Hi,

there are some facts about Linux=B4problems in the editorial by Andr=E9 
von Raison of the Mai 2000 issue of the german magazine "ix" that 
may be of interest.

Here are some of the highlights translated:

...(starting with talking about the splitup of Unix that helped NTs 
success)...  

"With the growing interest of the professional environment in Linux 
the differences of the distributions get more attention. The people of 
the ix-testlaboratory can report several problems: scripts that run 
only on certain distributions, strange interpretation of the Linux 
filesystem standard, incompatible handling of the system-startup-
scripts, and different interfaces of the standard libraries are only the 
worst." 

"Commercial softwaredevelopers are not interested to support 
several new platforms with Linux. SAP set a signal when they 
announced that they will only support a single distribution. R/3 will 
only be available and supported under RedHat, at least now."

... (here are some thoughts about why and how RedHat could have 
convinced SAP to exclusively support them, their strategies are 
compared to Microsofts=B4) ...

"There has been a Linux Standard Base (LSB) around for some 
time and most of the big distributions are members now. In march 
the first proposals of a base specification have been published 
under www.linuxbase.org. A final agreement has not jet been found. 
The distributors, most of all the US market leader, show a lack of 
flexibility when it comes to needed compromises. ...."

... (ends with some thoughts that the pressure of the (commercial) 
software industry could stop the splitup of Linux) ...



The whole article can be found (in german only) at 
http://www.heise.de/ix/artikel/2000/05/003/


mike