lwn article on the death of Fedora Legacy

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 10/24/06, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > On 10/24/06, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> >> > On 10/20/06, Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 09:36:15AM -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> >> >> > The problem is that we are just beat. Jesse has a kid, a release
> >> >> > cycle, a new knee, and a lot of other stuff on his real job. The
> >> other
> >> >> > people who have been doing stuff have also had 'stuff happen', and
> >> >> > temporary schedule changes that have become permanent.
> >> >>
> >> >> Yes.
> >> >>
> >> >> In order to survive the project needs some real support from Red
> >> Hat. (Or
> >> >> some other large company who wants to do Red Hat a favor, but that
> >> seems
> >> >> even less likely.)
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> >> Using the "Chasm" marketing model [*], without Legacy, Fedora is
> >> only a
> >> >> viable solution for Early Adopters and of dubious value to the second
> >> >> "Pragmatist" group. However, Fedora has been enough of a success that
> >> >> many
> >> >> Pragmatists are indeed using Fedora.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > I would argue that the pragmatists had been using it out of a trust
> >> > model. They had used Red Hat Linux when it has crossed the chasm, and
> >>
> >> I don't believe that Linux in general has crossed the chasm yet. I think
> >> it's *all* still in the "early adopters" stage. But within the "Linux
> >> community" (oxymoron) FC is the early adopters of the early adopters.
> >>
> >
> > That would put you in the conservative column then. So far at the 3
>
> No, I am not. I'm in the Pragmatist group.
>
> But you can't tell from what I wrote.
>
> > 10,000+ person companies I have worked at for the last 5 years, we
> > have replaced 90% of our Solaris, AIX, mainframes etc with Linux. From
> > what I have been helping with at other sites this has been the trend
>
> My opinion is based on the just recent (few months) decision of
> State governments to use Open Document formats, rather than MS
> proprietary. The people who use and promote Linux are, in the
> business world at least, still the "golly gee!" crowd, and
> not either the Pragmatists nor the Conservatives.
>
> > in the last 4 years. One site a friend works at just bought 5000 sun
> > boxes. Although they each have a Solaris license, none of them will be
> > using Solaris.. its just that the AMD hardware was considered better
> > to run the clusters on.
>
> These are interesting stats, and indicate that Linux may now be
> crossing the gap. I belive most offices are still firmly MS product
> houses, and a move to Linux would not even be considered. I know
> that every time I see a request for a resume, the format requested
> is MS Word.
>

Well there is a big difference between talking about Linux on the
desktop and Linux in the server. I think Linux in the server area
crossed the chasm a long time ago with over a million servers being
used by most of the Fortune 500.

On the personal desktop side.. I think it has crossed the chasm, but
will never be the Gorilla (to steal a term from Moore's "Inside the
Tornado"). A market place is usually split between a gorilla, 1-2
chimps, and the remaining monkeys. The 500 lb gorilla can get 40-85%
of the market and the chimps and the monkeys get the rest. The Ape of
the desktop market is of course Windows. Currently the Chimp #1 is
and Chimp #2 might be some brand of Linux... and the various 'monkeys'
being other brands of Linux/BSD/etc.

Looking over my data, it looks to break down this way:

Servers:  Linux 50%, Windows 30%, Unix <10%, Mac/etc the rest
Desktops: Windows 70%, Mac 20%, Linux/FreeBSD/etc the remaining 10%.

[So while we had 3000 Linux desktops at one site.. it was only 10%]

The embedded market space  (small routers, firewalls, small security
systems, cameras, etc) , we found that a majority of new systems were
coming with Linux installed on them (even if we didnt know about it
until we took them apart).



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"