| June LJ Supplement |
Craig Burton knows what makes platforms succeed. It was his strategy at Novell that established NetWare as the first Network Operating System (a term Craig coined), and completely changed the whole network conversation in the process. Later, at The Burton Group, Craig and his colleagues successfully moved the same network conversation to a new understanding of networks themselves: not as "pipes and protocols," but rather as services such as print, file, management, directory, security, messaging and Web.
Now President of Burton Associates, Craig modestly describes himself as "a voice of common sense and reason with proven sensibility." I disagree. Craig is an exceptional voice of uncommon sense. That's why we wanted to talk with him. More than anybody I know, Craig is the Voice of Reality. Don't talk to the guy unless you want to face straight shots and tough questions. That's what businesses want from their customers. And that's what Craig gave us.
– Doc Searls
Craig Burton: I see three:
Linux Journal: Let's start with number one.
Craig Burton: Linux has already passed the first big milestone. There is no other hardware independent OS — besides Windows — on the map. And by all accounts, Linux will have exponential growth over the next twelve to eighteen months, while NetWare and NT sales will only grow incrementally. So the Linux stake is already in the ground and no one can take that claim from the movement.
Linux Journal: Which brings us to your second point.
Craig Burton: The question at hand is, can Linux make the next jump? That jump is to prime-time back-office. Some Linux vendor needs to provide a platform with a set of services that is more robust and innovative than Windows, and do it faster than Microsoft. These services need to really solve customers' backend problems. I think it is up to one primary vendor.
Linux Journal: Who will that be?
Craig Burton: I just don’t see a back-office vision coming from any existing Linux supplier. Clearly Red Hat is making a run for it. But does Red Hat have the lineage and leadership to make the jump shift this market needs? We don’t know. Time will tell. In the meantime Red Hat is doing its best to drive a sense of growth and excitement around Linux right now. But excitement alone does not a jump shift make. There must be real meat to the commitment and sound vision behind the hype. So far, I don’t see that showing up.
Linux Journal: Red Hat's publicity is focussed on the desktop, and modeling itself after the great mass market success stories. That's why they talk about "branding" and "audiences" of "consumers." This attracts a lot of investment from guys who want to place bets with the Linux company that looks like a winner.
Craig Burton: Yet Linux will never be a contender for the mass client market. Do the numbers. It is simply impossible. Windows growth would have to go to zero and Linux would have to grow exponentially for the next eight to ten years before it would even begin to gain on Microsoft. And until Linux is at 20% market share, no serious developer is going to give it any respect.
Linux Journal: What about the work that has already been done on the desktop? Gnome and KDE look pretty good.
Craig Burton: Those are going to attract developers? Why? Where's the standard? More to the point, where is the alignment with reality? Look, Linux is in a hell of a good position. It is past the first major hurdles. But now what? If Linux intends to win on the basis of "mine is better than yours," Linux will loose. But if some Linux vendor can marshal a plan that leverages Linux momentum and lays serious infrastructure foundation that Microsoft simply can’t match because of its legacy, then by God we have something. The job of Linux is to make the back office pie bigger, not to steal desktop market share from Microsoft. That can’t be done. Why try?
Linux Journal: How can Linux make the pie bigger?
Craig Burton: Let’s focus on the real opportunity here. Microsoft is caught in workstation hell. Linux is totally unfettered from Windows legacy. So why try to be Windows? Do what Microsoft and no one else is doing. Deliver infrastructure capable of changing computing. And stop attacking Microsoft because it's "bad." That's not strategic.
Linux Journal: Why not?
Craig Burton: When enterprises choose Linux, the logic will be AND, not OR. And Linux will succeed not to the degree it displaces or replaces Microsoft, but to the degree it adds new computing benefits to enterprises where Microsoft is already established. Enterprises are not going to throw away Microsoft operating systems, services and applications. Those things are serious infrastructure. And many companies develop their own internal solutions using Microsoft tools; and Microsoft is extremely supportive of that development.
Linux Journal: Why is Microsoft in workstation hell?
Craig Burton: Microsoft can't move fast because it has too much legacy to support. Look at the list of operating systems they're dragging along: DOS; Windows 3.1, 95 and 98; Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server, plus NT Service Packs 1,2,3,4 and 5 (which are functionally all releases of the OS); Windows 2000; and Windows NT 5000 Workstation and Server. And Microsoft is anything but consistent across all those OSes. Linux has none of that, and it's a big advantage. A much cleaner slate. But there are down sides to Linux as well.
Linux Journal: Such as?
Craig Burton: Open source. It's a great rallying cry, but is it what customers want? Are enterprises praying for open source? On the contrary, they fear open source.
Linux Journal: So you think the coverage of open source is misleading?
Craig Burton: Totally. Take Apple's announcement about "opening" its OS/X server software. It was completely misleading. Every Apple OS is full of proprietary and closed code that they are not even in a position to open up. Look at Display Postscript from Adobe. John Warnock's will die before Adobe opens that source.
Linux Journal: Is QuickDraw Adobe code?
Craig Burton: Part of QuickDraw is Adobe code. That code is why you can display encapsulated postscript on a Mac and you can't in Windows, or Linux for that matter. Microsoft refuses to pay anything to Adobe for that functionality, even though it would be better for customers. And it's not open source, so you don't see it on Linux. But the Mac is so nice and smooth in the way it deals with what you see on the screen because of the display technology they invented themselves to emulate Postscript and embrace it without pissing off Adobe. That's not open source stuff, and it never will be.
Linux Journal: That subject almost never comes up.
Craig Burton: It never needed to – until now, when companies like Apple are making a virtue of going "open source" when in fact they can't open more than a small percentage of their code base. Open source for Apple was a desperation move. Apple is nowhere in the server space, so "opening" that source was safe. Same with Netscape's browser. It was headed nowhere when suddenly they yelled "everything is open source!" Then they whisped, "Oh, by the way, it doesn't include the object request broker" – which is fundamental technology that Netscape used to make a big deal about. Not included. It's a joke. A marketing ploy. Pure bullshit. If open source is so great, why don't Apple and Netscape open all their sources? Because it would make no business sense whatsoever. I'll battle any of the open source guys, any time, on that one. Get this straight: Mozilla is broken because it doesn't come with all the necessary pieces. And ironically it's the Open Source guys' biggest success story.
Linux Journal: Do you think the battling browsers give us a controlled experiment right now, between open and closed source?
Craig Burton: Absolutely. And tje closed side — MIcrosoft — is winning, big time. Going open source was great PR for Netscape, but the timing was bad because Netscape was about to get bought by AOL, which had to screw up the whole open source appeal. Who wants to hack on that?
Linux Journal: Meanwhile the press plays Linux as David, Microsoft as Goliath, and open source as Goodness.
Craig Burton: Screw that. This is not a Spielberg production pitting good against evil. This is not a question of right vs. wrong or good vs. bad. It’s a question of choice. Can a serious vendor do what is needed to field a sound choice for customers? It has nothing to do with Gates or the size of Microsoft. It’s just business.
Linux Journal: And you think its doable.
Craig Burton: Of course it’s doable. Is there a doctor in the house? Can someone holding the reigns drive this puppy home? We don’t know. That is the question.
Linux Journal: Speaking of people holding the reins, have you read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric Raymond?
Craig Burton: Yes. But I don't think it's cathedral vs. a bazaar here. It's a cathedral vs. a cult. They're both religions. This isn't to say that Eric Raymond doesn't make some very good points. But they are essentially partisan points: right vs. wrong. And they ignore the customers being served by the cathedral. He says the cathedral is what I call EWBU: evil, wrong, bad and ugly. Well, maybe it is. But if you want the cathedral's customers, you can't just tell them their church is EWBU and yours is holy, correct, good and beautiful. That's no business case.
Linux Journal: Have you read Eric's various cases for open source? The businessperson's case, the techie/hacker's case, the customer's case...
Craig Burton: Linux needs proof, not just cases. Corporate customers want accountability by a single company they can call up and demand service from. Not from a community of hackers, no matter how expert and helpful those hackers may be. They want to see software developed by command, not by consensus. And they trust a commanding company like Microsoft to pay attention to what they want. And I see no evidence the open source community cares about what the market wants. What I see is some guys saying Microsoft sucks and what they're doing is great. Well, that's a big hat, but where are the cattle? Show me the beef.
Linux Journal: What about the reliability argument? We hear people telling us if you put Apache and Linux on a box and let it run, it just isn't going down. While NT crashes all over the place. Isn't that a technological argument?
Craig Burton: It's bullshit. If somebody says any operating system isn't ever going down, theyr'e full of shit.
Linux Journal: Well, the faithful are legion.
Craig Burton: It's religion. Linux is the only "true" operating system. God/Buddha/Allah guided Torvalds' hands across the keyboard and caused him to build the only true and chosen operating system. Right. No disrespect intended, but Linux is not a predestined set of algorithms. The question should be simple: is Linux inherently less brittle than NT, and is the difference measurable? Let’s see the MTBF numbers, and then let's see what makes a difference, if we can tell. Which we probably can't because it's too hard to make them truly comparable. I think a better question is one of maturity. If Linux had the same number of applications as NT — applications that could potentially raise havoc with an OS — I would wager it would be no more reliable than NT. There is no magic key to building reliable platforms. Even the microkernel vs. monolithic kernel argument becomes religious at this point. I’m not saying technology doesn’t matter. I am saying that technology alone is not a reason to make a business decision. And no business decision gets made in a vacuum. Linux technology is simply one piece of an equation; not the answer to life, meaning, and the universe.
Linux Journal: What about customer demand? We hear from Oracle, IBM, HP and other big vendors that there is a groundswell of customer demand for Linux.
Craig Burton: There used to be big demand for OS/2 and DR DOS. So far I've heard very little in the way of specifics about Linux. Here's one question I'd have if I were a customer: are the Linux vendors afraid of each other? Does Red Hat feel threatened by Caldera and vice versa? My guess is: you betcha. And what I expect is that everybody will try to differentiate in ways that don't work for the customer who wants real interoperability. But I honestly don't know. Yet.
Linux Journal: What specifically, as a customer, would you like to see coming from the Linux community?
Craig Burton: I would want to see answers to these questions:
Linux Journal: What about cost?
Craig Burton: Linux is not free. That's a myth. The real costs are people and change maintenance. How many bodies do you have to throw at a project? We need to debunk the myth that Linux is cheap and easy – and that cost is why it's being adopted. Saving $495 on a license doesn't cut enough mustard. There are too many other costs, and if you don't factor them in, your customers will.