Companies push Linux partitioning effort

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Linux, Inc.

Reading this article, I saw similarities between Linux as currently managed and a dysfunctional bureaucracy in a single company.

Start here:
SWsoft is trying to get OpenVZ made part of the mainstream Linux kernel--the software at the heart of the operating system--and a part of the major commercial Linux versions, said Kirill Korotaev, a project manager at the Herndon, Va.-based company.

The functionality provided by OpenVZ is in demand and should be available. Though OpenVZ need not be the software providing that functionality.

In order to provide that functionality the kernel must be changed. However, the managers of the kernel have not heard of this product, and have little interest in making the extensive changes necessary.

Products (the kernel) are being developed in ignorance of what the market would be interested in purchasing.
No one is setting strategy and assuring all participants cooperate.

Balked, OpenVZ has to fall back on indirection, making the kernel changes after it leaves the monastery.

Only two companies count for a product hoping for a commercial success, Novell and Red Hat. Think of this as identifying people in an organization powerful enough to be helpful.

Novell isn't interested, having its own (indefinite) plans, but Red Hat is willing to be encouraging. In a way.

Quoting:
In this, it has a major ally: Red Hat, the top seller of the open-source operating system, which plans to add the software to its free Fedora version of Linux for enthusiasts.

Red Hat is willing to allow the program into the free version, and not in the company's real product, RHEL.

So Red Hat has effectively done little more than recognize the product. Why should they bother? Because of the advantages of ingratiationg Red Hat with a more significant parent organization.

Quoting:
But OpenVZ has the advantage over Vserver, said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. "OpenVZ is an offshoot of a well-regarded commercial product that's used by quite a few large hosting providers, so it's clearly the more mature," he said. OpenVZ is an open-source underpinning to Virtuozzo, sold by SWsoft, the main backer of the Linux push.
[The quoted comment is not completely logical. Nothing about the connection between OpenVZ and Virtuozzo assures that it's more mature than Vserver.]

It's exaggerating, but Red Hat's tepid acceptance sounds like hiring a powerful executive's nephew.

How likely is it that Novell will implement something or Red Hat will move the product into RHEL quickly?

And just to add complications, still another group is promoting software providing related functionality (Xen), which can probably be adapted easily to provide what OpenVZ provides.

That makes three possibilities, and no one making the kernel changes necessary to use them well.

It's the extensive kernel changes that makes this story one of infighting in a company rather than competing applications.


The worst infighting occurs when people believe that they have to cheat in order to win a competition of ideas and produce a beneficial result. Sort of like Linux, Inc.

Quoting:
In the past, although source code was available to those who requested it, as required by the GPL, SWsoft was reluctant to share, Korotaev said.

"There were some ideas about competitors, such as Vserver. We didn't want them to access our code easily," Korotaev said. "Sure, they could get (source code) if they bought Virtuozzo. But when our technology was only started, it was important that our ideas wouldn't appear in another project."

The approach meant SWsoft staff "basically were violating the GPL by not providing the source to their kernel modifications to their customers," said Vserver project leader Herbert Poetzl.


Sounds like this will turn into another "We're more open source than you are" arguments like the one between Sun and Red Hat.


Fractious doesn't begin to cover the situation.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 01/17/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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