The coming of Age
By: Dinesh Nair
The growing acceptance of governments and corporates in recognizing open source solutions as a viable alternative to their computing and internet infrastructures is very encouraging. More governments are making it a policy to consider open source, at least on par with closed source software. Although some of them are still blinkered into thinking that all open source is Linux and do not even know of the existence of FreeBSD, this is still something to be shouted about.
Just this week alone, a number of open source stories which signal its maturity in on the corporate radar has appeared on your favourite online news sites. NewsForge has a story on John Weathersby, a man who utilizes his political buddy list and schmoozing capabilities to get open source solutions into the US government. Granted, John himself admits that he is motivated by financial reasons as he intends to sell Linux training as part of the package. However, lobbying efforts like these are sorely needed. Too many people are carrying the open source flag because it currently is in the mainstream mindshare, but most of them do not know open source or do not really believe in the philosophy around it. This explains greatly why Linux seems to be the only thing which comes to mind when open source is mentioned.
Sun founder Bill Joy has also written an excellent piece on the fallibilities in C#, the language Microsoft has created to propogate their .NET concept. Bill is also responsible for Java, Sun's cross platform environment which while has had some success, still falls short of what Sun said it would be. Nevertheless, the me-too response by Microsoft is an indication of the concern they have for Java. Incidentally, C# and the .NET CLI will be developed on FreeBSD, as Microsoft is currently fighting a mindshare and enterprise battle with Linux servers. Surely this is some indication that the giant from Redmond has conceeded something.
Speaking of Sun, they've also announced shipments of a new range of servers running Linux and additions to the Cobalt line of products. Cobalt makes the cute Qube and the RAQ series of rackmounted boxes. Sun acquired Cobalt as a means to combat the small server market which was then dominated by Linux boxes from Dell and Compaq. I wonder when Sun will return to its roots and run a BSD deriviant on these boxes. After all, Sun was responsible for a lot of early work on BSD Unix. They've also revealed plans for a new management service which involves the virtualization of hardware and services. This would allow system administrators to manage their myriad of boxen thru perhaps a simple interface. However, this does not address the issue of incompetent and less-savvy sysadmins. A lot of tools and products for system management make the assumption that the admins are clued in. However, a powerful tool in the hands of a novice will do no good. One must rely on companies and services with a strong and established credibility factor for service and host management.
In this miasma of open source announcements, I am still saddenned that they all seem to be in the rush to cling on to the growing open source user base. No one has realised that a failure to recognize the principles and philosophy behind open source will result in a jump from one stranglehold to another. If we're talking open source, let's also include all open source solutions, including FreeBSD into the fray. Let's work on adopting the philosophy and not the product.
© 2002, Dinesh Nair.
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