Off course Linux is not a viable choice for desktop (even Red Hat says so), but is it for servers ?

A few untrue perceptions (Secure, free, fast ...) about Linux and its value for the entreprise lead many people to think so. Here is my two cents :

1- Linux is secure :

• take a look at http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/
• As of  8/1/03, the vulnerabilities discovered on the various OSs for 2003 numbered as follows :

OpenBSD	8
Trustix	18
EnGarde	20
Microsoft(Windows all versions)	26
SuSE	32
Sun	41
Mandrake	82
RedHat	82
Debian	139

2- Linux is free :

• Is it really free ? the cost of ownership of a software is never just the cost of the licencing. It includes deployment, maintenance, and operation. this would at least make Linux not really much cheaper than commercial OSs.
• In a server environment, especially in the entreprise, servers are not independent stand-alone machines, they have to fit in Kerberos realms, use LDAP, which are never out-of the box features on a Linux, and usually would become : go get the download, then spend a good portion of your time (never free in the entreprise) making it work, at your own risks for later maintenance and support ...
• The cost of the Application Servers, Transactional Monitors, Middleware and Message Brokers make any difference in the OS costs insignificant.
• Do we really want a free OS : the binding relation between a vendor and the entreprise is that of customer and vendor, ie: the lincence purchase. If there is no such relation between them, there could not be a binding guarantee on the quality of the software, or that of fixing up any problems that might arise later. It was not hard for Red Hat to simply say they will stop producing, supporting or patching Red Hat Linux. It was so easy for them to say so because their product was free. Do we want to base our system on an OS than can just decide someday to vanish ?

3 - Linux is Fast :

• If Linux can be a performant solution for appliances, it certainly looses of its perf attractiveness when there are serious applications on top of it. The OS is much lighter than Windows for example, but as one starts adding the necessary modules such as LDAP, Kerberos, Transactional monitor, Web Services, Message Broker, ...etc., its performance is much more linked to the performance of the applications server used. To compare for example the perf between Linux and Windows, one should compare a WebSphere over Linux, or WebLogic over Linux, with a Windows 2003. Then Linux is no longer performant.

4- Linux is there to last :

• Although I never like making "propheties", I will still venture with a sentence that might seem full of pretention and irrationality : Linux will not last much longer. What I mean is basically that it will not continue evolving as open source. There will be quite a few commercial product based on Linux, but they will have a very hard time competing, and keeping out of trouble, among all the copyright violations that made up Linux in the first place. When I look at the Red Hat Licence pricing (on average 3 times more expensive than Windows if we allow a version of Windows to be used for three years).
• There cannot be a business model based of free products. Therefore, either the products becomes paying, or it vanishes from the marketplace. There can be community software that is open source and free, but it will never be interesting for the entreprise to use such an unsupported, loosely tested software...

11/17/2003 4:24:11 PM UTC    Comments [2] 

Cette semaine, mon papier sur les techniques du codage sécurisé vient d'être diffusé dans le cadre de la lettre marketing et technique de Microsoft North Africa.

Puisque ce papier est, à mon avis, un bon début de réflexion pratique sur la sécurité du code, je l'attache pour toute fin utile ...

11/13/2003 3:17:20 PM UTC    Comments [14] 

www.vtdotnet.org/ineta/movies/INETA_Package_INETA_Close_300k.wmv (10 Mb)

11/6/2003 10:07:49 AM UTC    Comments [22] 

A meeting of all pdc bloggers will take place at the a party in Universal studios. I got this from Scott hanselman's blog :

PDC - ATTENTION ALL BLOGGERS! MEETING AT UNIVERSAL STUDIOS TONIGHT!

Yo!  There's a meeting at the Hollywood Grill inside of Universal Studios tonight at 8PM!  Check out the map of Universal.  We'll be meeting at #19 on the map, close to the entrance.  Pass it on!

10/29/2003 11:06:32 PM UTC    Comments [0] 

   I am telling you, don't you ever think that avalon, or WinFS is the big thing happening at pdc ... I don't want to discuss Yukon at this time of the night, but the big thing here is : INDIGO ... the blue and quiet new communication layer, that really ends the reign of COM, and of the objects everywhere model as well.

   Well, I saw the light (metaphorically off course, for this same light has been with me for many years now), and it was coming from Don Box's speech on Indigo. I don't use session or presentation, because it was a speech, full of enlightening thoughts, and it was a session of evangelization if I ever saw one.

   What object is about, what messages are about, what the value of message based architectures is (SOA- service oriented architecture if you prefer to call it so), and how SOA actually works  ... thank you Don.

   What amzes me is that so many people understood the value of the talk ... or at least so many of them where there, until there was no more free chairs, no more empty space on the floor, and the corridor was no longer walkable ... great job Don.

   The thing about don Box as an MSFT employee is that he has much less freedom to express his opinions in his natural words for them, but he found a way to speak them differently ... Keep going Don ...

   Then, when it is all about SOA, and the only speaker in this pdc that is clearly speaking the extent and value of it is Don ... Hail Don, Hurray ...

10/29/2003 9:34:16 AM UTC    Comments [0] 

   Do you know what the .Net Rocks is ? if you don't, click on this link quickly ....

   Well, imagine a .Net Rocks show, right from a session room in the LA Convention Center, during the very first day of pdc (actually on pre-conference day), with a panel made of an amazing selection of RDs, and with great Xbox gifts for attendees ...

   How ? just put an attendee on the alley, give him the microphone, and make him guess whether the nswer given by the RD is true or false.

   I never realized how fun many very serious RDs can be until today ... What are Web Services ? Michelle Leroux Bustamente would say : "it's like Teen Sex, those who talk about about it don't do it and those doing it don't talk about it"... "what the most significant difference between interop in C# qnd in C++", Kate Gregory would say that it is in the way you do DllImports!!!". How deo you access pivate members of a class? I don't remeber scott hanselmans exact wording, but it goes like " you buy him a drink...",  off course, it end up with th RD giving the right answer (except a couple times), and the attendee going home very happy.

   I'll be posting some pictures of the show and of the panel when I get those pictures printed and scanned (well, I use my smart phone for many things including my agenda and emails, I use almost no paper, but I still love using my Canon Eos camera with lenses and zoom covering a 35-210 mm focal distance... call me traditional or outdated on that, I don't mind at all)

   if you have been at a pre-conference day before, you know you dont have the feeling that the conference is there ... well, carl just made it happen ...

   thank you carl.

10/27/2003 10:42:23 AM UTC    Comments [1]