MESSAGE
| DATE | 2002-10-10 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | RE: [hangout] Ammo for the War on Stupidity
|
I've been using this document as well as the TCO Study for some time now.
R
egards,
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Ruben Safir [mailto:ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 12:31 AM
To: Ruben I Safir
Cc: hangout-at-www2.mrbrklyn.com
Subject: Re: [hangout] Ammo for the War on Stupidity
Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!
David A. Wheeler dwheeler-at-dwheeler.com Revised as of October 8, 2002
This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source
software / free software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using
their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper
examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and
total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues,
unnecessary fears, usage reports, other sites providing related information,
and ends with some conclusions. You can view this paper at
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html (HTML format). Palm PDA users can
view it in Plucker format (you will also need Plucker to read it). Old
archived copies are also available.
1. Introduction
Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) has risen to great prominence.
Briefly, OSS/FS programs are programs whose licenses give users the freedom
to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to
freely redistribute copies of either the original or modified program
(without having to pay royalties to previous developers).
This goal of this paper is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS
when youre looking for software, based on quantitative measures. Some sites
provide a few anecdotes on why you should use OSS/FS, but for many thats not
enough information to justify using OSS/FS. Instead, this paper emphasizes
quantitative measures (such as experiments and market
studies) on why using OSS/FS products is, in a number of circumstances, a
reasonable or even superior approach. I should note that while I find much
to like about OSS/FS, Im not a rabid advocate; I use both proprietary and
OSS/FS products myself. Vendors of proprietary products often work hard to
find numbers to support their claims; this page provides a useful antidote
of hard figures to aid in comparing proprietary products to OSS/FS.
Note that this papers goal is not to show that all OSS/FS is better than all
proprietary software. Certainly, there are many who believe this is true
from ethical, moral, or social grounds. However, no numbers could prove such
broad statements. Instead, Ill simply compare commonly-used OSS/FS software
with commonly-used proprietary software, to show that at least in certain
situations and by certain measures, some OSS/FS software is at least as good
or better than its proprietary competition. Of course, some OSS/FS software
is technically poor, just as some proprietary software is technically poor,
and even very good software may not fit your specific needs. But although
most people understand the need to compare proprietary products before using
them, many people fail to even consider OSS/FS products. This paper is
intended to explain why acquirers should consider OSS/FS alternatives.
Ill emphasize the GNU/Linux operating system (which some abbreviate as
Linux) and the Apache web server, since these are some of the most visible
OSS/FS projects. Ill also primarily compare OSS/FS software to Microsofts
products (such as Windows and IIS), since Windows has a significant market
share and Microsoft is one of proprietary softwares strongest proponents.
Ill mention Unix systems in passing as well, though the situation with Unix
is more complex; many Unix systems include a number of OSS/FS components or
software primarily derived from OSS/FS components. Thus, comparing
proprietary Unix systems to OSS/FS systems (when examined as entire systems)
is often not as clear-cut. I use the term Unix-like to mean systems
intentionally similar to Unix; both Unix and GNU/Linux are Unix-like
systems. The most recent Apple Macintosh operating system (MacOS OS X)
presents the same kind of complications; older versions of MacOS were
entirely proprietary, but Apples operating system has been redesigned so
that its now based on a Unix system with a substantial contribution from
OSS/FS programs. Indeed, Apple is now openly encouraging collaboration with
OSS/FS developers. I include data over a series of years, not just the past
year; I believe that all relevant data should be considered when making a
decision, instead of arbitrarily ignoring older data, and the older data
shows that OSS/FS has a history of many positive traits.
You can get a more detailed explanation of the terms open source software
and Free Software, as well as related information, from my list of Open
Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) references at
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_refs.html. Note that those who use the term
open source software tend to emphasize technical advantages of such software
(such as better reliability and security), while those who use the term Free
Software tend to emphasize freedom from control by another and/or ethical
issues. The opposite of OSS/FS is closed or proprietary software. Software
for which the source code that can be viewed, but cannot modified and
redistributed without further limitation (e.g., source viewable or open box
software, including shared source and community licenses), are not
considered here since they dont meet the previously-given definition of
OSS/FS. Note that many OSS/FS programs are commercial programs, so dont make
the mistake of calling OSS/FS software non-commercial. Almost no OSS/FS
programs are in the public domain (which has a specific legal meaning), so
avoid that term as well. Other alternative terms for OSS/FS software include
libre software (where libre means free as in freedom), free/libre and open
source software (FLOSS), open source / Free Software (OS/FS), open-source
software (indeed, open-source is often used as a general adjective), freed
software, and even public service software (since often these software
projects are designed to serve the public at large).
Below is data discussing market share, reliability, performance,
scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. I close with a brief
discussion of non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, usage reports,
other sites providing related information, and conclusions. 2. Market Share
Many people believe that a product is only a winner if it has significant
market share. This is lemming-like, but theres some rationale for this:
products with big market shares get applications, trained users, and
momentum that reduces future risk. Some writers argue against OSS/FS or
GNU/Linux as not being mainstream, but if their use is widespread then such
statements reflect the past, not the present. Theres excellent evidence that
OSS/FS has significant market share in numerous markets:
1. The most popular web server has always been OSS/FS since such
data have been collected, for example, Apache is currently the #1 web
server. Netcrafts statistics on web servers have consistently shown
Apache (an OSS/FS web server) dominating the public Internet web server
market ever since Apache became the #1 web server in April 1996. Before
that time, the NCSA web server (Apaches ancestor) dominated the web
from August 1995 through March 1996 - and it is also OSS/FS. For
example, Netcrafts September 2002 survey polled all the web sites
they could find (totaling 35,756,436 sites), and found that of all the
sites they could find, Apache had 59.91% of the market and Microsoft
had 29.18% of the market, iPlanet had 2.08%, and Zeus had 1.36%.
More recently, Netcraft has been trying to separately count
active web sites. The problem is that many web sites have been
created that are simply placeholder sites (i.e., their domain
names have been reserved but they are not being used); such sites
are termed inactive. Netcrafts count of only the active sites is a
more relevant figure, since this shows the web server selected by
those who choose to develop a web site. When counting active sites,
Apache does even better; in September 2002, Apache had 66.04% of
the web server market, Microsoft had 24.18%, iPlanet had 1.57%,
and Zeus had 1.34%.
Market Share for Active Web Servers, June 2000 - September 2002
Active servers across all domains, June 2000 - September 2002
Netcrafts September 2002 survey also reported on websites based on
their IP address instead of the host name; this has the effect of
removing parked (unused addresses), computers used to serve multiple
sites, and sites with multiple names. When counting by IP address,
Apache has shown a slow increase from 51% at the start of 2001 to
54%, while Microsoft was unchanged at 35%.
The same overall result has been determined independently
by E-soft - their report on web server market share published
October 1, 2002 surveyed 9,045,027 web servers in September 2002
and found that Apache was #1 (66.75%), with Microsoft IIS being
#2 (21.83%). E-soft also reports specifically on secure servers
(web servers supporting SSL/TLS, such as e-commerce sites), and
even here Apache has a commanding 51.26% market share, as compared
to Microsofts 34.85%, Netscape/iPlanets 5.68%, and Strongholds
2.71%. Indeed, since Stronghold is a repackaging of Apache,
Apaches real market share is at least 53.97%.
Obviously these figures fluctuate monthly; see Netcraft and E-soft
for the latest survey figures.
2. GNU/Linux is the #2 web serving operating system on the public
Internet (counting by physical machine), according to a study by
Netcraft surveying March and June 2001. Some of Netcrafts surveys
have also included data on operating systems; two 2001 surveys (their
June 2001 and September 2001 surveys) found that GNU/Linux is the #2
operating system for web servers when counting physical machines (and
has been consistently gaining market share since February 1999). As
Netcraft themselves point out, the usual Netcraft web server survey
(discussed above) counts web server hostnames rather than physical
computers, and so it doesnt measure such things as the installed
hardware base. Companies can run several thousand web sites on a
single computer, and most of the worlds web sites are located at
hosting and co-location companies.
Therefore, Netcraft developed a technique that indicates the number
of actual computers being used as Web servers, together with the
operating system and web server software used. The technique is
based on arranging a number of IP addresses to send packets to
Netcraft nearly simultaneously; low level TCP/IP characteristics
can be used to work out if those packets originate from the same
computer by checking for similarities in a number of TCP/IP protocol
header fields. This is a statistical approach, so many visits to the
site are used over a month to build up sufficient certainty. This
technique has its weaknesses; Round robin DNS, reverse web proxies,
some load balancing/failover products like Cisco LocalDirector
and BIG-IP, and some connection level firewalls hide a number of
web servers behind a hostname. Only a single front web server will
be counted, and with some of these products the operating system
detected is that of the front device rather than the web server
behind. Still, Netcraft believes that the error margins world-wide
are well within the order of plus or minus 10%, and this is the
best available survey of such data.
Before presenting the data, its important to explain Netcrafts
system for dating the data. Netcraft dates their information
based on the web server surveys (not the publication date),
and they only report operating system summaries from an earlier
month. Thus, the survey dated June 2001 was published in July and
covers operating system survey results of March 2001, while the
survey dated September 2001 was published in October and covers
the operating system survey results of June 2001.
Heres a summary of Netcrafts study results:
OS group Percentage (March) Percentage (June) Composition Windows
49.2% 49.6% Windows 2000, NT4, NT3, Windows 95, Windows 98
[GNU/]Linux 28.5% 29.6% [GNU/]Linux Solaris 7.6% 7.1% Solaris 2,
Solaris 7, Solaris 8 BSD 6.3% 6.1% BSDI BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
OpenBSD Other Unix 2.4% 2.2% AIX, Compaq Tru64, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO
Unix, SunOS 4 and others Other non-Unix 2.5% 2.4% MacOS, NetWare,
proprietary IBM OSs Unknown 3.6% 3.0% not identified by Netcraft
operating system detector
Much depends on what you want to measure. Several of the BSDs
(FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD) are OSS/FS as well; so at least a
portion of the 6.1% for BSD should be added to GNU/Linuxs 29.6%
to determine the percentage of OSS/FS operating systems being
used as web servers. Thus, its likely that approximately one-third
of web serving computers use OSS/FS operating systems. There are
also regional differences, for example, GNU/Linux leads Windows
in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland.
Well-known web sites using OSS/FS include Google (GNU/Linux)
and Yahoo (FreeBSD).
If you really want to know about the web server market breakdown of
Unix vs. Windows, you can find that also in this study. All of the
various Windows operating systems are rolled into a single number
(even Windows 95/98 and Windows 2000/NT4/NT3 are merged together,
although they are fundamentally very different systems). Merging
all the Unix-like systems in a similar way produces a total of 44.8%
for Unix-like systems (compared to Windows 49.2%) in March 2001.
Note that these figures would probably be quite different if
they were based on web addresses instead of physical computers;
in such a case, the clear majority of web sites are hosted by
Unix-like systems. As stated by Netcraft, Although Apache running
on various Unix systems runs more sites than Windows, Apache is
heavily deployed at hosting companies and ISPs who strive to run
as many sites as possible on a single computer to save costs.
3. GNU/Linux is the #1 server operating system on the public Internet
(counting by domain name), according to a 1999 survey of primarily
European and educational sites. The first study that Ive found that
examined GNU/Linuxs market penetration is a survey by Zoebelein in
April 1999. This survey found that, of the total number of servers
deployed on the Internet in 1999 (running at least ftp, news, or http
(WWW)) in a database of names they used, the #1 operating system
was GNU/Linux (at 28.5%), with others trailing. Its important to
note that this survey, which is the first one that Ive found to
try to answer questions of market share, used existing databases
of servers from the .edu (educational domain) and the RIPE database
(which covers Europe , the Middle East, parts of Asia, and parts of
Africa), so this isnt really a survey of the entire Internet (e.g.,
it omits .com and .net). This is a count by domain name (e.g., the
text name you would type into a web browser for a location) instead
of by physical computer, so what its counting is different than the
Netcraft June 2001 operating system study. Also, this study counted
servers providing ftp and news services (not just web servers).
Heres how the various operating systems fared in the study:
Market Share Operating System Composition GNU/Linux 28.5% GNU/Linux
Windows 24.4% All Windows combined (including 95, 98, NT) Sun 17.7%
Sun Solaris or SunOS BSD 15.0% BSD Family (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
BSDI, ...) IRIX 5.3% SGI IRIX
A portion of the BSD family is also OSS/FS, so the OSS/FS operating
system total is even higher; if over 2/3 of the BSDs are OSS/FS,
then the total share of OSS/FS would be about 40%. Advocates of
Unix-like systems will notice that the majority (around 66%) were
running Unix-like systems, while only around 24% ran a Microsoft
Windows variant.
4. GNU/Linux was the #2 server operating system sold in 1999, 2000,
and 2001. According to a June 2000 IDC survey of 1999 licenses, 24%
of all servers (counting both Internet and intranet servers) installed
in 1999 ran GNU/Linux. Windows NT came in first with 36%; all Unixes
combined totaled 15%. Again, since some of the Unixes are OSS/FS
systems (e.g., FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD), the number of OSS/FS
systems is actually larger than the GNU/Linux figures. Note that it
all depends on what you want to count; 39% of all servers installed
from this survey were Unix-like (thats 24%+15%), so Unix-like servers
were actually #1 in installed market share once you count GNU/Linux
and Unix together.
IDC released a similar study on January 17, 2001 titled Server
Operating Environments: 2000 Year in Review. On the server, Windows
accounted for 41% of new server operating system sales in 2000,
growing by 20% - but GNU/Linux accounted for 27% and grew even
faster, by 24%. Other major Unixes had 13%.
IDCs 2002 report found that Linux held its own in 2001 at 25%. All
of this is particularly intriguing since GNU/Linux had 0.5% of
the market in 1995, according to a Forbes quote of IDC. Data such
as these (and the TCO data shown later) have inspired statements
such as this one from IT-Director on November 12, 2001: Linux on
the desktop is still too early to call, but on the server it now
looks to be unstoppable.
These measures do not measure all server systems installed that
year; some Windows systems are not paid for (theyre illegally
pirated), and OSS/FS operating systems such as GNU/Linux and
the BSDs are often downloaded and installed on multiple systems
(since its legal and free to do so).
5. An Evans Data survey published in November 2001 found that 48.1% of
international developers and 39.6% of North Americans plan to target
most of their applications to GNU/Linux. The November 2001 edition
of the Evans Data International Developer Survey Series reported
on in-depth interviews with more than 400 developers representing
over 70 countries, and found that when asked which operating system
they plan to target with most of their applications next year, 48.1%
of international developers and 39.6% of North Americans stated that
they plan to target most of their applications to GNU/Linux. This is
particularly surprising since only a year earlier less than a third
of the international development community was writing GNU/Linux
applications. The survey also found that 37.8% of the international
development community and 33.7% of North American developers have
already written applications for GNU/Linux, and that more than half
of those surveyed have enough confidence in GNU/Linux to use it for
mission-critical applications.
Later data seems to confirm this, for example, the Japanese Linux
white paper 2003 found that 49.3% of IT solution vendors support
Linux in Japan.
6. A Japanese survey found widespread use and support for GNU/Linux;
overall use of GNU/Linux jumped from 35.5% in 2001 to 64.3% in 2002
of Japanese corporations, and GNU/Linux was the most popular platform
for small projects. The book Linux White Paper 2003 (published by
Impress Corporation) surveys the use of GNU/Linux in Japan (it is
an update to an earlier book, Linux White Paper 2001-2002). This is
written in Japanese; here is a brief summary of its contents.
The survey has two parts, user and vendor. In Part I : User
enterprise, they surveyed 729 enterprises that use servers. In Part
II : Vendor enterprise, they surveyed 276 vendor enterprises who
supply server computers, including system integrators, software
developers, IT service suppliers, and hardware resellers. The most
interesting results are those that discuss the use of Linux servers
in user enterprises, the support of Linux servers by vendors,
and Linux server adoption in system integration projects.
First, the use of Linux servers in user enterprises: System 2002
2001 Linux server 64.3% 35.5% Windows 2000 Server 59.9% 37.0%
Windows NT Server 64.3% 74.2% Commercial Unix server 37.7% 31.2%
And specifically, heres the average use in 2002: System Ave. units #
samples Linux server 13.4 N=429 (5.3 in 2001) Windows 2000 Server
24.6 N=380 Windows NT Server 4.5 N=413 Commercial Unix server 6.9
N=233 Linux servers are the fastest growing category from last
year. The average units of server per enterprise increased by
2.5-fold from 5.3 units to 13.4 units.
Second, note the support of GNU/Linux servers by vendors: System
Year 2002 Support Windows NT/2000 Server 66.7% Linux server 49.3%
Commercial Unix server 38.0% This is the rate of vendors that
develop or sale products supporting Linux server; note that Linux
is already a major OS when compared with its competitors. The
reasons for supporing Linux server were also surveyed, which turn
out to be different than the reasons in some other counties (for a
contrast, see the European FLOSS report): Increase of importance
in the future 44.1% Requirement from their customers 41.2% Major
OS in their market 38.2% Free of licence fee 37.5% Most reasonable
OS for their purpose 36.0% Open source 34.6% High reliability 27.2%
Third, note the rate of Linux server adoption in system integration
projects: Project Size (Million Yen) Linux Win2000 Unix
2002 2001 2002 2002
0-3 62.7% 65.7% 53.8% 15.4% 3-10 51.5% 53.7% 56.3% 37.1% 10-50
38.3% 48.9% 55.8% 55.8% 50-100 39.0% 20.0% 45.8% 74.6% 100+
24.4% 9.1% 51.1% 80.0% Where 1 Million Yen = $8,000 US. GNU/Linux
servers are No.1 (62.5%) in small projects less than 3,000,000 Yen
($24,000 US), and GNU/Linux has grown in larger projects more than
50,000,000 Yen ($400,000 US) from 20.0% to 39.0%. In projects more
than 100,000,000 Yen ($800,000 US), Linux is adopted by 24.4% of the
projects (mainly as a substitute for proprietary Unix systems). Note
that many projects (especially large ones) use multiple platforms
simultaneously, so the values need not total 100%.
This makes sense given that GNU/Linux is a more recent competitor
to Windows and Linux. No (rational) organization is going to commit
its largest projects to a new server system immediately; instead,
they will try it on small projects, use it more often on small
projects if that succeeds, and then gradually use the product on
larger projects if it appears to be successful and scaleable. The
trend here shows GNU/Linux already dominant on small projects,
and growing rapidly on the larger ones.
7. The European FLOSS study found significant use of OSS/FS. The large
report Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS): Survey and Study,
published in June 2002, examined a number of issues including the
use of OSS/FS. This study found significant variance in the use of
OSS/FS; 43.7% of German establishments reported using OSS/FS, 31.5%
of British establishments reported using OSS/FS, while only 17.7%
of Swedish establishments reported using OSS/FS. In addition, they
found that OSS usage rates of larger establishments were larger than
smaller establishments, and that OSS usage rates in the public sector
were above average.
8. Microsoft sponsored its own research to prove that GNU/Linux isnt
as widely used, but this research has been shown to be seriously
flawed. Microsoft sponsored a Gartner Dataquest report claiming
only 8.6% of servers shipped in the U.S. during the third quarter
of 2000 were Linux-based. However, its worth noting that Microsoft
(as the research sponsor) has every incentive to create low numbers,
and these numbers are quite different from IDCs research in the
same subject. IDCs Kusnetzky commented that the likely explanation
is that Gartner used a very narrow definition of shipped; he thought
the number was quite reasonable if it only surveyed new servers with
Linux, But our research is that this is not how most users get their
Linux. We found that just 10 to 15 percent of Linux adoption comes
from pre-installed machines... for every paid copy of Linux, there
is a free copy that can be replicated 15 times. Note that its quite
difficult to buy a new x86 computer without a Microsoft operating
system (Microsofts contracts with computer makers ensure this),
but that doesnt mean that these operating systems are used. Gartner
claimed that it used interviews to counter this problem, but its
final research results (when compared to known facts) suggest that
Gartner did not really counter this effect. For example, Gartner states
that Linux shipments in the supercomputer field were zero. In fact,
Linux is widely used on commodity parallel clusters at many scientific
sites, including a number of high-profile sites. Many of these systems
were assembled in-house, showing that Gartners method of defining a
shipment does not appear to correlate to working installations. The
Registers article, No ones using Linux (with its companion article
90% Windows..) discusses this further. In short, Microsoft-sponsored
research reported low numbers, but these numbers are quite suspect.
9. Businesses plan to increase their use of GNU/Linux. A Zona Research
study found that more than half of the large enterprise respondents
expected increases of up to 25% in the number of GNU/Linux users in
their firm, while nearly 20% expected increases of more than 50%. In
small companies, more than one third felt that GNU/Linux usage would
expand by 50%. The most important factors identified that drove
these decisions were reliability, lower price, speed of applications,
and scalability. Here are the numbers:
Expected GNU/Linux Use Small Business Midsize Business Large
Business Total 50% increase 21.0% 16% 19.0% 19% 10-25% increase
30.5% 42% 56.5% 44% No growth 45.5% 42% 24.5% 36% Reduction 3.0%
0% 0% 1% You can see more about this study in The New Religion:
Linux and Open Source (ZDNet) and in InfoWorlds February 5, 2001
article Linux lights up enterprise: But concerns loom about OS
vendor profitability.
10. The global top 1000 Internet Service Providers expect GNU/Linux
use to increase by 154%, according to Idayas survey conducted January
through March 2001. A survey conducted by Idaya of the global top
1000 ISPs found that they expected GNU/Linux to grow a further 154%
in 2001. Also, almost two thirds (64%) of ISPs consider the leading
open source software meets the standard required for enterprise level
applications, comparable with proprietary software. Idaya produces
OSS/FS software, so keep that in mind as a potential bias.
11. A 2002 European survey found that 49% of CIOs in financial services,
retail, and the public sector expect to be using OSS/FS. OpenForum
Europe published in February 2002 a survey titled Market Opportunity
Analysis For Open Source Software. Over three months CIOs and
financial directors in financial services, retail and public sector were
interviewed for this survey. In this survey, 37% of the CIOs stated that
they were already using OSS/FS, and 49% expected to be using OSS/FS in
the future. It is quite likely that even more companies are using OSS/FS
but their CIOs are not aware of it. Perceived benefits cited included
decreased costs in general (54%), lower software license cost (24%),
better control over development (22%), and improved security (22%).
12. IBM found a 30% growth in the number of enterprise-level
applications for GNU/Linux in the six month period ending June 2001. At
one time, it was common to claim that Not enough applications run
under GNU/Linux for enterprise-level use. However, IBM found there
are more than 2,300 GNU/Linux applications (an increase in 30% over 6
months) available from IBM and the industrys top independent software
vendors (ISVs). A Special report by Network Computing on Linux for
the Enterprise discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of
GNU/Linux, and found many positive things to say about GNU/Linux for
enterprise-class applications.
13. A 2001 survey found that 46.6% of IT professionals were confident
that their organizations could support GNU/Linux, a figure larger
than any OS except Windows. A TechRepublic Research survey titled
Benchmarks, Trends, and Forecasts: Linux Report found that support
for Linux runs surprisingly deep when it surveyed IT professionals and
asked them how confidently their organizations could support various
operating systems. Given Windows market dominance on the desktop, its
not surprising that most were confident that their organizations could
support various versions of Windows (for Windows NT the figure was
90.6%; for Windows 2000, 81.6%). However, GNU/Linux came in third, at
46.4%; about half of those surveyed responded that their organizations
were already confident in their ability to support GNU/Linux! This is
especially shocking because GNU/Linux beat other well-known products
with longer histories including Unix (42.1%), Novell Netware (39.5%),
Sun Solaris (25.7%), and Apple (13.6%). TechRepublic suggested that
there are several possible reasons for this surprisingly large result:
* GNU/Linux is considered to be a rising technology; many IT
professionals are already studying it and learning how to use
it, assuming that it will be a marketable skill in the near
future. * Many IT professionals already use GNU/Linux at home,
giving GNU/Linux an entree into professional organizations.
* Since GNU/Linux is similar to Unix, IT professionals who are
proficient in Unix can easily pick up GNU/Linux.
TechRepublic suggests that IT executives should inventory their
staffs skill sets, because they may discover that their organization
can already support GNU/Linux if they arent currently using it.
14. Sendmail, an OSS/FS program, is the leading email server. A survey
between 2001-09-27 and 2001-10-03 by D.J. Bernstein of one million
random IP addresses successfully connected to 958 SMTP (email)
servers (such servers are also called mail transport agents, or
MTAs). Bernstein found that Unix Sendmail had the largest market share
(42% of all email servers), followed by Windows Microsoft Exchange
(18%), Unix qmail (17%), Windows Ipswitch IMail (6%), Unix smap (2%),
UNIX Postfix (formerly VMailer, 2%) and Unix Exim (1%). Note that
Bernstein implements one of Sendmails competitors (qmail), so he has
a disincentive to identify Sendmails large market share. Qmail is not
OSS/FS, because derivatives of Qmail cannot be freely redistributed;
Qmail is source viewable, so some people are confused into believing
that Qmail is OSS/FS. However, Sendmail, Postfix, and Exim are all
OSS/FS. Indeed, not only is the leading program (Sendmail) OSS/FS,
but that OSS/FS program has more than twice the installations of its
nearest competition.
15. A survey in the second quarter of 2000 found that 95% of
all reverse-lookup domain name servers (DNS) used bind, an OSS/FS
product. The Internet is built from many mostly-invisible infrastructure
components. This includes domain name servers (DNSs), which take
human-readable machine names (like yahoo.com) and translate them into
numeric addresses. Publicly accessible machines also generally support
reverse lookups, which convert the numbers back to names; for historical
reasons, this is implemented using the hidden in-addr.arpa domain. By
surveying the in-addr domain, you can gain insight into how the entire
Internet is supported. Bill Manning has surveyed the in-addr domain
and found that 95% of all name servers (in 2q2000) performing this
important Internet infrastructure task are some version of bind. This
includes all of the DNS root servers, which are critical for keeping
the Internet functioning. Bind is an OSS/FS program.
16. PHP is the webs #1 Server-side Scripting Language. PHP, a recursive
acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor, is an open source server-side
scripting language designed for creating dynamic Web pages (e.g.,
such as e-commerce). As noted in a June 3, 2002 article, PHP recently
surpassed Microsofts ASP to become the most popular server-side
Web scripting technology on the Internet, and was used by over 24%
of the sites on the Internet. Of the 37.6 million web sites surveyed
worldwide, PHP is running on over 9 million sites, and over the past
two years PHP has averaged a 6.5% monthly growth rate.
17. OpenSSH is the Internets #1 implementation of the SSH security
protocol. The Secure Shell (SSH) protocol is widely used to securely
connect to computers and control them remotely (using either a text or
X-Windows graphical interface). On April 2002, a survey of 2.4 million
Internet addresses found that OpenSSH, an OSS/FS implementation of SSH,
was the #1 implementation, with 66.8% of the market; the proprietary SSH
had 28.1%, Cisco had 0.4%, and others totaled 4.7%. You can see general
information about the survey, or the specific SSH statistics for April
2002. Its also interesting to note that OpenSSH had less than 5% of
the market in the third quarter of 2000, but its use steadily grew. By
the fourth quarter of 2001, over half of all users of the SSH protocol
were using OpenSSH, and its market share has continued to grow since.
18. GNU/Linux has a tiny client (desktop and laptop) market share,
but there are reasons to believe it will grow in the future. Many
users only direct experience with computers is through their desktop
or laptop computers running basic client applications such as a web
browser, email reader, word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation
software (the last three together are often called an office suite),
possibly with additional client applications, and all of these must have
a graphical user interface and be supported by an underlying graphical
environment. Such computers are often called client computers (even
if they are not using the technical approach called the client-server
model). OSS/FS systems like GNU/Linux have a wealth of server and
developer applications, but GNU/Linux is a brand new contender in the
client operating system (OS) market and has only begun penetrating
into that market. First, lets look at the available figures.
According to the June 2000 IDC survey of 1999 licenses for client
machines, GNU/Linux had 80% as many client shipments in 1999 as
Apples MacOS (5.0% for Mac OS, 4.1% for GNU/Linux). More recent
figures in 2002 suggest that GNU/Linux has 1.7% or 3.8% of the
client OS market (depending on which quote you believe). Obviously,
while this shows that there are many users (because there are so
many client systems), this is still small compared to Microsofts
effective monopoly on the client operating system market.
But this should not be surprising, because before 2002 OSS/FS
systems like GNU/Linux could not really meet the requirements for
a client system. Few users can even consider buying a client system
without basic client applications, since that system wont meet their
fundamental requirements. As a practical matter, client systems must
be compatible with the market leader (e.g., the office suite must
be able to read and write Microsoft Office formats); before 2002
the most available products could not do this well. Finally, for
systems like GNU/Linux to compete with its competitors, the basic
client applications and environment have to be OSS/FS as well, and
this is a point not often understood. There have been proprietary
basic client applications for GNU/Linux for several years, but
they dont really help GNU/Linux; a GNU/Linux system combined with
a proprietary basic client applications still lacks the freedoms
and low cost of purely OSS/FS systems, and the combination has to
compete with established proprietary systems which have many more
applications available to them. This doesnt mean that GNU/Linux
cant support proprietary programs; certainly some people will buy
proprietary basic client applications, and many people have already
decided to buy many other kinds of proprietary applications and run
them on a GNU/Linux system. However, few will find that a GNU/Linux
system with proprietary basic client applications has an advantage
over its competition. After all, the result is still proprietary,
and since there are fewer desktop applications on GNU/Linux,
many capabilities have been lost, little has been gained, and the
switching costs will dwarf those minute gains.
However, the situation is changing dramatically, due to three
factors: OSS/FS basic client software is now available, Microsoft
is raising prices, and governments want open systems:
1. OSS/FS basic client software is available. Back in 1997
I predicted that GNU/Linux would be ready for the desktop in
2002-2003 (5 years later). I think my prediction was correct;
OSS/FS applications and environments matured in 2002 where they
are finally competitive on the client. In 2002, Mozilla finally
released version 1.0 of their suite (including a web browser,
email reader, and other tools), and the first reasonably usable
version of Open Office (an office suite) was released. Desktop
environments matured as well; in 2002 both the GNOME and
KDE projects released capable, more mature versions of their
desktop environments. In addition the WINE product (a product
that allows OSS/FS systems to run Windows programs) was finally
able to run Microsoft Office 97, suggesting that although WINE
is still immature, it may be sufficient to run some Windows
applications developed internally by some organizations.
There are other plausible alternatives for client applications
as well, such as Evolution (an excellent mail reader), Abiword
(a lighter-weight but less capable word processor which also
released its version 1.0 in 2002), Gnumeric (a spreadsheet),
and KOffice (an office suite).
However, I will emphasize Mozilla and Open Office, for
two reasons. First, they also run on Microsoft Windows,
which makes it much it easier to transition users from the
competition (this enables users to migrate a step at a time,
instead of making a single massive change). Second, they
are full-featured, including compatibility with Microsofts
products; many users want to use fully-featured products since
they dont want to switch programs just to get a particular
feature. In short, it looks like there are now several
OSS/FS products that have begun to rival their proprietary
competitors in both usability and in the functionality that
people need, including some very capable programs.
2. Microsoft is raising prices. Microsoft is changing many of its
practices, resulting in increasing costs to its customers. It has
changed its licensing so that a single copy of Windows cannot be
used for both home and office. Microsoft has switched its largest
customers to a subscription-based approach (called Licensing
6), greatly increasing the costs to its customers. TIC/Sunbelt
Software Microsoft Licensing Survey Results (covering March 2002)
reports the impact on customers of this new licensing scheme. 80%
had a negative view of the new licensing scheme, noting, for
example, that the new costs for software assurance (25% of list
for server and 29% of list for clients) are the highest in the
industry. Of those who had done a cost analysis, an overwhelming
90% say their costs will increase if they migrate to 6.0, and
76% said their costs would increase from 20% to 300% from what
they are paying now under their current 4.0 and 5.0 Microsoft
Licensing plans. Indeed, 38% of those surveyed said that they
are actively seeking alternatives to Microsoft products.
Gartners review of Star Office (Suns variant of Open Office)
also noted that Microsofts recent licensing policies may
accelerate moving away from Microsoft. As Gartner notes, This
[new license program] has engendered a lot of resentment
among Microsofts customers, and Gartner has experienced a
marked increase in the number of clients inquiring about
alternatives to Microsofts Office suite... enterprises are
realizing that the majority of their users are consumers or
light producers of information, and that these users do not
require all of the advanced features of each new version of
Office... unless Microsoft makes significant concessions in
its new office licensing policies, Suns StarOffice will gain
at least 10 percent market share at the expense of Microsoft
Office by year-end 2004 (0.6 probability). They also note
that Because of these licensing policies, by year-end 2003,
more than 50 percent of enterprises will have an official
strategy that mixes versions of office automation products -
i.e., between multiple Microsoft Office versions or vendor
products (0.7 probability).
3. Governments want open systems. A New York Times article noted
that More than two dozen countries in Asia, Europe and Latin
America, including China and Germany, are now encouraging their
government agencies to use open source software - developed
by communities of programmers who distribute the code without
charge and donate their labor to cooperatively debug, modify
and otherwise improve the software.
Indeed, the advantages of OSS/FS to governments are clear,
especially to non-U.S. governments. No government wants their
computing infrastructure controlled by a single company
(and outside the U.S., a foreign company at that). Jiang
Guangzhi, director of a software development center in
Shanghai, emphasized that the Chinese government did not
want one company to manipulate or dominate the Chinese
market. IBM signed a Linux deal with Germany; Germanys
Interior Minister, Otto Schilly, said the move would help cut
costs, improve security in the nations computer networks, and
lower dependence on a single supplier. Ralph Naders Consumer
Project on Technology gives reasons the U.S. government should
encourage OSS/FS. Many countries favor or are considering
favoring OSS/FS in some way, such as Peru, the UK, South
Africa, and Taiwan. An older but broad survey was published
in 2001 by CNet.
Indeed, so many governments have begun enacting preferences
for OSS/FS that Microsoft has sponsored an organization called
the Initiative for Software Choice. This organization makes
many nice-sounding statements, but it appears that the real
purpose of this organization is to forbid governments from
considering software licenses when they procure software and
to encourage standards that lock out OSS/FS. An opposing
group, founded by Bruce Perens, is Sincere Choice.org,
which advocates that there be a fair, competitive market for
computer software, both proprietary and Open Source. Bruce
Perens has published an article discussing why Software
Choice is not what it first appears to be.
There are some interesting hints that GNU/Linux is already starting
to gain on the client. Some organizations, such as TrustCommerce
and the city of Largo, Florida, report that theyve successfully
transitioned to using Linux on the desktop.
Theres already some evidence that others anticipate this; Richard
Thwaite, director of IT for Ford Europe, stated in 2001 that
an open source desktop is their goal, and that they expect the
industry to eventually go there (he controls 33,000 desktops, so
this would not be a trivial move). It could be argued that this
is just a ploy for negotiation with Microsoft - but such ploys
only work if theyre credible.
There are other sources of information on OSS/FS or GNU/Linux
for clients. Desktoplinux.com is a web site devoted to the use
of GNU/Linux on the desktop; they state that We believe Linux is
ready now for widespread use as a desktop operating system, and we
have created this website to help spread the word and accelerate
the transition to a more open desktop, one that offers greater
freedom and choice for both personal and business users.
Indeed, it appears that many users are considering such a
transition. ZDNet published survey results on August 22, 2002,
which asked Would your company switch its desktop PCs from Windows
to Linux if Windows apps could run on Linux? Of the more than
15,000 respondents, 58% said theyd make the switch immediately;
another 25% said theyd consider dumping Windows in favor of Linux
within a year. While all such surveys need to be taken with a grain
of salt, still, these are not the kind of responses you would see
from users happy with their current situation. They also noted
that ZDNet Australia found that 55% of the surveyed IT managers
were considering switching from Microsoft products.
3. Reliability
There are a lot of anecdotal stories that OSS/FS is more reliable, but
finally there is quantitative data confirming that mature OSS/FS programs
are more reliable:
1. Equivalent OSS/FS applications are more reliable, according to
a 1995 study. The 1995 Fuzz Revisited paper measured reliability by
feeding programs random characters and determining which ones resisted
crashing and freeze-ups. Some researchers scoff at this measure,
since this approach is unlikely to find subtle failures, but the study
authors note that their approach still manages to find many errors
in production software and is a useful tool for finding software flaws.
OSS/FS had higher reliability by this measure. It states in section
2.3.1 that: It is also interesting to compare results of testing
the commercial systems to the results from testing freeware GNU
and Linux. The seven commercial systems in the 1995 study have
an average failure rate of 23%, while Linux has a failure rate
of 9% and the GNU utilities have a failure rate of only 6%. It is
reasonable to ask why a globally scattered group of programmers,
with no formal testing support or software engineering standards
can produce code that is more reliable (at least, by our measure)
than commercially produced code. Even if you consider only the
utilities that were available from GNU or Linux, the failure rates
for these two systems are better than the other systems.
There is evidence that Windows applications have similar
reliability to the proprietary Unix software (e.g., less reliable
than the OSS/FS software). A later paper, An Empirical Study of
the Robustness of Windows NT Applications Using Random Testing,
found that with Windows NT GUI applications, they could crash 21%
of the applications they tested, hang an additional 24% of the
applications, and could crash or hang all the tested applications
when subjecting them to random Win32 messages. Thus, theres no
evidence that proprietary Windows software is more reliable than
OSS/FS by this measure. Yes, Windows has progressed since that
time - but so have the OSS/FS programs.
Although this experiment was done in 1995, nothing thats happened
since suggests that proprietary software has become much better
than OSS/FS programs since then. Indeed, since 1995 theres been
an increased interest and participation in OSS/FS, resulting
in far more eyeballs examining and improving the reliability of
OSS/FS programs.
The fuzz papers authors found that proprietary software vendors
generally didnt fix the problems identified in an earlier version
of their paper, and found that concerning. In contrast, Scott
Maxwell led an effort to remove every flaw identified in the
OSS/FS software in the 1995 fuzz paper, and eventually fixed
every flaw. Thus, the OSS/FS communitys response shows why, at
least in part, OSS/FS programs have such an edge in reliability;
if problems are found, theyre often fixed. Even more intriguingly,
the person who spearheaded ensuring that these problems were fixed
wasnt an original developer of the programs - a situation only
possible with OSS/FS.
Now be careful: OSS/FS is not magic pixie dust; beta software of
any kind is still buggy! However, the 1995 experiment measured
mature OSS/FS to mature proprietary software, and the OSS/FS
software was more reliable under this measure.
2. GNU/Linux is more reliable than Windows NT, according to a 10-month
ZDnet experiment. ZDnet ran a 10-month test for reliability to compare
Caldera Systems OpenLinux, Red Hat Linux, and Microsofts Windows NT
Server 4.0 with Service Pack 3. All three used identical (single-CPU)
hardware, and network requests were sent to each server in parallel for
standard Internet, file, and print services. The result: NT crashed
an average of once every six weeks, each taking about 30 minutes to
fix; thats not bad, but neither GNU/Linux server ever went down. This
ZDnet article also does a good job of identifying GNU/Linux weaknesses
(e.g., desktop applications and massive SMP). Hopefully Windows has
made improvements since this study - but the OSS/FS have certainly
made improvements as well.
3. GNU/Linux is more reliable than Windows NT, according to a one-year
Bloor Research experiment. Bloor Research had both operating systems
running on relatively old Pentium machines. In the space of one year,
GNU/Linux crashed once because of a hardware fault (disk problems),
which took 4 hours to fix, giving it a measured availability of 99.95
percent. Windows NT crashed 68 times, caused by hardware problems
(disk), memory (26 times), file management (8 times), and a number
of odd problems (33 times). All this took 65 hours to fix, giving an
availability of 99.26 percent. Its intriguing that the only GNU/Linux
problem and a number of the Windows problems were hardware-related;
it could be argued that the Windows hardware was worse, or it could
be argued that GNU/Linux did a better job of avoiding and containing
hardware failures. In any case, file management failure can be blamed
on Windows, and the odd problems appear to be caused by Windows as
well, indicating that GNU/Linux is far more reliable than Windows. Gnet
summarized this as saying the winner here is clearly Linux.
4. Sites using Microsofts IIS web serving software have more than
double the time offline (on average) than sites using the Apache
software, according to a 3-month Swiss evaluation. These are the
results of Syscontrol AGs analysis of website uptime (announced
February 7, 2000) They measured over 100 popular Swiss web sites over a
three-month period, checking from 4 different locations every 5 minutes
(itd be interesting to see what a larger sample would find!). You can
see their report (in German), or a Babelfish (machine) translation
of the report. Heres their entire set of published data on average
down-time in an hour per type of server, plus a 3-month average that
Ive computed:
Downtime Apache Microsoft Netscape Other September 5.21 10.41 3.85
8.72 October 2.66 8.39 2.80 12.05 November 1.83 14.28 3.39 6.85
Average 3.23 11.03 3.35 9.21
Its hard not to notice that Apache (the OSS web server) had the best
results over the three-month average (and with better results over
time, too). Indeed, Apaches worst month was better than Microsofts
best month. I believe the difference between Netscape and Apache
is statistically insignificant - but this still shows that the
freely-available OSS/FS solution (Apache) has a reliability at
least as good as the most reliable proprietary solution. The report
does note that this might not be solely the fault of the softwares
quality, since there were several Microsoft IIS sites that had
short interruptions at the same time each day (suggesting regular
restarts). However, this still begs the question -- why did the
IIS sites require so many more regular restarts than the Apache
sites? Every outage, even if preplanned, results in a service loss
(and for e-commerce sites, a potential loss of sales).
5. According to a separate uptime study by Netcraft, OSS/FS does very
well; as of August 3, 2001, of the 50 sites with the highest uptimes,
92% use Apache and 50% run on OSS/FS operating systems. Netcraft
keeps a track of the 50 often-requested sites with the longest uptimes
at http://uptime.netcraft.com. Looking at the August 3, 2001 uptime
report, I found that 92% (46/50) of the sites use Apache; one sites
web server was unknown, and three others were not Apache. Of those
three, only one reported to be Microsoft IIS, and that one instance
is suspicious because its reported operating system is BSD/OS
(this apparent inconsistency can be explained in many ways, e.g.,
perhaps there is a front-end BSD/OS system that masks the IIS web
site, or perhaps the web server is lying about its type to confuse
attackers). In this snapshot, 50% (25/50) ran on an open source
operating system, and only Unix-like operating systems had these large
uptimes (no Windows systems were reported as having the best uptimes).
As with all surveys, this one has weaknesses, as discussed in
Netcrafts Uptime FAQ. Their techniques for identifying web server
and operating systems can be fooled. Only systems for which Netcraft
was sent many requests were included in the survey (so its not every
site in the world). Any site that is requested through the whats
that site running query form at Netcraft.com is added to the set of
sites that are routinely sampled; Netcraft doesnt routinely monitor
all 22 million sites it knows of for performance reasons. Many
operating systems dont provide uptime information and thus cant be
included; this includes AIX, AS/400, Compaq Tru64, DG/UX, MacOS,
NetWare, NT3/Windows 95, NT4/Windows 98, OS/2, OS/390, SCO UNIX,
Sony NEWS-OS, SunOS 4, and VM. Thus, this uptime counter can only
include systems running on BSD/OS, FreeBSD (but not the default
configuration in versions 3 and later), recent versions of HP-UX,
IRIX, GNU/Linux 2.1 kernel and later (except on Alpha processor
based systems), MacOS X, recent versions of NetBSD/OpenBSD,
Solaris 2.6 and later, and Windows 2000. Note that Windows NT
systems cannot be included in this survey (because their uptimes
couldnt be counted). Windows 2000 systemss data are included
in the source source for this survey, but they have a different
problem. Windows 2000 had little hope to be included in the August
2001 list, because the 50th system in the list had an uptime of
661 days, and Windows 2000 had only been launched about 17 months
(about 510 days) earlier. Note that HP-UX, GNU/Linux (usually),
Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after
497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that
precise point. Thus it is not possible to see an HP-UX, GNU/Linux
(usually), or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497
days, and in fact their uptimes can be misleading (they may be up
for a long time, yet not show it). There is yet one other weakness:
if a computer switches operating systems later, the long uptime
is credited to the new operating system. Still, this survey does
compare Windows 2000, GNU/Linux (up to 497 days usually), FreeBSD,
and several other operating systems, and OSS/FS does quite well.
It could be argued that perhaps systems on the Internet that
havent been rebooted for such a long time might be insignificant,
half-forgotten, systems. For example, its possible that security
patches arent being regularly applied, so such long uptimes are
not necessarily good things. However, a counter-argument is that
Unix and Linux systems dont need to be rebooted as often for a
security update, and this is a valuable attribute for a system
to have. Even if you accepted that unproven claim, its certainly
true that there are half-forgotten Windows systems, too, and they
didnt do so well. Also, only systems someone specifically asked
for information about were included in the uptime survey, which
would limit the number of insignificant or half-forgotten systems.
At the very least, Unix and Linux are able to quantitatively
demonstrate longer uptimes than their Windows competitors can,
so Unix and Linux have significantly better evidence of their
reliability than Windows.
Of course, there are many anecdotes about Windows reliability vs. Unix. For
example, the Navys Smart Ship program caused a complete failure of the
entire USS Yorktown ship in September 1997. Anthony DiGiorgio (a
whistle-blower) stated that Windows is the source of the Yorktowns computer
problems. Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction
Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there have been
numerous software failures associated with [Windows] NT aboard the Yorktown.
Redman also said Because of politics, some things are being forced on us
that without political pressure we might not do, like Windows NT... If it
were up to me I probably would not have used Windows NT in this particular
application. If we used Unix, we would have a system that has less of a
tendency to go down.
One problem with reliability measures is that it takes a long time to gather
data on reliability in real-life circumstances. Thus, theres more data
comparing older Windows editions to older GNU/Linux editions. The key is
that these tests contemporary versions of both OSS/FS and proprietary
systems; both have moved forward since, but its a fair test. Nevertheless,
the available evidence suggests that OSS/FS has a significant edge in
reliability. 4. Performance
Comparing GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows performance on equivalent hardware
has a history of contentious claims and different results based on different
assumptions. I think that OSS/FS has at least shown that its often
competitive, and in many circumstances it beats the competition.
Performance benchmarks are very sensitive to the assumptions and
environment, so the best benchmark is one you set up yourself to model your
intended environment. Failing that, you should use unbiased measures,
because its so easy to create biased measures.
First, here are a few recent studies suggesting that some OSS/FS systems
beat their proprietary competition in at least some circumstances:
1. In 2002, TPC-C database measures found that a Linux based system
was faster than a Windows 2000 based system. More specifically, an
HP ProLiant DL580 with 32 Intel Xeon 900MHz CPUs running Oracle 9i R2
Enterprise edition ran faster running on a stock Red Hat Linux Advanced
Server than on Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server. You can see
the Linux and Windows reports; note that HP did not modify the Linux
kernel to get these results. 2. PC Magazines November 2001 performance
tests for file servers found that Linux with Samba significantly
outperformed Windows 2000. PC Magazines article Performance Tests:
File Server Throughput and Response Times found that Linux with
Samba significantly outperformed Windows 2000 Server when used as a
file server for Microsofts own network file protocols. This was true
regardless of the number of simultaneous clients (they tested a range
up to 30 clients), and it was true on the entire range on computers
they used (Pentium II/233MHz with 128MiB RAM, Pentium III/550MHz with
256MiB RAM, and Pentium III/1GHz with 512MiB RAM, where MiB is 2^20
bytes). Indeed, as the machines became more capable the absolute
difference became more pronounced. On the fastest hardware while
handling largest number of clients, GNU/Linuxs throughput was about
130 MB/sec vs. Windows 78 MB/sec (GNU/Linux was 78% faster).
3. PC Magazine file server performance tests again in April 2002;
again Linux with Samba beat Windows 2000, only now Samba surpasses
Windows 2000 by about 100% and can handle 4 times as many clients. PC
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