When Four Become One: UnitedLinux

By: Brian Proffitt
Wednesday, May 29, 2002 05:14:36 PM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/newss/4226/1/

The Birth of UnitedLinux

Today, four distibution companies--SuSE, Caldera, TurboLinux, and Conectiva--are planning to formally announce the formation of a single UnitedLinux distribution, which is tentatively planned to be released at the end of 2002.

The new UnitedLinux distro will be targeted for business and enterprise-level platforms and will feature a single, unified code base that combines select packages of all of the participating distributions. Each distro will likely feature the same libraries and same installation tools as the others, though the technical details have not been ironed out yet.

But that is where the unification stops, according to information released to analysts in a meeting yesterday morning. Each distribution company will market, sell, and package their own versions of UnitedLinux under their respective labels.

And, though the code base for UnitedLinux will be the same, each company will have the option of inserting their own value-added software into their own releases.

The primary reasons for combining the resources of these four companies are both technical and financial. One major technical benefit will be a unified code base that will make it much easier for independent software vendors (ISVs) to port applications to the new UnitedLinux. This is significant because one of the major sponsors of this consrtia is IBM, a company that could bring in a whole slew of ISVs.

According to Aberdeen Group's Bill Claybrook, who was part of the analysts' meeting yesterday, a major financial benefit will come from the fact that four companies will no longer be using up their resources building distros that would compete with each other instead of with the dominant seller of Linux, Red Hat.

"It was pretty silly for them to produce distrbutions that were so similar to each other," Claybrook said.

The announcement, which will be made at 11 p.m. EDT time this morning, is expected to outline the project and introduce the four founding members of the UnitedLinux group. Both Claybrook and other sources confirmed that this will by no means be an exclusive club.

"I'm not sure if Mandrake will join," Claybrook speculated, "but they might."

The project thus far has been relatively smooth, though one source who spoke under the condition of anonymity hinted that the timing of this announcement may have been moved up rather abruptly due to the losses reported in Caldera International's 2Q report this week.

Logistics of UnitedLinux

Under the new agreement, each company will have its own role to play. SuSE Linux will act as the systems integrator for the distribution, tying all of the code and packages together into UnitedLinux. The other three companies will act in more quality assurance and testing roles.

Claybrook cited the value of this arrangement, as it gives each company more time and resources to produce value-added products instead of devoting so much energy to creating a distribution as well. Since the companies will have to work together to build the unified distro, special attention will be paid to the Linux Standards Base, a voluntary project working to stanadrdize code in all Linux distributions.

This does not mean that the SuSE, Caldera OpenLinux, TurboLinux, and Conectiva distros are going away. The briefers at the meeting outlined that each company will continue to package and distribute the UnitedLinux distribution under their own brands, with their own boxes. Only a special UnitedLinux logo will appear on each distro's box to identify the unified brand.

This approach may undermine some of the key benefits of UnitedLinux, however. Claybrook speculated that if each distribution is allowed to included their own value-added products in the boxed sets, this could complicate or even negate the single code base philosophy that is being touted to ISVs. Even though the code base will be unified, the inclusion of different applications between distributions could create some software conflicts that ISVs would have to contend with.

The emphasis on the individual companies' brands is only natural, but if "UnitedLinux" is de-emphasized too much, Claybrook mused, then it becomes weaker against another area in which Red Hat is very strong: branding.

"Overcoming brand recognition is a big obstacle," Claybrook said.

The source code for UnitedLinux will be available under the GPL, and can be re-distributed under that license's terms. The UnitedLinux brand, however, will stay with the original code base and cannot be claimed by any company not actively working on the project.

The emphasis on high-end, enterprise-level customers was stressed at the analysts' meeting, but it was not clear where this market positioning will leave existing products such as SuSE Personal, which are clearly aimed at another demographic.

Another unknown: sources have indicated that there will be one code base provided for IBM's eServer platform. How this will affect SuSE and TurboLinux, two companies that have been openly competing for share on this platform, is anyone's guess. Since IBM is one of the main sponsors of this project, they stand to reap the benefits of both distributions, whichever way IBM chooses.

UnitedLinux, still in its early stages, will probably strive to answer these conundrums soon.

Impact of UnitedLinux

Almost every source contacted about this topic all stated emphatically that this is clearly a move against the monolithic Red Hat, whose sales of Red Hat Linux have so dominated the Linux market.

With this target in mind, Claybrook stated, one bar to measure the success of this venture will be very clear. Though it's clearly too soon to tell, he explained, whether this new distribution generates new revenue for the companies involved will be the deciding factor for success.

What is also telling about this new consortia are the identities of two of the major sponsors for UnitedLinux: IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

"This is advantageous for IBM because they want to leverage Linux for their own growth," said Stacey Quandt, an Industry Analyst from the Giga Information Group. As they attract more enterprise-level customers to Linux, IBM is also trying to make sure that there is more than one Linux game in town. By sponsoring UnitedLinux, IBM immediately gains the advantage of having another distribution besides Red Hat to deal with, Quandt explained.

"Consortiums succeed or fail based on an external threat," Quandt said. Clearly, IBM, HP, and the rest of the companies involved with United Linux perceive Red Hat as that threat, she added.

While the ability for IBM to pull in major ISVs may look good on paper, Quandt expressed some concerns on how this would actually work.

"Can [IBM] pull in Siebel? I think this unlikely," she opined, indicating that Siebel may feel that it is already deployed on enough platforms already. Other ISVs, such as Oracle and Veritas, have very close ties to Sun Microsystems, which some industry analysts feel is well on it's way to creating a distribution of it's own. If that were the case, then Oracle and Veritas would very likely work exclusively with Sun's Linux.

This, Quandt said, could leave UnitedLinux and its enterprise customers without a robust application base to work with.

Still, any participants in the UnitedLinux consortium could benefit from having another Linux distribution to work with besides Red Hat and any potential version of Linux from Sun. IBM, for example, could have certain features pushed through United Linux much faster than they would through Red Hat or Sun, Quandt speculated.

Executives from Red Hat declined to comment before this official announcement, but indications are they will have something to say very soon.

In one sense, Red Hat's response may be already in the works. An announcement is expected next week from Red Hat, Dell, and Oracle regarding an enterprise-level project known right now as "Unbreakable Linux."

How the other distributions will react to this squaring off remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the enterprise market is now the golden key for Linux industry leaders. And as new alliances are forged, the players in the Linux industry are about to be changed, perhaps forever.