The Sikh Geek

That’s a good question? It’s something that an article over at The Register asks. In fact it could be broadened out to ask why not chose FeeBSD or OpenBSD? What it shows is that there is real choice out there. So when I previously said that Microsoft should open source Windows, this is not something which is without precedent for a major vendor. Sun open sourced Solaris for its x86 OS and created Open Solaris and enjoyed a bit of a rebirth and it has more recently open sourced Java. In reality the battle so far has been between Linux taking market share from various versions of UNIX, moving towards commodity Intel based servers. Ubuntu is showing some interest being generated on the commercial Linux side but it’s all funded by a wealthy benefactor in the form of Mark Shuttleworth. So, are you going to bet your business on the good will and deep pockets of a single person? My view is that you’re better off sticking with a commercial Linux vendor like Novell, Red Hat and running it on supported hardware platforms such as IBM, HP or Dell which all support these distros. It’s not going to be free as in “free beer” but you’ve got some form of insurance for your business.