Unanswered questions

The Big Unanswered Questions

A progress report on what we don't yet know about Linux Success in the Enterprise.

To say the least, Linux is not a Done Thing. It never will be. But it has clearly succeeded -- together with Net on which it mostly resides -- as common infrastructure. In other words, we're well on our way to taking it for granted. Which brings up some Now What? questions.

So let's review a few items we can chalk into the Done column. Then we'll visit the UnDone.

The Demand Side. Yes, it's a Good Thing that IBM, HP, Oracle, Red Hat and other vendors are pushing Linux and offering an exploding variety of "solutions" based on it. But fundamentally Linux is something that happened when the demand side started supplying itself.
Enterprises. IT folks all over the place are using Linux and the open source applications it supports. If the day has not come when nobody gets fired for specifying Linux; but it's in sight.
LAMP. The LAMP family of platform components (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, Python, PostgresSQL, PHP) is now firmly established as a development and deployment environment. Note that many of those components are deployed where Linux meets the Net and the Web.
Embedded. Linux is so easily and widely deployed in embedded devices that calling it a success is an understatement.
Red Hat. Yes, Debian and SuSE are winners too, but Red Hat has become the predominant Linux distro.
Debian. There will always be a need for a distro that's as free, non-proprietary, and removed from commercial purposes as can be. That's why Debian is locked in just as solid as Red Hat, though with far less publicity.
GNU. Same story as Debian, only older and with many more components. We may not all like the GNU/ prefix when it show up, but in many cases that's what gets deployed.

Now for the UnDone:

The desktop. Here there are two questions:
1. What will it take to make Linux desktops — including (perhaps especially) laptops — ready for the mass marketplace? (Glenn Stone has a good take on the subject.)
2. What will it take for the major PC makers to start marketing those machines, and not just floating half-hearted efforts (mostly outside the U.S. and Europe) and mumbling platitudes about "waiting for market demand" that they could create with one good ad campaign?
The Big Vendors. Here we're talking mostly about HP and IBM. (Dell's story is still pretty thin.) HP has been coming on strong in its PR and advertising, and the Linux content on its Web site getting much fatter with useful information (even though it's still thin in places). But IBM's is just freaking huge. I get the sense, from both HP and IBM, that their Linux Strategies go far beyond TCO calculations, expressions of love and server consolidation on mainframes. Linux now runs across all of IBM's eServer lines. Yet it's still a special order on desktops and laptops. Two big questions there:
Research. Given the size of the Linux Phenomenon, and the degree to which has happened as a result of the demand side supplying itself, there is an Xtreme paucity of good information about any of it. "Market shares" and "server shipments" are fun and interesting, but tell an incomplete story. Customers of all sizes could use some good information about how, where and why Linux is succeeding -- and not just in terms of who is selling and shipping stuff. There's too much about Linux, LAMP and open source deployment that can't be described in those vendor-centric terms. What's it going to take to provide that information? Who's going to step up and provide it? Whatever the answer, the market opportunity is there.