Open Letter to companies who publish software for Linux

An Open letter to companies who build products for Linux

17 May, 2007

To Whom it may Concern:

My name is Rubin Bennett, and I am the owner of RB Technologies, a Linux consulting company in the Northeastern United States . RB Technologies has been installing and building Linux based servers and network infrastructure (routers, firewalls, VPN and Spam filtering appliances etc.) for over 10 years, and we have a roster of clients that spans both coasts, and includes well over 100 servers. I actively participate in the Free and Open Source software community, contributing code to several projects, from SpamAssassin (http://spamassassin.apache.org) to the Linux-HA project (http://linux-ha.org) to internally developed FOSS software such as the SpamDigester (http://spamdigester.org).

This letter is to express my disappointment at what I sense to be an emerging trend in commercial companies that support or build products that run on Linux: I really resent being forced to choose one of the big 2 Linux distributors by my choice (in this particular instance) of groupware suite. It seems to be the very antithesis of what Linux is about for a software vendor to build their packages for only the 2 or 3 'top' Linux distributions to me; isn't Linux and GNU and FOSS supposed to be about choice and freedom at it's core? What is it with these companies? I use Linux precisely because I don't like being roped into an Operating system choice, or any choice for that matter.

I don't use, deploy, or support Exchange because A. I think it's a bad product from a disaster recovery and security perspective, and B. Because it forces me to use an operating system that I detest for similar reasons.

I fail to follow the logic therefore that in order to use a product that is built, theoretically, for "Linux" that I must therefore use the distribution of the product makers' choice; it puts me in *exactly* the same position that I refuse to accept from Microsoft!

So... to the product development and marketing teams at Scalix and Zimbra, please - have a change of heart! By allowing your product to run on different distributions, you are not forced to support them; you are simply allowing your customers to make a choice about the 'flavor' of Linux they prefer. By not locking particular (i.e. all other) distributions out, you allow your customers to make the choice to install your product on a 'Supported' distribution, or on another, 'non-supported' distribution. You get to set the terms for your product support on the supported vs. non-supported flavors, so please, leave the choice up to your customers as to what level of support we are willing to accept, rather than force us to make architectural changes to networks based upon your corporate choices. That is what Linux, and the idea of Freedom that Linux embodies is all about.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Rubin Bennett
Owner,
rbTechnologies