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.

Re:The Drawback of Linux acceptance

[Benley]

... or imagine what could happen if all of a sudden a large wave of 60-year-old Unix gurus were unleashed as Linux developers instead of HP-UX or Tru-64 developers.

Very Good things may happen if Hewlett Paqard keeps their OS fellows around and turns them towards the new unified OS front.

HP+Compaq prime competitor is IBM

[S. Allen]

And IBM is already committed to Linux. So HP either chooses Linux to gain an equal footing or foolishly pursues it's own massive matrix of proprietary hardware/os offerings. Like the article says: "If HP continues to place equal emphasis on the various operating systems, it will likely survive. But HP could have difficulty growing in the high-end server market and in services. Fiorina's job could become one of managing decline rather than leading growth."

Services will not pull them out of this one and training a new/larger field service group in a plethora of new technologies will not be cheap. My money says they will not succeed. Only a simplification and rationalization of offerings will. Linux looks like an excellent choice as it is beginning to make a buzz in boardrooms.

But will it really?

[Wister285]

I think that this merger will obviously cause some downsizing of OSes but this will have bad side effects. One, it could hurt corperate culture and cause alot of internal stability problems. No good programmer is going to want to give up his or her job and baby (their flavor of UNIX). It will cause them to leave or cause competing UNIXes within HP (everyone remember at Apple - Mac people had buttons "we are the future" and the Apple people had "we are the cash"). This is obviously a great risk that came with aquiring Compaq.

Second, the decentralized nature of Linux posses a problem for big wigs in the mega companies today. Beside HP, who just made their "distro," who is behind Linux besides all of the individuals? Where is their ticker symbol? I do realize that HP made HPUX, but was its success really that great? I'm all for Linux, but are most people on the board of directors going to prefer an OS which they can fallback on (like Microsoft), or one which has a rebellious "nature" and following.

Granted, Linux is nice and all, and it will get a boost from this merger, but I'm not sure that it will quite get the boost that this article is talking about. I just can't think of any more points right now. :-)

It would be quite an admission...

[s390]

of defeat for these two large proprietary-Unix vendors. Not that I think they'll ever do this, but it sounds like a good idea to me. A very good idea.

For decades, proprietary-Unix vendors sold awkward, mutually incompatible versions of the OS on the premise that this somehow "differentiated" their products and "locked-in" their customers. All this really accomplished was waste lots of money on software development and maintenance - money that could have been better spent on basic hardware R&D and product development. Maybe they'll learn and embrace the commodity open-source OS concept, but I'm not holding my breath.

HP and Compaq are in for a rough ride (and the stock market has figured this out - HP's down about 20%). Since they've given up designing their own processor architectures, they're destined to become garden variety Intel box-makers. And Dell's got them beat at this. Moving to Linux might help.

HP/UX = yes, Linux = No.

[standards]

Hahahaha. Why would HP abandon HP/UX?

Certainly I can understand why Compaq's Unix (aka Tru64, Ultrix, OSF1, DigitalUnix) would be KILLED. After all, Digital never let it grow to be a competitor with VMS. The market was never really developed.

HP/UX isn't the most popular Unix, but it is popular and mature and has it's following.

So there is no need to "rectify" HP/UX with Compaq's UNIX, other than to kill Compaq's efforts.

Killing HP/UX would just help Linux succeed, and HP has no financial reason to be interested in that.

After all, HP doesn't want to get out of the lucrative HP/UX hardware business, and supporting Linux will just convince people to go with lower-cost hardware.

Business Week should only publish stuff written by people with a clue.

Re:HP+Compaq prime competitor is IBM

[rfreynol]

'Services' does not equal 'field service'.

Field Service fixes stuff. 'Services' = consulting, as in $300 per hour Sys admins, DBA's, and Project managers.

Plus, if anyone thinks that Linux is better than Tru64, they are smoking crack. Tru64 is what Linux should strive to be. HP/Compaq will continue to support both HP-UX and Tru64, as long as there are Tru64/Alpha boxes out there. But don't expect to see any new hardware based on the Alpha and running Tru64. In 18 months, we will be snapping up those on eBay

Why not get rid of the WHOLE wintel bed thing?

[tcc]

How about having balls and develop and MARKET a true 64 bits processor, I.e. the alpha!?

Compaq had all the ammos to fight intel and microsoft... but they didn't have the balls.

I guess HP won't do it neither since they're in bed with Intel.

The only thing that pisses me off is to see money winning again over technology, Intel's release in a year from now will be what alpha would have been a YEAR ago if it would have kept the same pace than pre-compaq. Intel really doesn't deserve ANY credits for "innovation". Maybe in 4 years from now they'll "innovate" enough to catch up with the theorical bar that alpha would have been at in the same timeframe, then again, not without stealing some alpha technology. (I mean.. licensing probably for peanuts, as we know compaq).

I remember when they had a speech with Digital Domain (special effects house) people at the Alpha Workstation launch party 2 years ago, they were claiming all the speed performance this and that, BUT NEVER would compare it to an Intel workstation (everybody knew it was HEAPLOAD faster with native apps and relatively equal speed with FX32 recompiling). They NEVER DARED touching intel's marketshare.

Anyways, no more compaq. That name brought shame and destruction to another "amiga" platform, a platform that was too much in advance for it's time, and will be copied and ripped to death for some years to come.

Re:In the long run all commercial *nixes gone?

[omega9]

Actually, it would seem it's the other way around.

I was just browsing through a new HP-UX 11i guide, looking at info about CIFS/9000 [hp.com] which is based in large part on Samba [samba.org]. Since it's based on open-source software CIFS/9000 is free to download [hp.com], but note that it only runs on HP-UX 11.x.

And that seems to be a good system for them: Develop tools based off the work of open-source projects (so the ground work is already done for you), but tailor them to only run on HP-UX. That way re-releasing the new tools for free doesn't hurt you, because the only way for someone to use them is if they are a paying HP-UX customer.

They've got the best of both worlds. The grunt work and benifits of open-source developers, AND they get to keep charging huge ammounts of money for the OS.

Re:Monopoly Issues

[foonf]

If antagonism of microsoft was the only goal of the linux community then macintoshes would have done the job. Well until Gates got his hands in it anyway.

Ahh those silly mac zealots. Of course Gates' hand was in it all along. Microsoft was the first software company to support the Mac, and it was the birthplace of Excel and Office.

Re:Sounds good but....

[RandomPeon]

What happens if you are a customer who was sold a system with one of those "other" operating systems. You'd scream bloody murder if the OS running your systems was going to be trashed in favor of something else.
If that happens you can be sure that Microsoft is going to try and sweep in to pick through the carnage...

I don't think the BizWeek guy is suggesting they drop support for their Unices tommorrow. (BizWeek cheering on Linux??? What is this world coming to?)

They're all Unix flavors, all conforming to POSIX to some degree or another. If your inhouse developers followed the POSIX standard closely, (which they should have, as that gives you the flexibility to switch unix flavors), tranistioning to Linux is an order of magnitude easier than switching to NT/2K. And training an HPUX staff to use Linux is substantially easier than teaching them the MS way. Running to Microsoft would be even more difficult.

Re:consequences? I can think of a few

[connorbd]

You make all this sound like it's somehow a bad thing...

Actually, I like some of those ideas, since I'm a bit of a retrocomputing enthusiast myself. And an ELKS port to the PDP-11 is probably doable, especially with those ancient DEC techies kicking around.

Porting ITS to modern hardware, though... go look through the ITS tech reference. I thought of doing it to learn a little about OS hacking. It frightened me.

/Brian

Re:consequences? I can think of a few

[rnturn]

``TECO debs and rpms are made (if this has already happened, I don't want to know).''

Well not yet. But there are versions of TECO written in C. Any bets on whether I could get it to run under Linux in my copious spare time? Would RPMs by Christmas do?

``Somebody writes a kernel module to accept input (through serial I'd guess, not that I'm advocating this) from handmade front panel switches...''

This'd mean I could actually find something neat to do with the PDP/8 and 11/70 front panels I have down in the basement!

``Two words: PDP port. (tech sidenote: yeah yeah, I know)''

Sort of like getting back to one's roots, eh?

``Termcap gets an entry for "asr33".''

I've seen this already (on a SVR4.2 for the PC and, if memory serves, on Coherent) but not on a Linux box.

``The man page for ed(1) gets updated.''

You mean people are still making tweaks to ed?

Deal would be great for Microsoft

[Brett Glass]

HP has been able to be somewhat independent of Microsoft because it sold many things -- printers, instruments, etc -- that were not dependent upon Windows. If it absorbs Compaq -- the vast majority of whose revenues rely upon Windows PCs -- this will change. The merged company will be much more dependent upon Microsoft than HP was before. Microsoft will own the combined company.

As for Linux dominating the *NIX world? Perish the thought. We do not need a monoculture; that's one of the biggest problems with Windows.

--Brett Glass