Some Analysts Still Don't Get It

In the early days of Linux, analysts were spouting all kinds of nonsense about Linux. It was pretty clear that folks from firms like Forrester and Gartner weren’t clued in entirely about what Linux is, how open source works, nor did they have any vision for the future.

But after 20 years, I figured that most analysts with a major firm like Forrester would know better than writing silly posts that say mobile has killed Linux’s hopes for world domination. Unfortunately not.

Mike Gualtieri writes, “the real end to Linux’s hope for world dominance came when mobile platforms iOS and Android cleaned clocks in the mobile market. Sure, Android is built on top of Linux, but Linux is only one of many piece parts of the Android mobile operating system. It is not Linux.”

Say what?

In as much as any operating system using the Linux kernel is “Linux,” then Android certainly is Linux. Sure, Android ships a lot of different pieces compared to Ubuntu or Fedora, but it’s still Linux.

What Gualtieri is trying, I think, to say is that Android isn’t the standard Linux desktop. The Linux desktop market share is not huge, but it seems to me that the world is moving away from standard desktops over time. Meanwhile, in the form of Android, Linux is racking up some serious points towards “world domination.”

Inexplicably, Gualtieri also overlooks all the other devices that Linux powers. Every Roku, TiVo, and Kindle runs Linux. It’s in televisions and cars. It’s powering the majority of supercomputers. The list goes on and on.

Finally, Gualtieri says “open source never seems to be the innovator.” But that’s false as well. Look at the hottest technologies of the year so far — Hadoop, Cassandra, MongoDB, and the list goes on. All open source, all innovative.

I know the Linux Foundation does technical Linux training. Perhaps it’s time for them to branch out into a remedial class on Linux for analysts.