Linux is booming, but unpaid adoption may hurt vendors

[Daniel ~]

Written by Daniel
Wednesday, 19 August 2009

Even as the recession continues to cool CIO appetites for software purchases, Linux is bucking the trend, according to a new IDC report.

August 19, 2009 4:27 AM PDT
by Matt Asay

IDC is projecting Linux revenue to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 16.9 percent from 2008 to 2013, topping $1.2 billion in 2013.

As IDC notes, this growth will comprise just 4 percent of total software market revenue by 2013, up from 2.2 percent in 2008. However, for the second time, IDC has also examined nonpaid deployments of Linux, revealing some troubling data.

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[ccperf721p]

I'm still trying to figure this article out. RedHat sells support and updates for free software it packages and sticks some copyrighted logos in, not the actual software. The software will always be free, unless RH is trying to change that.

[Gizmo]

I'm with CCPerf here; I'm a little lost as to what the argument is.

RedHat isn't in the business of selling Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). RedHat is in the business of selling service and support for RHEL.

Now, there might be (probably are) companies that are running 5 copies of RHEL when they only have one server support contract, and any time they have a problem, they use the same contract number for all 5 of their servers, but that doesn't make the copies of RHEL illegal; it only puts them in violation of the terms of their support agreement.

Indeed, the fact that CentOS exists at all (CentOS is compiled from the same sources as RHEL, and in fact IS RHEL, just without the RedHat branding) would seem to prove that there's no such thing as an illegal copy of RHEL.

[ccperf721p]

Then there is the segment: "They spend 100 million a year developing linux (doubt this accurate) and they make over 300 million a year. Poor RedHat, hope they survive... I spend 60 -70 K a year developing my business, I make about 50K each year before taxes..

[MightyMar22]

CC, shouldn't you be bankrupt then? those are not good ratios.

[ccperf721p]

I should have said I make ~110K, but the 50K is what I actually get in my pocket before the gov get's theirs. It was quite a bit less when I had an employee or 2. Still haven't figured out how I make more money by myself, than I did with 2 employees..

[dsio]

Another slice of RH's pie is the training. They actually do it better than 95% of vendors out there, resulting in vastly superior in house support staff on RH software than most others, (try comparing an RHCE to an MCSE for an example).