LWN: Comments on "HP: Linux ready for mission-critical applications (ZDNet UK)"

HP: Linux ready for mission-critical applications (ZDNet UK)

bdale@hp.com — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:49:43 +0000

Until HP takes the same tone as IBM and commits the largest chunk of their development to Linux it probably won't meet their needs, and at the same time they will continue to lose customers to those companies that already have.

While as a Linux advocate I can't argue with your underlying desire to see Linux win in the long term, I gather from this assertion that you haven't looked at market share data in the last 9 or so years? As one example, you might find this IDC release from May 2007 interesting.

HP: Linux ready for mission-critical applications (ZDNet UK)

rahvin — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:17:54 +0000

HP-UX isn't better than Linux in any real way, if it doesn't meet HP's needs completely it's because HP hasn't taken the majority of their HP-UX developers and moved them over to Linux and taken the HP technologies and submitted them into Linux.

Until HP takes the same tone as IBM and commits the largest chunk of their development to Linux it probably won't meet their needs, and at the same time they will continue to lose customers to those companies that already have. IBM saw the writing on the wall 8 years ago, SGI saw it long enough to commit most of their innovations, SUN recently saw the writing (but only after getting a new CEO) and HP kinda saw the writing but just can't give up the control.

UNIX was good for a time but it's fragmentation was it's demise. The GPL puts every company on the same playing ground because everyone gets to use the advances of others and if you make something and someone else improves it dramatically you get those changes back to use yourself. (not to mention leveling out the architecture equation by making it possible to recompile yourself)

This is why the BSD license could never be successful with corporate paid coders, anything taken out didn't have to be committed back so a company could come in and improve someone else's code and take it proprietary so no company was willing to contribute for fear a competitor would come in improve some aspect dramatically and then out-sell the original inventor. I've seen some BSD people call it the stupid tax, but the reality is that the BSD license was and is used in exactly that manner, and out of the 100's of proprietary companies that used BSD code, almost no improvements were handed back. The reality of American businesses is that the honor system doesn't work, forced re-contribution, with penalties under copyright law is the only way to keep the system open and free. The perfect example is Microsoft, how many hundreds of lines of code did they take from BSD and how much did they put back?

HP: Linux ready for mission-critical applications (ZDNet UK)

intgr — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:31:12 +0000

Because they don't want to let go of their own legacy Unix OS, the HP-UX. Quote:

"With reliability, I think it's not as robust yet [as HP's own iteration] or some of the other proprietary Unix systems, but it's making great progress," Hergett added.

HP: Linux ready for mission-critical applications (ZDNet UK)

mbottrell — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:04:54 +0000

Hasn't that been IBM's claim for many years now?

What's taken HP so long to announce the same policy?