David Berlind: “In a way that seemingly minor conflicts around the world can erupt into flash points between superpowers, the bottom line is that if a consolidation wave sweeps through the industry in 2006, it’s this acquisition of JBOSS that will have sparked it.”
Yikes, pretty scary stuff. The race is on to be the best, full-featured software deployment platform from A to Z. According to the article, software companies must consolidate in order to be competitive, but how much is too much? Moreover, there are two points that I find interesting.
Initially, the article talks about Red Hat making an acquisition. Some point to the fact that the ability of an Open Source company is in a postion to make a multi-million dollar acquistion as a huge accomplishment for the Open Source community. However, if the author is correct, there is little hope for GNU/Linux companies to survive in the for-profit arena; the author speaks of “logical” acquisitions of Novell or Red Hat by Sun, IBM, or Oracle as a means of survival. So what does this say about GNU/Linux or Open Source software in general? The “Big Dogs”, so to speak, are still the proprietary, Closed Source companies. If the author is indeed correct, then GNU/Linux is nothing more than a deployment vehicle for the proprietary goods of the aforementioned companies; buy from IBM, get everything you need (a certified GNU/Linux desktop is just one small piece).
Secondly, what does this mean for Ubuntu’s push into the corporate market? Dapper has been delayed to work out a few wrinkles, but the thrust of this article is that having a slick, easy to use desktop is not enough. Corporate solutions are quickly taking the form of “vertical monopolies”, with each company providing every piece to the puzzle. Mark Shuttleworth is investing a lot of time and money into a tiny piece of the puzzle; clearly not the direction the article states the corporate solutions are headed. At best, I suppose, Ubuntu can only hope to be acquired by another company with far reaching goals, because it is the big picture that produces profit; at least the author would have us believe as much.
It is no wonder why Bruce Perens recently said in a “Linux Format” interview that, “I don’ believe that Linux distributions are a natural fit in for-profit enterprise.”