Is the conventional Linux support business model of obtaining ongoing support direct from a particular Linux distribution vendor too constraining? Strategic consulting firm Oliver Wyman has an interesting report up on the More Interoperability web site (http://moreinterop.com/Resources.aspx).

The June 2010 report consolidates viewpoints from interviews with enterprise IT execs and concludes many of them feel “they do not have recourse when they do not get the quality of support they require, since the conventional option has been to rely on the distribution vendor for support. IT Executives also expressed concerns in their ability to integrate their Linux environment with other parts of their server architecture, either with their Windows servers or across multiple Linux distributions where there was a mixed Linux environment.”

It looks into the decision-making of those who have opted for Novell ESS to support SUSE and/or Red Hat Enterprise Server and those who have opted not to divorced the support relationship from their original distribution platform vendor.

Anybody here prefer third-party support rather than direct from the Linux vendor you came to the dance with?

Anything that touts the Novell/Microsoft hookup is suspect in my view.

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Thanks for responding. Would you mind expanding on that thought? Is there something in particular that prompted that response, or just a general unease with the Novell/Microsoft relationship?

[About me: tinyurl.com/petebart]

Firstly, that's very simplistic - most large organisations have their own, internal, *nix support engineers. They would only go to Red Hat for problems that cannot be fixed locally. In much the same way that large companies have a route into Microsoft. So really, all RH is doing is using a similar model that has been seen to work for MS.

That link, by the way, is terrible. Firstly, we have to look through a list of articles to find the one you are discussing. Secondly, who puts articles online as PDFs in 2010? Have moreinterop never heard of people who read articles online? And thirdly, you didn't declare your interest - it seems that (according to your PDF bio) you blog for moreinterop. Not that that final point invalidates your post, but it's good to be upfront on these things.

Essentially Novell signed an agreement with Microsoft holding each other harmless for possible intellectual property issues relating to Linux. I didn't like it because it presumes that MS would have any basis for saying their intellectual property is violated by Linux. The agreement's existence lends credibility to the idea when IMHO there is none. In fact it is more likely MS has pirated Linux code in my view but of course I have no way to prove that since MS is closed source. I have heard anecdotes suggesting that the early MS TCP/IP stuff was actually outputting messages showing it came from the GNU stuff.

In the "Help/About" for MS TCP/IP they credit the BSD team.

...now.

One wonders if they did that before someone realized from whence it came. As I said what I heard was an anecdote so it could be completely false for all I know.

IIRC, I first saw that on Windows for Workgroups 3.11 or Win 95. There has never been an issue with MS using BSD stuff - the BSD licence explicitly allows anyone to take their code and do whatever you want with it without giving back. It is very very liberal.

Interesting write-up on use of BSD TCP/IP here:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displays.../19/05641/7357

It is. It doesn't necessarily debunk the "BSD code in Windows" idea, but it does make it clear that (as I said) it was used openly and legally. Microsoft do so many bad things that this is not something to waste any ire over

No ire on my part. If I allowed myself to get angry over what I view as M$ bad ethics and outright flouting of laws I'd have died of apoplexy long ago.

Actually, I think that's one of the good things about them - they do provide credit where they should. Mainly, I guess, because it's easier to just put the few extra characters in place than to get the legal team revved up to do some work

And the "ire" bit was a general one - I don't have the impression that you are particularly wound up about this.