The Linux Kernel's Fuzzy Future (InformationWeek)

The Linux Kernel's Fuzzy Future (InformationWeek)

Posted Dec 6, 2004 17:02 UTC (Mon) by russelst (guest, #24599)
Parent article: The Linux Kernel's Fuzzy Future (InformationWeek)

There's an interesting assumption here that having concrete long range goals is good. Its one of the challenges that both large corporations and large software development shops have to deal with. When you create artificial critical events, achieving the event often becomes more important than achiving the business benefit.

An example of this that shows both sides of the same problem is that since Linux didn't have a concrete roadmap, large components of the community were able to get behind Xen fairly quickly over UML. The inertia coming out of OLS for Xen was quite impressive. Not that UML is dead, or Xen is totally ready, but there was a strategic shift there than I have a hard time seeing in a large corporate software development shop. The engineer that had suggested to management, that in turn promised customers 'UML-virtualization' would have a hard time shifting as quickly as an unstructured market with shared responsibility. Case in point, SuSE is likely to have to spend substantial effort supporting and improving UML while other distros have the option of supporting Xen (or any better options coming along).

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