The Fragmentation of Linux: Two Points of View

“The fragmentation of Linux has become a hot topic in recent
weeks as industry leaders debate how the community can collaborate
to compete against single, vertical operating systems without
creating an ecosystem that pulls the community in too many
directions at once to be truly effective. As FOSS developers work
at a fever pitch to create Linux-based OSes, handheld devices,
enterprise-level servers, and mobile phones, the point at which
they join forces can make the difference between getting a leg up
on other operating systems and lagging behind.

“Canonical COO Matt Asay says Linux has the opportunity to beat
Apple’s iPhone as long as developers don’t stretch themselves too
thin working on various iterations of the mobile platform.

“”The mobile Linux market has always had more
variants/distributions than sense, ranging from Google Android to
LiMo to Moblin (now MeeGo) to Bada to WebOS to…you name it. […]
Meanwhile, Intel and Nokia have fused together their Moblin and
Maemo projects under the MeeGo brand, while Samsung backs Bada and
Google stands atop the heap with Android.

“”To beat Apple, the industry needs to collaborate, even as it
has done in servers to fix the Unix mess and meet the growing
Microsoft Windows threat.”

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