HP+Compaq Deal Could be Great for Linux

elliotj writes "This Business Week editorial is arguing that the HP purchase of Compaq could mean big things for Linux as the resulting monolith is forced to rationalize their multitude of operating systems. The most sensible solution may well be for them to abandon HPUX, Tru64 et al and embrace Linux as the one-and-only *nix OS. Interesting thing about the article is that it comes from Business Week...not exactly a traditional penguin cheerleader." Ah, but soon, thanks to Yet Another Corporate Merger, we'll have another defunt company icon in the topics field.

Company Icon

[Gameshow Bob]

And you STILL don't have an HP icon. Actually, the official strategy from HP, at least before all of this merger business, is the "Three OS Strategy" Windows, HP-UX, Linux. HP-UX at some point is going to be binary compatible with Linux and be the HP Big Iron version of "Linux"

I'm a capitalist bastard.

[piecewise]

"Yet another corporate merger." I'm not insuating that remark was made in this way -- but so many people say that phrase with a sense of bitterness, and I just don't get it. It's the nature of the markets. Companies merge, so what?

Often people get layed off -- but if the companies don't merge, trust me, MORE people could get layed off (clearly in this case.. Compaq's been in BIG trouble for some time)

Call me a Capitalist Pig, but this is the way it goes, and it's not so horrible. I don't like Compaq, I don't like HP much... but I'm not cursing them because they're merging -- it's best for the market, and could turn out pretty good.

It's funny that (especially those from the 60's) despise corporations, and somehow fail to realize corporations provide us with jobs, health coverage, a place in which to feel pride, et cetera. Companies aren't evil.

If you want something to bitch about, bitch about the 50% divorce rates. Now THERE are some "comporate mergers / layoffs" in itself.

My ranting is done. :-)

The right tool for the right job.

[jellomizer]

Dont get me wrong I have been using Linux for about 8 Years now and I like working with. But I also like working with Unix systems (Solaris, *BSD, etc). And I found that every OS has its atvantages and Disatvantages. And I dont think Hpaq will do a big switch to all Linux any time soon. Although it would be great if they use Linux for the systems that Linux is good, for Low-Mid size servers (1-2 Processors) where the server is set up and let it do its job. But I found the Triditional Unixes and even the old VMS has its place as well in today market and I dont see them dieing out anytime soon (Mabey VMS). Those Evil Closed sourse Unix Systems (Some with over 20 years of development on them) are better tuned to do their jobs on their own systems. Linux by contrasted is developed to work more like a leathermen tool of the OS. (Windows is like a cheap pockit knife). Although they are greate for most taskes there are time that you need to get a real screwdriver or pliers to get the job done. I found the Unix systems Open or Closed source work very well. And True64 and HPUX still have their place. They do the serving on the higher scailable systems that Linux dosent handle as well plus I found that the latest versions of the UNIX's are more stable then Linux is. Mostly because they are designed around a fixed archecture, While linux and windows tries to run on it all.

HP not far behind IBM

[Pinball Wizard]

...abandon HPUX, Tru64 et al and embrace Linux as the one-and-only *nix OS.

And supposedly IBM will do this as well, along with making AIX "100% Linux compatible". Trouble is, I've been hearing this for years - and AIX still ships without a C compiler and behaves erratically when you try to install GCC, Perl, etc from anything other than pre-compiled binaries. And where is SMIT for Linux? I'm having a hard time finding evidence of IBM's billion dollar commitment.

It would be a great move for all these companies to get behind Linux - maybe Sun will go the same way if it finally happens. It would be awfully nice to use the same tools to admin RS/6000s as you do to HP or Sun servers, not to mention your Intel boxes at home. Trouble is, all we've seen yet is lip service paid to Linux.

So HP, if you're listening, hopefully you won't drag your feet like IBM has. You're not that far behind, because so far IBM has done very little.

Nice idea, isn't going to happen though

[pantherace]

HP/C can't, even if they wanted to. Period. VMS and others (think tru64, and maybe hpux) have a government contract which requires them to support the systems for something like 10 years or more. Plus, many banks use VMS, and rely on Alphas. (No, geeks aren't the only ones who like them.) The problem hp-compaq-dec is going to have is that they are by contract forced to support these operating systems, whether they want to or not.

What makes anyone think Linux will be the choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

With paying customers for tru64 and HPUX, why should Hewlet ComPaqard drop those OSes for Linux?

I predict both propietary unices will continue to be maintained. But eventually they'll start to look more like each other and Linux.

Re:The Drawback of Linux acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

Posing AC because I'm a Compaq employee fearing for my job...

First of all it would mean the loss of quite a few jobs in Compaq and HP.

Even without the focus on Linux there will be plenty of job loss. Both companies have their own version of Unix. The initial announcement said that they planned to "integrate" the two systems and create one mega-Unix. Well, we all know how trivial it is to merge two completely different operating systems into one, right? In reality, they're going to pluck a few key features from one Unix and put them into the other. Then, the "losing" Unix gets thrown out on the street, along with all its developers!

Imagine that if all of a sudden a wave of 60 year old Unix guru's were put out onto the street...

Well, not 60... A few years ago they flushed out most of the old Unix developers and brought in a new group (I don't really know why). Most of the Unix people have only been around for a few years. But yes, you probably will see a wave of gurus out on the street.

True, companies aren't evil.

[dmaxwell]

However, companies are amoral. Publically traded companies are the most amoral of all. Corporations have to make short term decisions that maximize profits for their shareholders or they can be sued. If it means buying politicians, offensively using patents, indefinetly extending copyrights, balkanizing scientific disciplines with walls of IP, or polluting the environment as much as legally possible then so be it.

Public relations departments aside, corporations don't have consciences. So yes, it's true. They can employ people and fill needs but it is not pristine good with no downside whatsover. The positive things they do are not an excuse to turn a blind eye to the horrible things they often do. Their actions bear watching and sometimes correcting. And no, "the market" does not automagically bring right and light to the world. The market IS a system with some homeostasis but these mechanisms are themselves amoral with no regard for the welfare of either corporations or individuals.

Linux is just a loss leader for these guys

[ToasterTester]

Sun, Compaq, IBM, and all the rest in one article or another said for them Linux is just a tool to get people off Windows and over to some from of Unix. Then once they have customers moved to Linux they will then start to convince them now they need to move up a their commericial Unix with enterprise features and real support. So Linux is going to move people off Windows, but then same user will be moved over to Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, Tru64.

Worse than it looks

[CptnKirk]

HP, who's stock has fallen to about a third of what it was a year ago, still isn't seeing any light. It just bought Compaq for what was $25 Billion in stock. Well since then the stock price has gone from around $23/share to a little over $17/share. This now puts the deal worth at around $18.5 Billion. Still a huge amount of money, but going down rapidly. Investors are asking themselves the same questions that are being asked here. What is the new game plan? Make Linux their heart and soul? Kill off the Linux and HPUX divisions? We all know there will be major layoffs. There just isn't a lot of room for making huge profits in the desktop PC market. Even less I think they'll find in the free OS market.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Linux, Open Source and the like as much as the next guy, however if I had money in HP or Compaq I'd sure hope they'd ditch some of these projects. Right now they need to concentrate on what will bring in the most money the fastest. That's PCs with Windows, peripherals and their scientific equipment (which has huge mark-ups). Supporting Linux at this time IMHO is not the best use of their limited resources. They need to have clear goals (one, maybe two things), and strive to meet them. Being big is not enough.

And speaking of big. A lot is being said about HP now being number 2 behind IBM. As much as people might hope that this makes HP a threat, I just don't think so. IBM has remained pretty strong over this past year. It has a many diverse products, most of which are doing fairly well. With the time it takes HP to work out all the details of this merger and get to facing those goals IBM will have been going strong for another 3-6 months. In the mean time it will be able to corner the Linux desktop market (another reason for HP to bail).

And all this is fine with IBM. IBM is happy to support Linux because it's a sound strategy. Linux works like their mainframe OSs (well much more so than Windows does). IBM develops a lot of software to run on their "big iron", but people and companies are moving away from big machines and onto smaller servers and work stations. For this Linux is a sound choice for IBM. They don't have to spend a lot of money to port their OS to a PC architecure, it's more or less been done for them. Any enhancements they might make to help their Apps can be made through Open Source projects. JFS, Java devel, kernel devel have all come out of IBM. Not because they're being nice, but because it helps their database or some other high price App. run better. This is very sound business and has worked very well for them. I'm sure they'll continue to support Linux, as well as produce desktop PCs that compete with HP. However they have a much more sound business model, they have much more money, and when it's all said and done, I don't think they have much to worry about from HP's latest merger.

Re:The Drawback of Linux acceptance

[Jeff Probst]

why would any sane company drop a well developed, stable, scalable, reliable operating system like HPUX or Tru64 for a hacked together piece of shit like linux?

i mean seriously, slashdot is kidding itself if you other unix hackers will take you seriously.

at the moment i am hacking the IP stack and to be honest its a disgrace. statements such as these:
icmp_param.icmph=*icmph;
icmp_param.icmph.type=ICMP_ECHOREPLY;
icmp_param.data_ptr=(icmph+1);
icmp_param.data_len=len;
icmp_reply(&icmp_param, skb);

are insane. for fucks sake copying data around in an IP stack is retarded and is against the principles of designing a fast IP stack. look at the bsd stack if you really need a lesson.

and it will take all of IBM's $1b to fix the mess that is linux.

Re:"one and only *nix"?

[barneyfoo]

HPUX, Linux, Unix, BSD, IRIX, Solaris ... they all have their reasons, their histories, their strengths, their weaknesses, their lack of support

And their Linux kernel personalities.

Lets face it. Linux is the new unix standard. Most all Unixes are developing linux compatability (can you think of an important one that isn't?). Remember how POSIX was supposed to unite Unix-land? In the end I think it just gave companies an excuse to differentiate and proprietize while still maintaining the moniker of "Unix" or "Posix". With a free, fully functional refernce model that is skyrocketing its market share (linux), the unix manufacturers have no choice now but to be interoperable. Whether HP decides to use the real Linux refernce model (more likely on higher volume, lower cost models) or their flagship HP-UX brand of Linux(personality) is somewhat of a red herring. Linux should be the synergistic glue that brings together HP and Compaq's disperate software platforms. (which I gather was the the point of the article.)

It depends on what business they want to be in.

[Ami Ganguli]

HP wants to be in the consumer PC business, then you're probably right. They should dump all the overhead and follow Dell. But it's a tough business and Dell is a tough competitor.

If HP wants to be in the high end, high margin consulting business, then Linux makes a lot of sense. There's no point supporting Digital Unix, Tru64, and HP-UX, especially since _none_ of these offer any real competitive advantage. (Being a little faster on certain classes of hardware or having a slightly better clusting system compared to AIX/Solaris doesn't count except in very limited markets). It makes a lot more sense to improve Linux where needed and gain access to the larger Linux market.

On the other hand, while adopting Linux across the board makes a lot of sense, it still doesn't offer a real compelling reason to use HP products. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help much either.

In the end that's the real challenge for the new HP. Finding something that they really can do better than Dell and IBM. The only thing that comes immediately to mind is printers, but that's not going to support such a massive company.

Better for Linux? You Crazy?

[Kagato]

All you have to do is look at HP's comitment to OpenMail and you have a pretty grim outlook. HP has not qualms about killing a project that could be a compeditor to a MS product. I've been to the UK debelopment centre, I've talked to Unix Developers, they all see the writing on the wall. HP does not want to do anything that could upset MS. The enconomics of scale make selling 100 NT/2000 servers to do the job of one V Class HP-9000 Unix box far more profitable.