Re:``Why?'' That's the question I'm asking. (Score 1)

I believe the why can be answered by two words "market dominance". The software side of the Linux/OSS phenomenon is pretty much ambiguous from a business perspective. If you are going to give the code away for free, and people are generally able to build upon or cut/paste from your work, how do you really make money. The answer is services, support, and hardware. One problem that existed during the first iteration of *NIX was that the hardware vendors decided to make their own proprietary distributions to support the things they wanted to do with hardware. That's why you have Solaris, AIX, IRIX, etc.. They all evolved from the original BSD and System V architectures. That was back when proprietary and closed was a good thing; funny how they've changed their tunes isn't it? Anyway, VA isn't looking to do their own distro, besides tweaking a RH distro to ship with their systems. RH pretty much has the business market at this point in the game. Although it isn't true, a lot of suits think that RH is Linux, and they've got the support of many industry bigwigs. So VA is going after hardware, services, and I'm sure it won't be long before you see them start to gobble up, or create, support. They've got support for their own stuff but I'm talking about a large scale, more inclusive effort. Long story short, when someone, especially a business person, thinks 'Linux' VA wants that thought to be 'VA Linux'. The arguements purporting the demise of Linux as we now know it are partially true, in my opinion. Granted, OSS will exist and develop. Linux will exist as an open, free, OS in various flavors. But, if the momentum continues, the realities of the business world will be increasingly evident. More big players will offer Linux apps, most will NOT be OSS. They will be less expensive than traditional *NIX apps, but I think that will be an industry wide trend. The vary nature of commercial businesses and the people who run them dictates that accountability, service, and support must exist from the software that they build the business on. Therefore, more and more companies will pop up that provide these services for OSS software; software that was designed and developed largely for free. Sooner or later, all but the hardcore will become disenchanted at seeing others make money off of their hobbies. Of course, they could go into business for themselves but then they too become part of the establishment and must change to adapt to their new environment. I would like to think that a simple computer operating system could revolutionize business practices and economic models as they have been known for thousands of years but, sadly, I don't think that we as a society and evolving creature are there quite yet. But I'll keep my fingers crossed ... X