass
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market, particularly if they did not depend on iBCS2 and DOS/Windows
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compatibility (which could supply a fair number of current
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applications), but depended on ``native'' Linux applications.
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<P>
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<P>So applications are king (and queen) for the mass market, and installed
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base (volume) or the promise of explosive growth (volume) is the key to
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these. But is the mass market the only ``commercial'' market? The answer
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is ``no''. The mass market is a subset (albeit very large one) of the
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commercial market. So let's look at what the rest of the commercial
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market needs. We will look at this by segmenting the market into:
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<P>
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<UL>
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<LI>turnkey systems</LI>
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<LI>large end-user customers</LI>
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<LI>specialized markets</LI>
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</UL>
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<P>
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<H2><A NAME="ss5.1">5.1 Turnkey systems</A>
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</H2>
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<P>
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<P>When I speak of turnkey systems I typically mean a computer system that
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has one specific (or not so specific) application that runs on it.
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Examples of turnkey systems are point-of-sale terminals, reservation
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systems, CAD systems, etc. But in a larger sense, other applications
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such as Web servers, nameservers (such as BIND), etc. could also be
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considered ``turnkey'', since they have only a few necessary programs that
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have to run on the system.
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<P>
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<P>Usually turnkey systems are ones that an Independent Software Vendor
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(ISV) or Value Added Reseller (VAR) will chose a hardware system, an
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operating system, port an application to it, then duplicate that system
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500 to 1000 times without change to the basic application. These ISVs
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and VARs will try to chose the lowest cost solution to fit their
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customer's needs.
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<P>
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<P>Linux is perfect for these types of applications. The operating system
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is stable enough for the developer to port their application and test
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the application fully. Once it is fully tested and stable, the entire
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package is ``frozen'' and duplicated any number of times for the end
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customer.
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<P>
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<P>Since the operating system may be freely copied, and it runs on
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inexpensive hardware, their variable costs are minimal. Even a developer
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who is not familiar with the Linux system (so they need help getting it
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running on a platform) will quickly pay back the porting and system
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programmer costs they accrue by not paying $200-$500. per
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license for the operating system. Plus they have all the source code for
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the entire system, in case they run into trouble later on. You can buy a
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lot of Linux support for $200-$500K.
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<P>
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<P>As I said before, I include Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as part of
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this ``turnkey'' environment, for both external internet and internal
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internet. Why overload your expensive, high-powered, highly complex
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general-purpose server to do Web serving when a smaller, simpler box can
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offload it? Why not run your NIS slaves on a Linux box? Or perhaps
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your BIND server?
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<P>
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<P>In the early days of Digital UNIX (known then as DEC OSF/1) we did not
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have very many applications. In fact we had none. The marketing staff
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came to me with sad faces asking if it was possible to sell an operating
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system that had no applications. I invented a term called
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``Turbocharging'', which allowed a Digital UNIX system using the speed and
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power of the Alpha processor (as well as the throughput of our
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networking devices) to offload NIS, NFS, BIND and other services from
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people's overloaded, slower SPARC machines. We also showed people how
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they could use the rsh(1) command to allow the Alpha to do a portion
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of their very CPU intensive processing while delivering the result back
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to the SPARCs on their desk. This allowed the SPARCs to work more on
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applications and less on the other ``system administration'' tasks that
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they were performing. We sold lots of Digital UNIX systems based solely
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on executing those tasks. Today, of course, Digital UNIX has a lot more
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applications, and particularly very large memory databases that are
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extremely fast. But the same principle applies. The database engine
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runs on the Alpha system, supplying data to the slower SPARC engines as
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a ``Turbocharger''. I could see Linux systems headed in the same
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direction, following the same path.
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<P>
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<P>
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<H2><A NAME="ss5.2">5.2 Large end-user customers</A>
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</H2>
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<P>
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<P>Very large customers often have their own home-grown applications which
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they need to deploy across a wide network of people. Or they can have
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management dictate a certain suite of applications, which then can be
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ported to Linux. Since these customers are so large, their operating
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system costs are huge, and utilizing the savings using the Linux
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operating system they may completely cover the expenses of porting their
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software.
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<P>
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<P>Or these very large customers may ``influence'' their layered product
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providers to port to the Linux platform. Finally, they may even change
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some of their computing habits (to use existing programs) if the cost
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savings are enough to warrant it.
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<P>
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<P>Companies like Caldera are creating a suite of applications and
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approaching these very large customers to show them the operating system
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savings that they can achieve if they switch to Linux. While it is true
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that every application the customer could ever conceive of running may
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not run on Linux, by using the native applications, the iBCS2
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applications, the DOSEMU applications, and applications that run under
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WABI, a nice suite of applications could be built to solve their needs.
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<P>
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<H2><A NAME="ss5.3">5.3 Specialized markets</A>
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</H2>
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<P>
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<P>Finally there are what I call ``specialized markets''. Markets that might
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buy Linux simply because it is Linux, and not because of the application
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suites that it provides.
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<P>
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<P>In the education field there are three main markets:
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<UL>
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<LI>administrative</LI>
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<LI>``campus computing''</LI>
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<LI>computer science education</LI>
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</UL>
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<P>The administrative part is the ``business'' aspect of the market. They
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are looking for easy-to-use systems that can also handle complex
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administrative tasks that might cover a community the size of a small
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city.
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<P>
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<P>The ``campus computing'' is the supply of computing power and service for
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majors of all types, web services and research into non-computer science
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(for example, molecular modeling) research.
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<P>
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<P>Finally there is computer science education, both on the undergraduate
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and graduate level, as well as research into computer science.
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<P>
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<P>While the administrative sub-market typically relies more on
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shrink-wrapped applications, the other two rely on them to a lesser
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extent (with the computer science education market relying the least).
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The other two markets can utilize a lot more of the freeware and
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shareware applications that are already ported to Linux. This gives
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them a very low-cost (from a software perspective) platform while
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allowing them to see and (often) modify the source code for the
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applications they use.
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<P>
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<P>More importantly, in the computer science research area, the results of
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the research can be freely distributed to others working in the field,
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or even published as source code to illustrate the results. This can
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not be done with ``commercial'' operating systems.
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<P>
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<P>Some universities are utilizing Linux more and more to run their campus.
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From a ``commercial'' standpoint, their needs are the same as many large
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businesses. Students graduating from college will know about Linux, and
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bring the word to their future employers.
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<P>
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<P>Finally, there is the computer hobbyist and software developer market. I
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relate this market to the amateur radio market. In the amateur radio
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market the radio is often used to simply talk to other people, but at
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the same time the users investigate new ways of using radio, and
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improving it. Many electrical engineers started out as amateur radio
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users. So it can be with Linux, since for the first time both the
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prices of the hardware and the prices of the operating system source
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code are within the reach of mortal people.
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<P>
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<P>In conclusion, I feel that Linux does have the items needed for several
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types of ``commercial'' uses:
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<P>
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<UL>
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<LI>stability and quality</LI>
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<LI>low variable costs for turnkey applications</LI>
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<LI>explosive growth in volume to attract ISVs</LI>
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</UL>
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<P>What Linux really needs is for the ``commercial'' community to understand
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what is going on, and to embrace it where it will be useful. This will
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increase the volume numbers even more, which will attract more
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applications.
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<P>
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<P>Along these lines I would like to ``advertise'' a joint effort of USENIX
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and Linux International to happen in January of 1997 in Anaheim,
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California of the United States. There will be a joint USENIX/Linux
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development conference, and while a certain part of the Linux conference
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will be oriented towards the development of the Linux operating system,
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the bulk of the conference will be oriented towards application
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developers and marketing people, to better understand the Linux
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operating system and how to sell their applications and services into
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the Linux market. We hope to show ISVs, VARs, resellers and distributors
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how they can make money by selling their applications and services on
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top of the Linux operating system.
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<P>
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<P>
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<H2><A NAME="ss5.4">5.4 Biography</A>
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</H2>
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<P>
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<P>Jon ``maddog'' Hall is a Senior Leader in the Digital Equipment
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Corporation UNIX group. He has been in the computer industry for
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twenty-five years, UNIX for sixteen years and has guided the emergence
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of six operating systems, including Alpha Linux. He has an MS in
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Computer Science.
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<P>
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