| From: ac via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | I have been wondering about tech unicorns and Linux. It seems to me that Linux has won and been commoditized on the server side. No high-level discussion needs to address this. Several distros are good enough and almost interchangeable in abilities. On the PC side, if you don't wish to demand a dedicated machine, you have to fit into what the market has. 1. Windows of various vintages 2. MacOS. 99. Linux. On the mobile phone and tablet side 1. iOS (not the most users but the most money) 2. Android. 3. Web App of some kind On the dedicate device side: an engineering choice. Embedded Linux if the device is beefy enough. All these decisions are easy. On the device side, it is just an engineering decision. Old Unicorns came from different times. 25 years ago, it wasn't obvious that Linux would be where it is (and isn't). Netflix uses NetBSD for at least some stuff. Making a decision like that today would take serious conviction. | Does anyone on the list actually know (as in personal experience) | whether/which (or even if) most tech unicorns are Linux based or with a | Linux origin story? That may be interesting history but I doubt that it is worth consideration for a new business. More interesting is to figure out how to use the cloud without being tied to a particular vendor.
On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 12:19 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk < talk@gtalug.org> wrote: It seems to me that Linux has won and been commoditized on the server side.
No high-level discussion needs to address this. Several distros are good enough and almost interchangeable in abilities.
Agreed. The whole CentOS/Rocky/Alma/Oracle/SUSE/RHEL dustup has brought some instability to the realm (and for those of us old enough, bears remarkable resemblance of the old SysV/OSF1 wars). Ditto some of the jerk moves Canonical seems to be doing to leverage the Ubuntu base. But I think that these instabilities will settle down, even if they only evolve into stalemates. On the PC side, if you don't wish to demand a dedicated machine, you
have to fit into what the market has. 1. Windows of various vintages 2. MacOS. 99. Linux.
People want virtual dedicated desktops, for something other than UI testing? Uh, OK. Where do Chromebooks fit into this? Old Unicorns came from different times. 25 years ago, it wasn't obvious
that Linux would be where it is (and isn't).
Speak for yourself. 🙂 I was kinda certain that Linux would overtake Unix early in its life; that feeling was confirmed when the first Beowulf clusters came online and DEC imploded in the late 90s, and fully cemented when Oracle bought Sun less than a decade later. The increasing commoditization of PC components combined with the neverending balkanization of Unix hardware increasingly made the progression to dominance inevitable, the main issue was how long it would take. Netflix uses NetBSD for at least some stuff. Making a decision like that
today would take serious conviction.
BSD is still a good choice for some, so long as they're OK with self-support. It failed to get Linux's mindshare for two unrelated reasons: - They got caught up in their own little petty Unix wars in the 90s, just when the world was looking for some platform stability (that Microsoft and Apple were providing on desktops). Going with one Linux distro over another, especially on the server side, was far less of a critical decision than choosing Open- or Net- or FreeBSD. - Also, the GPL enabled big vendors to contribute code without a competitor being able to take it and re-lock it proprietary, as Apple famously did to BSD-licensed code in Project Darwin. The GPL enabled the old Ray Noorda philosophy of "co-opetition" which BSD could never match
| Does anyone on the list actually know (as in personal experience) | whether/which (or even if) most tech unicorns are Linux based or with a | Linux origin story?
That may be interesting history but I doubt that it is worth consideration for a new business.
Agreed. Linux is infrastructure, not a factor in whether an effort gets funded or expands. More interesting is to figure out how to use the cloud without being tied
to a particular vendor.
Both the choice of OS and where hosted is infrastructure, operational issues, and rarely part of a startup's pitch. If there is a privacy or security component to the proposal's added value the hosting may be a factor (ie, not hosted in a Five Eyes country) but I think even that is less of a factor with revelations that much claimed protection is an illusion <https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/08/08/protonmail-fbi-search-led-to-a-suspect-threatening-a-2020-election-official/> . -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56
| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 12:19 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk < | talk@gtalug.org> wrote: | | It seems to me that Linux has won and been commoditized on the server side. | > No high-level discussion needs to address this. Several distros are good | > enough and almost interchangeable in abilities. | > | | Agreed. | | The whole CentOS/Rocky/Alma/Oracle/SUSE/RHEL dustup has brought some | instability to the realm (and for those of us old enough, bears remarkable | resemblance of the old SysV/OSF1 wars). Ditto some of the jerk moves | Canonical seems to be doing to leverage the Ubuntu base. But I think that | these instabilities will settle down, even if they only evolve into | stalemates. | | On the PC side, if you don't wish to demand a dedicated machine, you | > have to fit into what the market has. | > 1. Windows of various vintages | > 2. MacOS. | > 99. Linux. | > | | People want virtual dedicated desktops, for something other than UI | testing? Uh, OK. | Where do Chromebooks fit into this? I was talking about an application publisher. If they want to run on the user's existing PC... | Old Unicorns came from different times. 25 years ago, it wasn't obvious | > that Linux would be where it is (and isn't). | > | | Speak for yourself. 🙂 | | I was kinda certain that Linux would overtake Unix early in its life; that | feeling was confirmed when the first Beowulf clusters came online and DEC | imploded in the late 90s, and fully cemented when Oracle bought Sun less | than a decade later. The increasing commoditization of PC components | combined with the neverending balkanization of Unix hardware increasingly | made the progression to dominance inevitable, the main issue was how long | it would take. 25 years ago, it was clear Unix was not much of a contender. And Windows NT looked like a winner. You could choose to build a Unicorn on Windows in the cloud. I think you'd be nuts to use Windows now. | Netflix uses NetBSD for at least some stuff. Making a decision like that | > today would take serious conviction. | > | | BSD is still a good choice for some, so long as they're OK with | self-support. It failed to get Linux's mindshare for two unrelated reasons: So you are agreeing, right? | - They got caught up in their own little petty Unix wars in the 90s, | just when the world was looking for some platform stability (that Microsoft | and Apple were providing on desktops). Going with one Linux distro over | another, especially on the server side, was far less of a critical decision | than choosing Open- or Net- or FreeBSD. | | - Also, the GPL enabled big vendors to contribute code without a | competitor being able to take it and re-lock it proprietary, as Apple | famously did to BSD-licensed code in Project Darwin. The GPL enabled the | old Ray Noorda philosophy of "co-opetition" which BSD could never match | | | | > | Does anyone on the list actually know (as in personal experience) | > | whether/which (or even if) most tech unicorns are Linux based or with a | > | Linux origin story? | > | > That may be interesting history but I doubt that it is worth consideration | > for a new business. | > | | Agreed. Linux is infrastructure, not a factor in whether an effort gets | funded or expands. Or even work. In other words, it isn't an innovation any longer. | More interesting is to figure out how to use the cloud without being tied | > to a particular vendor. | > | | Both the choice of OS and where hosted is infrastructure, operational | issues, and rarely part of a startup's pitch. If there is a privacy or | security component to the proposal's added value the hosting may be a | factor (ie, not hosted in a Five Eyes country) but I think even that is | less of a factor with revelations that much claimed protection is an | illusion | <https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/08/08/protonmail-fbi-search-led-to-a-suspect-threatening-a-2020-election-official/> | . Yeah, I was grasping at straws. There is room for innovation in infrastructure but it is hard to become a unicorn there since the area is mostly occupied by giants: - Amazon - Microsoft - Google - Oracle... Being cloud platform agnostic is smart. How you do it isn't something I know much about. I vaguely remember that Netflix can switch platforms. (The few tech people that I know of there are fairly impressive.) That's probably very useful when negotiating with their cloud providers. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 3:51 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
There is room for innovation in infrastructure but it is hard to become a unicorn there since the area is mostly occupied by giants:
Almost by definition, infrastructure cannot and should not be a place for disruptive innovation. Even by the giants. It's the common foundation upon which innovation sits. I would argue that in operating system platforms, the occupation is not the exclusive realm of the giants, though they collectively pay for a lot of coders of Linux core components so that does give them an indirect influence. Still no one influence holds outsized sway of which I'm aware. The decision-making processes of IETF, GSM and other infrastructure standards bodies are biased towards slow, incremental progress in with a usual emphasis on not breaking things -- the exact opposite of the unicorn "move fast and break things" mantra coined by Zuckerberg who later recanted <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms#History> once Facebook got big enough to itself be considered an infrastructure of sorts. "On May 2, 2014, Zuckerberg announced that the company would be changing its internal motto from "Move fast and break things" to "Move fast with stable infrastructure"." - Evan
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 3:51 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote: | Old Unicorns came from different times. 25 years ago, it wasn't obvious that
Linux would be where it is (and isn't). | | Speak for yourself. 🙂 | | I was kinda certain that Linux would overtake Unix early in its life; that feeling was confirmed when the first Beowulf clusters came online and DEC | imploded in the late 90s, and fully cemented when Oracle bought Sun less | than a decade later. The increasing commoditization of PC components combined with the neverending balkanization of Unix hardware increasingly made the progression to dominance inevitable, the main issue was how long it would take
25 years ago, it was clear Unix was not much of a contender. And Windows NT looked like a winner.
Not in any circle I traveled. IMO Windows Server had just become the new Netware; fine to run an office with, but not really much more scalable than that. I recall painfully how one associate tried to install a local version of BES (Blackberry Server) on a Windows box before giving up and going to the RIM-hosted service. It just wasn't up to much challenging tasks. But MS had marketing money, and Ballmer was into full-on Linux-bashing at the time. The FUD campaigns were effective at slowing but not stopping the shift. But NOBODY I knew was taking Windows server seriously as a server of Internet-protocol-based stuff. If you were into, say, Sendmail or MySQL or Apache you already knew that open source worked, so overcoming the FUD and considering Linux for the plumbing was a no-brainer. Aside: I recall being at a product launch from NEC for a line of Intel-based Windows server boxes. Some salescritter boasted that they were so confident of the superiority of Windows that the hardware was jigged so that it COULDN'T run Linux (they were evasive explaining how that was done, and I never pressed for an answer). Within a year NEC was out of the PC hardware business completely; I was really hoping that some product manager(s) lost their job over that bonehead move. - Evan
On Tue, 28 Nov 2023 12:12:13 -0500 Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote: <snip>
The whole CentOS/Rocky/Alma/Oracle/SUSE/RHEL dustup has brought some instability to the realm (and for those of us old enough, bears remarkable resemblance of the old SysV/OSF1 wars). Ditto some of the jerk moves Canonical seems to be doing to leverage the Ubuntu base. But I think that these instabilities will settle down, even if they only evolve into stalemates.
<snip>
| Does anyone on the list actually know (as in personal experience) | whether/which (or even if) most tech unicorns are Linux based or with a | Linux origin story? That may be interesting history but I doubt that it is worth consideration for a new business.
Agreed. Linux is infrastructure, not a factor in whether an effort gets funded or expands.
Anything else is just unthinkable
More interesting is to figure out how to use the cloud without being tied to a particular vendor.
if you are just a user? no clue. but if you are a 'user' as in sys/dev not much to figure out, I alreay live this dream. I call mine DAPI, but it probably needs a better name than just db api (as it is much more than just that or yacapi yet another custom api :) ) i talk to sql from anything, anywhere and auth is multi layered (even down to data field level, where even data field views and changes are all new data in themselves, nowadays meta data has become deprecated as it is all just data) you can also live this dream? if you need to get inspiration, look at EPP - you can define any protocol to assign objects, but coding for this is like praying while biting nails - you need to make it very spiritual (I have multi bibles) and extremely habitual, imo, and of course as usual ianal (i have eons of prior art) and ymmv :)
Both the choice of OS and where hosted is infrastructure, operational issues, and rarely part of a startup's pitch. If there is a privacy or security component to the proposal's added value the hosting may be a factor (ie, not hosted in a Five Eyes country) but I think even that is less of a factor with revelations that much claimed protection is an illusion <https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/08/08/protonmail-fbi-search-led-to-a-suspect-threatening-a-2020-election-official/> .
yeah, but if i do happen to get a unicorn, i will not need to pitch anything to anyone as unicorns are as unicorns do - and you should just want to ride it, like a virgin! (o joy, I still remember 12 november 84) but, anyway, unicorns lay eggs as well as also give live birth (same as some lizards) and unicorns do affect people's lives. Lets say that you use my unicorn, but my unicorn works so well with "Big 8" and "Crush" but not so great with Pepsi, this may mean that Big 8 gets more rackspace at Price Depot, which indirectly influences even more people to buy Big 8
On Tue, 28 Nov 2023 at 12:13, Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Both the choice of OS and where hosted is infrastructure, operational issues, and rarely part of a startup's pitch. If there is a privacy or security component to the proposal's added value the hosting may be a factor (ie, not hosted in a Five Eyes country) but I think even that is less of a factor with revelations that much claimed protection is an illusion.
( https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/08/08/protonmail-fbi-search... ) You're unhappy with ProtonMail? You thought they should protect all anonymity in defiance of the law? I think these quotes (from the article you cited) are worth reading: "Proton did say, however, that by Swiss law, for U.S. agencies to get information on Proton accounts, they have to go through Swiss authorities." "The FBI didn’t get much back from Proton, but it did receive the recovery and associated email addresses linked to the ProtonMail user. They proved crucial, enabling the FBI to find more information about the person online and conduct a sweep across the suspect's internet accounts, including on Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Google, PayPal and Spotify." I'm fond of the law. I like to see it enforced. Protonmail lives in Switzerland, under Swiss law ... I'm okay with them complying with those laws. Sure Protonmail isn't perfect - but it's a hell of a lot better than Gmail. (Yes, I do use Protonmail. I pay them - they don't pay me to say this.) -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
| From: Giles Orr via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/08/08/protonmail-fbi-search... | ) Interesting post. Interesting article. The article linked to another that I found very interesting. I'd never heard of Window Snyder before (Window is her first name and has nothing to do with MS Windows.): <https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/04/window-snyder-cybersecurity-trailblazer/>?
participants (4)
-
ac -
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Evan Leibovitch -
Giles Orr