[Fsfe-uk] Bruce Prerens' ideas for a 'UserLinux' non-corporate distro

[Paul Mobbs]

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http://userlinux.com/white_paper.html


UserLinux: Repairing the Economic Paradigm of Enterprise Linux


Bruce Perens <address@hidden>, Perens LLC

FIRST DRAFT: Please send corrections.


Copyright 2003 Perens LLC. You may translate, excerpt, and reformat to fit 
your presentation, and you may republish the result, but you may not edit the 
material to change my opinion or take my statements out of context.


**The Problem**

Enterprise users have embraced GNU/Linux. But the very aspects that make Linux 
desirable, its low cost, Open Source nature, and the way it gives customers 
more control over their software, are under attack by Linux vendors bent on 
increasing shareholder value. Businesses are paying more as Linux 
distributions demand a per-seat cost and service lock-in for software that 
they didn't develop and that others support. Many of the early adopters of 
Linux are small but profitable industries with extremely sophisticated needs, 
and commercial Linux distributors simply can't afford to pay much attention 
to them while larger markets are waiting.

This has hampered the adoption of Linux. For example, a very large 
multinational bank recently informed me that they had called off a 
10,000-system Linux deployment becuase "Linux is now more expensive than 
Windows". An ISP complained that the cost of Enterprise Linux is greater than 
the annual profit of one of his servers.

We, the Free Software developers, created this software to empower everyone, 
and for everyone to share. But today's Enterprise Linux is a lock-in play, 
designed to draw the customer into expensive subscriptions and single-vendor 
service. Customers are made to agree not to pass service bulletins on to 
others. While this is within the letter of the licenses that we crafted for 
our software, it's outside of their spirit. We have no problem with payment 
for service, when service is rendered. But the $1000 per year or greater that 
many customers now pay for their Linux systems goes not for service, but for 
a brand and the endorsement of a few application providers like Oracle.

The economics of Open Source work worst for commercial Linux distributions. 
They are attempting to generate profit from a product that they don't own, 
and to which they can't add much value without departing from the factors 
that make Linux desirable. This has forced even the best of them to depart 
from the ethos of Open Source with lock-in plays or pay-per-seat proprietary 
content. And the worst of them used to be called Caldera.

<SNIP>


==========

"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for
this party nor against the other but we are for justice and mercy and
truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation,
and that goodness, righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity
with God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
(Edward Burroughs, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')


Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations,
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864

email - address@hidden
website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/index.html



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