[clug] Has Ubuntu resulted in a decline of Linux distribution innovation

Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net
Sun Jun 21 13:13:59 GMT 2009


Paul Wayper <paulway at mabula.net> writes:
> On 21/06/09 18:51, Daniel Pittman wrote:
>> Paul Wayper<paulway at mabula.net>  writes:
>
>>> Really, the choice is actually much simpler: do we let one or two big
>>> distributions dictate how our operating system / GUI / mabulator works, or
>>> do we let the open market work?
>>
>> It seems to me that you are drawing a false dichotomy here: you would need to
>> prove that having one or two big distributions[1] is somehow a failure of the
>> open market.
>
> OK, maybe I didn't draw my analogy so well.
>
> If the choice is between allowing lots of different operating system, or
> letting Microsoft and Apple tell us how things are going to work and what we
> can and cannot do, then I'll go with the former even if it means lots of
> wasted effort and arguments.

Yeah, that works for me: I fully support that argument.  (I also suspected it
was what you meant, but it really wasn't clear. :)

> I've had people argue that Canonical and Google are just as 'oppressive' as
> Microsoft, although the various interlocutors that have attempted this
> argument with me seem to cherry-pick their examples of 'oppressiveness'.

Well, they probably are: both are commercial ventures that, at the end of the
day, need to answer to shareholders and deliver enough profit that they
continue and, in the long term, grow.

[...]

>> Footnotes:
>> [1]  As opposed to the present three, or four, depending on how you count
>>       them, in the first tier, then about as many again in the second tier.
>>       Much like how IT "system" hardware vendors have fallen out, as it happens.
>
> See, 'how you count them' here is actually fairly important.  Go to LCA and
> count which distros are in use - Debian wins hands down two-to-one over
> Ubuntu (from memory, based on 2008 numbers).  Go to Germany and I've heard
> that SuSE is much more popular.  But in my opinion artificially dividing
> them up into tiers trivialises the richness and diversity of the
> Distribution ecosystem.

I don't think it does: I think it recognises a relatively arbitrary division
between the various "groups" of distributions, which works much like the same
relatively arbitrary grouping in other industries.

This doesn't make the smaller distributions less valuable, and in most cases
they are probably *more* innovative overall — since they have less of a
customer base to support, so are more free to choose differently.

[...]

> No-one's forcing you to stay with "Distro X" because of vendor lock-in or
> anti-competitive practices.

There is vendor certification on hardware or software combinations; a
non-trivial number of vendors do "force" you to, in the sense that they can
artificially raise the cost of change.

That said, I agree with the general point that this is substantially more
uncommon in the Linux world.

Regards,
        Daniel


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