By editorial@silicon.com, 28 June 2001 18:15
COMMENT Why is there such an outcry when a small, ideologically sound company is forced to re-think its business model? After all, in the news this week have been major overhauls at larger players including Cap Gemini, Lucent and Nokia. Take another commercial open source enterprise - VA Linux. To close observers, its move into consultancy and lay-offs came as no surprise yesterday. So back to Caldera. Everyone is protesting because it is trying to make an honest buck or two out of the open source movement. It's not as if it's CEO, Ransom Love, has developed an overnight taste for fighter planes at customers' expense. He admitted earlier this week the company is "seeking long-term viability" and is "in the business of making money". In other words, this is just another day in IT. And while we often admire the open source model, let us not forget: the king of the duck pond, Linus Torvalds, bought a new BMW sports car last year. He is not personally against money. In fact, he recently admitted to silicon.com he quite likes it. What he does dislike is curbing innovation and entrepreneurship. Which is the exact opposite of what Caldera is trying to do. So are these efforts to make Linux more viable for the enterprise such a crime? As long as Torvalds' brainchild, the Linux kernel, is kept available for techies to work with and there are no breaches of any GPL (that's general public licence, for the non-open source aficionados) rules, it can only signify another milestone in the long journey to challenging the Redmond supremos. For silicon.com's detailed coverage of all things Linux, see the Linux week special: http://www.silicon.com/linusweek
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