“…despite the frenzy, capped by Red Hat’s successful initial
public offering last week, Linux aficionados said its success will
not cause it to splinter into proprietary versions as Unix
did.”
” ‘The most important thing that the commercial vendors must
remember is that they don’t own Linux, we [the community] do, said
Jon [‘mad dog’] Hall, executive director of Linux
International…”
“If any segment of the industry stands to benefit from Linux
balkanization, it is the hardware vendors, said Rob Enderle,
analyst at… Giga Information Group. Computer makers have the
biggest interest in co-opting Linux for proprietary purposes, he
said.”
“Marco Scibora, president of Advanced Communication Design Inc.
(ACD), an IBM reseller in Minneapolis, said, ‘I don’t think the
argument of increasing fragmentation will hold water.’ The
Linux kernel is open and is the same in all vendor offerings, so
unique versions only affect the periphery, he said. ‘At the
core, where it matters, there will be no difference.’ “