Open-Source Unix in Business

Managers who are not themselves Unix hackers would probably distrust a freeware version of Unix upon first blush. Free software is a revolutionary concept in many respects, and when you're responsible for a departmental budget or for the MIS department of a company, a number of questions come up in connection with using a freeware or ``open-source'' product.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with the price, if it's for real, which it is. But certain accoutrements appear to be missing, such as technical support and a single company or human being whom you can hold accountable if something doesn't work out as promised. When you first implement something like Linux or FreeBSD into your organization, you might feel like Robinson Caruso all alone on an island. But don't worry, because these are the days in which free software is blossoming.

Is There Tech Support?

Yes, but you have to purchase it separately. Since Linux vendors don't make much money off the copyright of Linux itself, they are paid for the distributions they design and collect on CD-ROM and sell for $50 or so. Where they stand to make some money is selling the special programs they write themselves or sell the licenses for, and for selling technical support. Red Hat Software, for example, sells TriTeal Common Desktop Environment, the Applixware Office Suite, and Red Hat Motif libraries, in addition to their Linux distribution. They also sell a commercial technical support arrangement. In addition to Red Hat Software, Caldera Inc. also sells commercial support contracts. These are a realistic alternative to companies seeking a full commercial package for their enterprise.

In addition to commercial support contracts, managers can also look at hiring highly experienced consultants, who are increasingly abundant. Being a Unix variant, anyone experienced with other Unix flavors will feel mostly at home with Linux or one of the Free BSDs. If your MIS department has already implemented Unix solutions companywide, your budget will be glad you looked into open-source software.

Is It Good?

I can say without reservation that Linux, for example, is excellent on both the desktop and the backroom servers. (I only know the BSDs anecdotally from other network administrators, so I'll speak about Linux here.) First of all, Linux retains all the stability of Unix. Uptimes traditionally are measured in months or years rather than in hours or days, as they often are with Windows. The robust Linux kernel does full premptive multitasking. Normally, no single application can brainfart and freeze the whole system as they can under Windows. Also, since vital system processes and resources are protected by ownership permissions, you won't be dealing with basic security problems like virii and runaway virtual device drivers. Because of these features and others like them, Linux requires normally less support day to day than Windows. Once you get Linux installed, it normally just runs and does its job.

But What About Complexity and Applications?

Linux sometimes gets criticized for its apparent dearth of desktop applications and for its complexity for the new user.

I tend to minimize the complexity argument because inexperienced users also find Windows difficult. And because Windows is more fragile, these users must often contact technical support to fix their problems more often than they would under a well-designed Unix environment. Further, learning Windows may be easier than learning Unix, but running Unix after you've learned it is easier than running Windows. That's because you can only do with a GUI those things for which a button or menu item is specifically designed. But with a command line interface, you can access all utilities and resources; oftentimes, you can do the work of dozen mouse clicks with a single command line. But, you have to learn Unix. So, I consider the complexity argument a wash. For inexperienced users, you can configure their X Windows desktop with what they need, and most of the time they stay out of trouble just fine.

Desktop applications can be a different matter. It depends on how committed you are to doing things in the way you're used to doing them. If you can think of ``solutions'' rather than ``applications,'' you'll probably have an easier time integrating Unix into your environment. For example, even though word processors and desktop publishing systems are available under Unix, text processing solutions like LaTeX and SGML applications are more commonplace. Solutions often look different under Unix than Windows.

For example, if you want to run a fax server, there are numerous commandline-type applications that run beautifully in a terminal window. They perform every bit as well or better than their pretty Windows equivalents, in most cases, but inexperienced users will probably prefer the attractive Windows applications, because the interface and its ease of use is what's important to them. At times like this, Unix admins would need to write a graphical front-end to these programs, or create a menu entry to launch these applications, or somehow insulate the inexperienced user from the command line. This is often quite easy to do. Unix administrators spend quite a bit of time doing things like this for their users, so it's possible that this won't be a big problem for you either.

Sometimes there are singular applications or protocols that there might be a problem accomodating in Unix or Linux. Microsoft operating systems, being so popular and well marketed, rely many times on proprietary protocols rather than open solutions. These can be a problem in an open-sourced Unix environment. However, even old-time Unix geezers cannot ignore Microsoft's popularity, so fixes to many of these incompatibilites are often available in a short time after they're discovered.

For example, when the Linux SMB (session management block) server had trouble authenticating NT 4.x workstations with service pak 3 applied--because passwords were now encrypted rather than cleartext after this service pak was applied--MIS managers experienced Excedrin headaches. But, soon the SAMBA sources could be compiled to read these encrypted passwords, thanks to the Samba Team and various contributors. The Linux community is famous for communicating about everything, so if one person has a problem in Duluth, a person in Copenhagen will likely have a fix within a week. It's amazing how the global Linux community cooperates so successfully this way. When you use something like Linux, you have to figure in the extra value you receive from simply being a member of this unique open-source community.

Open Source Software and the Future

Netscape's recent decision to release the source code to Navigator into the public domain demonstrates an important new trend. One of the best ways of dealing with the difficulties of a near-monopoly like Microsoft appears to be this new strategy of licensing the tools of production. If Microsoft continues to acquire control over vital computing arenas, more and more open technologies will tend to become proprietary and closed. Protecting the open nature of communication channels among developers was the foremost reason for establishing open-source licensing in the first place. With free software like apache running on more than half of the Internet's web servers, it appears that open-source software is no longer just an alternative, it's a success story in its own right. Open source software appears to be a powerful answer to the question, ``Where do you want to be tomorrow?''