Choice or Chaos? The High Cost of Linux Fragmentation
Freedom of choice is one of the great benefits of Open Source Software in general and Linux in particular. This freedom gives consumers the ability to select, without fear of litigation, what software they will use and how they will use or modify it. As a principal, this freedom is extremely valuable. However, a couple of announcements this week seem to indicate that market value of freedom of choice has dipped considerably. The biggest hurdle Linux adoption faced this week wasn't Microsoft, it was an enemy from within: Linux fragmentation.
Maybe we should clarify that. While obviously the core Linux Kernel isn't fragmented, it's community is. No one uses Linux (apologies to the two people that actually do, in advance). What they use is some flavor of Linux. And since those flavors aren't uniform in nature vendors can't predict their behavior. When Dell looks at their IdeaStorm website they probably don't see Linux users massing around a few key ideas, they see Red Hat users, SUSE users, Gentoo users, Unbuntu users, Whatever users. Maybe they see a Linux community but from Dell's point of view it's a very fragmented one and not one they can make happy on a broad basis with pre-installed Linux.
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