VARBusiness: The Once And Future Linux

“As Comdex winds down in Las Vegas, it’s time to come to grips
with one obvious reality. The real fun this year was not at either
of the two convention centers, which housed Comdex proper, but
instead was tucked into the first floor of the Las Vegas Hilton at
the Linux Business Expo. Who cares that the Expo got second billing
behind the mammoth trade show. Or that its exhibitors numbered only
a fraction of its host’s. It achieved something Comdex proper did
not. Buzz. And lots of it.”

“Linux pator Linus Torvalds emerged as the star of the keynote
lineup. His visage appeared on Vegas cable and convention TV more
frequently than Leonid Breshnev at the height of the Cold War.
Torvalds, with his laid-back, unassuming style, was the darling of
convention interviewers. And the buzz did not stop with Linus.
Caldera Systems Inc.’s CEO Ransom Love also made the rounds,
offering a corporate point of view on techy talk shows.”

“For people like Tony Baines, corporate evangelist for the
Santa Cruz Operation Inc. (SCO), long-time purveyor of Unix
systems, it was all great fun. But when the week was over, it was
time to get back to business. The high profile Linux now enjoys, he
postulated, is just the fall-out of a year’s worth of media focus
on Microsoft’s woes with the Justice Department and Judge Jackson’s
recent finding of facts. Although Linux may be new, he says,
“the concept of collaborative development and shared code is not.
It has been a ubiquitous feature in the UNIX industry from the
beginning. And that, of course, is a whole 20 year
involvement.”

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