OSNews

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E4D81339F93BA157...

By AMY HARMON
Published: September 28, 1998

Submissions to Linux's core code, or kernel, are subjected to instantaneous electronic peer review, a technological meritocracy that has so far insulated Linux from the kind of fragmentation that has befallen other operating systems built around the international Unix standard.

Despite the operating system's reputation for power and reliability, corporations have been reluctant to use Linux because nobody owns it. That is why the emergence of companies like Red Hat and Caldera Systems Inc. -- a Linux distributor with a business plan based on corporate training, services and support -- is considered crucial to the success of the free operating system.

Now, bolstered by commitments from companies like Oracle, Netscape, Intel, Informix and Corel, all of whom have announced plans to support Linux in recent months, Red Hat and Caldera are getting more aggressive.

But their business plans are fragile. For instance, since Red Hat wants whatever code it writes to become part of the Linux kernel, it must be published under open-source rules. That means that www.cheapbytes.com can, and does, sell Red Hat's entire Linux package for $1.99 -- $48.01 less than Red Hat's customers pay.

Red Hat's Mr. Young estimates that as few as 1 in 10 of the people who use Red Hat have paid him for it. But that is one of the paradoxical pillars of charging only for support and services, not for intellectual property.

''My job is not to compete with Microsoft,'' Mr. Young stresses. ''It's to lower the value of the operating system market. Microsoft makes $5 billion in operating system sales. If I get that market, I automatically make it a $500 million market.''

Skeptics are quick to note that the technology companies lining up behind Linux, with its estimated seven million users, have their own competitive reasons to oppose Microsoft, which has 300 million users for its Windows operating systems.

What is more, the skeptics point out, no one knows how long Linux's labor-of-love development by programmers will last.

''An operating system is a living thing,'' said Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and a co-author of ''Information Rules,'' a book to be published this week by the Harvard Business School Press. ''Ongoing investment and upgrades are essential to attract customers. Nice cooperative thoughts are not enough.''

Still, use of Linux is growing by more than 40 percent a year, according to IDC, a research firm. And a 1997 survey by another research firm, Datapro, found that Linux scored higher with users than any other operating system. Dell Computer, which last year began offering Linux to customers who ordered at least 50 computers a quarter, said that more interest had been expressed in Linux in recent months.

James Love, director of Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology, which has encouraged the Justice Department to investigate Microsoft's Windows licensing deals with computer manufacturers, said his office had found it impossible to buy Linux already installed on a PC from a major commercial vendor. But he managed to install it on his own computer, and he was impressed.

''This is the first time we've seen an industrial-strength product developed without a corporation behind it, and we think it's amazing'' Mr. Love said. ''If the operating system is in fact a natural monopoly, then what could be better than having an operating system that nobody owns?''

No one argues that Linux poses a threat to Microsoft right now. But at a time when the next version of Windows NT appears indefinitely delayed by a complexity that has grown unmanageable, Linux enthusiasts are beginning to find back-door ways to introduce the operating system into their corporations.

For example, when Randy Kessel, a manager for technical analysis for Southwestern Bell, part of SBC Communications, installed Red Hat's Linux on the 36 desktop personal computers that monitor network operations in Kansas and Missouri, it was done on something of a dare.