Re: UserLinux white paper
On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 15:08, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 04:52:47PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > I don't deny that many businesses do have to come to their vendor on
> > bended knee to get support for a new platform. It's important, however,
> > to realize that this does indicate a problem in the customer's
> > relationship with the vendor. Either there's only one solution, or the
> > customer has allowed himself to enter a lock-in situation. The latter is
> > much more likely.
>
> Most end-customers don't bother going to their vendor on bended knee
> to get support for a new platform. That assumes that most customers
> want to run machines with a particular OS, and that's simply not true.
> Customers do not purchase operating systems/distributions; they
> purchase solutions.
This is perhaps why Bruce is focussing on the industry groups - the
consortium, which puts the needs (cost, reliability) of the customers as
a whole, first, where a single customer would not bother/ do so. Yes
solutions will be needed, and that's where the industry body, with
enough members and more importantly funds, can either negotiate with
ISVs or sponsor a developement project, whichever is most appropriate
for their members.
In some cases if it doesn't exist, creating an industry group might be
called for.
> So instead, businesses deside that they want to run SAP, or Oracle
> Financials, or Ariba, or Peoplesoft, and then they decide which
> hardware and OS they want to use that will support their desired
> application of choice. This is why traditionally computer vendors
> have to go to ISV's on bended knee. Once a customer has decided to
> adopt Peoplesoft, or Ariba, if Debian or UserLinux or SuSE is not
> supported, then those hardware/software/distribution platforms that do
> not support the chosen business application will simply be out of
> luck.
I am thinking long term that change is possible and indeed quite likely.
Could be wrong of course, but Bruce has a project in train that will
kick the ball rolling on a financial level, for at least one industry
body.
> > Group 1 is a large and complicated industry. They are major customers
> > for a number of proprietary application providers. Their business is
> > complicated enough that it is not possible for them to purchase a
> > solution, they must integrate it under the direction of their IS
> > department, using both internal and external resources. They have the
> > economic power to compel their application providers to support the
> > platform of their choice, it is the application provider who must come
> > to them upon bended knee.
>
> Why does Group 1 really care about running under Linux, as opposed to
> some other OS? Is it really about price sensitivity? If so, it's
> surprising because to the extent that they pay $50,000 for Oracle, or
> $1,000,000+ for SAP R/3, why should they care about the cost of $1500
> for the RedHat or SuSE enterprise version of the distro?
They probably don't care about the underlying OS. "The math" the Bruce
pointed out showed that the desktops at the end of this project will
have their shiny new OS at about $20 per seat. Does anyone have the
German govt. "Linux" per-desk deployment costs on hand or memory?
The point must surely be to find a group where a specific need can be
met, by delivering noticeable benefits [cost, manageability, freedom,
interoperability, stability] that that group cares about.
> > Group 2 are ISPs. They do not in general ask for much added value over
> > the Open Source contents of the system, and they are generally
> > self-supporting. They are more interested in quality and cost than ISV
> > support.
>
> To the extent that they are self-supporting, they become economically
> irrelevant to a commerical distribution or to a support provider of
> UserLinux. The best that you will get out of these customers are bug
> reports, and maybe you can get some of them to become Debian
> Developers and work on Debian packages on company time. So why don't
> they just use Debian instead?
At the low "technical" level, there won't be 'much' difference between
Debian Enterprise/ User Linux and Debian proper. They will be the same
pool of packages, the same packaging policies, etc.
The goal is to build on the Debian foundation, and integrate
improvements back into it.
We are already seeing the FAI/knoppix/debix "live" cd distributions now
in the process of merging back into Debian. It might take two years to
finish every last step (famous last words), but the point is there's no
conflict here...
> I will also note that ISP's are generally not generally regarded as
> "enterprise" customers. So perhaps you are using a somewhat different
> definition of "enterprise" than what is traditionally used.
Whatever the differnces, where there is overlap it makes sense to work
together on common technical (and organisational) goals.
> > So, our problem is how to rebalance the vendor-customer relationship for
> > our purposes. Probably the most useful tool is the industry group
> > organization, where a number of similar businesses get together to steer
> > their participation in userlinux, and the group involves their vendors
> > from a position of strength, together, rather than one of weakness,
> > apart. Customer group 1 is confident that this will work for them.
>
> Business who get together can also negotiate better discounts from
> today's distribution vendors. It's already the case that very few
> people actually pay list price for commercial distributions....
Debian principles - our users, and free software.
Debian Enterprise - leveraging the purchase/ development power of
for-profit organisations to build, within Debian an "enterprise"
structure, to further the needs of this userbase. These are users who
will bring value to Debian in various ways.
The "Enterprise" users/ clients - cost-sharing, leverage, high quality,
strong security, most community-oriented (publicity, image), maximum
affordability (through truly Free Software (no per-seat crap) we
engender a truly Free Market Software economy! (I think this last point
is absolutely critical here and will prove to play out in the long run
wrt Debian Enterprise/ User Linux.
regards
zen
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