05.22.08
Survey: Businesses Choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux Over Novell Ballnux
In last year’s Alfresco customer/user survey, we saw quite clearly that Novell’s adoption suffered after its deal with Microsoft. One year later, nothing has changed for the better.
The Second Open Source Barometer shows the community growing like a hockey and the number of members choosing Red Hat RHEL mirroring that growth with the number of members choosing Suse flat in comparison. So maybe “it was the worst of times” and the response of the open source community is to let Suse “have a far, far better rest to go to than it has ever known”?
Such surveys don’t typically work in Novell’s favour, unless Novell cooks those surveys or conducts its own. Upon closer inspection, it’s even quite embarrassing [1, 2]. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
David Flax said,
May 22, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Gee a survey done by a biased group. What a surprising result.
Roy Schestowitz said,
May 22, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Can you please explain the bias (I’m asking, not doubting)?
I know that Asay (of Alfresco) resents Novell for the deal, but here you have a population that is customers using FOSS.
stevetheFLY said,
May 24, 2008 at 4:56 pm
…and the latter surves was done by another ‘Anti-Novell’-freak like yourself. Very, very convincing…
At www.distrowatch.com openSUSE now ranks second behind Ubuntu. Not bad. Fedora ranks 4th.
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