Re: Debian is not welcome on Microsoft Azure
Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob@debian.org> writes:
> I found it very disappointing that I had to defend Debian against Ubuntu
> which is stealing our audience by somehow arranging more favourable hosting
> conditions on Azure. I'm not talking about availability of OS images.
> According to "Information for Non-Endorsed Distributions" [1]
> "The Azure platform SLA applies to virtual machines running the Linux OS
> only when one of the endorsed distributions [2] is used".
> So naturally my client is concerned that by choosing Debian they won't have
> benefits of SLA like they would have if they choose Ubuntu because the latter
> is "endorsed".
I suspect you're attributing to malice what's probably due to other
causes. My bet is that their "endorsed" list is the stuff that either
they've actually tested or that their "partners" are testing in some
formal way, and they're not going to test every Linux distribution, and
they don't guarantee that the ones they haven't tested will work.
This is sadly very typical of any sort of vendor support. I see this all
the time for complex software stacks with support contracts (you can only
ask them for support if you run it all on some OS that they "support") or
for anything that requires hardware support or drivers. It's basically
universal in the world of proprietary software.
It's possible, I suppose, that money has changed hands to get Microsoft to
endorse Ubuntu, but I think it's equally likely that they just looked at
the "enterprise" Linux space to see what the most popular distributions
commercial are, and then some other companies reached out to them to see
what was involved in getting on the list.
Note that one thing in common with all of the supported distributions is
that there is a company behind it. (CentOS is on there only because
OpenLogic put themselves on the hook for it.) Debian is notoriously hard
for companies to actually contact because we don't actually exist as a
formal organization, and there isn't a strategic partnerships coordinator
who is calling their counterpart at Microsoft and chatting about things
like this. I suspect all of those companies have at least one employee
whose job it is to set up things like this. It's possible we're not there
just because we haven't asked in that sort of a way, or don't sufficiently
exist to be able to ask in the way that they would expect.
> Maybe someone could draft a press release to draw attention to the
> problem, if we should be concerned?
I think it would be tricky to draft a press release that didn't make us
sound faintly silly. They don't list Arch or Gentoo or quite a few other
distributions either; it's not like they're singling out Debian in
particular. They don't list any community-maintained distributions, only
ones with companies behind them.
This sort of limited support list (however constructed, possibly via
business deals with money involved) is pretty much universal in the
industry. If, like me, you're not a big fan of capitalism in general,
you're probably not a big fan of this manifestation of it, but it's
certainly not illegal and, by capitalism rules, not unethical.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: