Lora Bentley spoke with Amanda McPherson, marketing and developer programs VP at the Linux Foundation. She and two colleagues recently released a new paper, “Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution.”

Bentley: Your study found that it would cost $1.4 billion for a company to build the Linux kernel from scratch today, and $10.8 billion to build an entire Linux distribution similar to Fedora 9. Can you explain how you reached those figures?

McPherson: The conclusions were reached by using David Wheeler’s well-known SLOC tool, SLOCCount, which makes use of the industry standard COnstructive COst MOdel (COCOMO). This methodology takes into account lines of code written, the appropriate number of labor years, and salary adjustments for inflation. We wanted to come up with a real number based on the one thing you can quantify in open source — code. We used a well-regarded methodology and tool that had been used before. Instead of making random projects, we thought this was the best way to approach it.

Bentley: Why the Fedora community distribution and not another?

McPherson: Fedora is the basis for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which represents a large percentage of the Linux market. This provided us with a very relevant model to assess. Also, David A. Wheeler had used Red Hat for his study in 2002. OpenSuse and Debian/Ubuntu would, of course, also be great targets for this study. We may do that at a later date. We also would like to use an embedded distribution.

Bentley: What do or should these findings mean to proprietary software vendors?

McPherson: I think it means the future of software development is collaborative. These systems have grown so powerful and so important that for any one company to fund the development on its own would be a foolish and possibly financially untenable decision. Software development today actually requires collaboration in order to innovate at the pace the market demands. Consider devices like the Kindle and Gphone. They wouldn’t likely be available today were it not for the billions of dollars worth of R&D that they can use from the Linux kernel. You see companies like Intel using Linux and open source components in the Moblin project to expand the use of netbooks running its products. Intel could instead develop proprietary software in-house to meet this need, but why would they when they can make use of billions of dollars of free R&D? Things have changed since the desktop computer revolution.

Bentley: Don’t many proprietary software vendors recognize the value of open source now given that so many use open source in some way or another?

McPherson: Absolutely! You can also look at our “Who Writes Linux” report to see that hundreds of companies support Linux development directly. This study shows that those companies (such as IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Novell and HP) have made a very smart decision. They can fully participate in a large ecosystem and make use of free R&D without having to shoulder the burden all alone.

Bentley: So why is a study like this one helpful?

McPherson: Sometimes it’s easy to take a ubiquitous piece of technology for granted, especially one you can use for free. I think it’s not just Linux we take for granted: Just imagine the R&D value of the Internet itself and what that means for our economy. Compared to that, Linux seems small, yet when you think about all the innovation it’s powered or is powering, you start to get the idea. I honestly can’t imagine where we would be if Google had had to pay a company a per-server fee for its servers. I do not believe the economics would have been there to build out the powerful search network that we all use everyday. This study makes us appreciate the sometimes-unheralded piece of software and the license that has powered this innovation.

Bentley: Do the findings have added significance in light of the current economic climate?

McPherson: I think so. Linux has always been a lower-cost alternative to Windows, but this report illustrates its economic impact on technology innovation. It’s exciting to see how the collaborative development model is fueling a new category of devices and technologies that would be at least a decade into the future if it weren’t for Linux. Let’s remember that in software, time is money; oftentimes time is more important than money. For a company like Google or Intel to be able to make use of this code that has taken years to develop, drives innovation and keeps costs low for consumers.

By: Lora Bentley

In this day’s websites normally requires simple web hosting plans for smooth performance of the website and email transfer that is essential. There are two modes of hosting planes are generally available, first is Linux hosting and second one is Windows hosting. Both have several advantages and disadvantages respectively but Depending upon small business owner’s requirements suitable managed hosting plan can be selected for a specific website.

Well in most of the normal situations, the general preference of small business owners for choosing web hosting plan moves towards the Linux server hosting plans rather than window server hosting, because there are numerous optimistic factor that influence people to choose it.

Expenditure Factor

The truth is that Linux hosting plans are much economical than Windows servers plans. For all small business people the web hosting price matters vastly. They wish to receive many options or you can say facilities at a tiny expenditure. Most of them not required supreme type of security and they also do not bother whether it is MS-SQL database server or some thing else to develop their database. Thus Linux server is the best option for them at really least cost with several kinds of features.

Open Source Factor

Linux is an Open Source code and enables people from all around the world to promote their own knowledge for its development. This is one of the main reasons where Linux servers have the power to eject Windows servers far away form competitive hosting industry. Now a day’s, due to its farthest adaptability Linux becomes a unique platform for lots of fresh technologies that are mostly used in competitive hosting industry. This means that a Linux server gives you numerous features than Windows servers can does.

Scripting Language Factor

There are many scripting language available on the Internet like Perl, Python, Java, and PHP to build your site. All these scripting languages and have been developed on Linux / UNIX web servers and they do not required Microsoft support to run them. But when you use those scripting languages which can be run on windows servers like ASP.Net then you require MS-SQL to develop the database and other supports of Microsoft. Now it is easily understandable that for small business owners Linux hosting is best to host their website into the internet.

Dependability Factor

Now a day’s Linux is vastly known as really steady and dependable. This means that Linux servers are little faster, easy to use and reputed as non crushable than a Windows server. Thus, Linux servers will provide more upgraded facilities for your website at a minimum outlay.

Familiarity and Executing Speed Factor

Linux servers have years of experience for providing services than Windows servers in hosting industry. There is no such recommendable difference in executing speed between Linux servers and Windows servers, but it is viewed that Linux servers are slightly quicker in processing normal website pages.

Efficiency Factor

Windows support ASP which is a programming language supported by Microsoft, which allows people to fabricate dynamic database motivated website pages by connecting with a MS-SQL server or Access server. It increase the production cost as well. Linux neither requires ASP language nor MS-SQL databases to build dynamic database driven website pages, because it simply uses MySQL database which is freely available.

By: Joanna Gadel

For basic HTML web sites, there is no apparent difference.

As you may have guessed, Windows and
Linux accounts are differentiated by the operating system platform that the server runs on.

Windows is a Windows 2000 (or the new Windows server 2003), which are both very much like the Microsoft Windows 98, XP, etc…Except, web server versions are more specialized for hosting web sites and server applications that standard PC operating
systems.

Linux is an alternative operating system platform originally developed from open source code and Unix (not from a software corporate giant, like Microsoft). It is not very popular in the Desktop PC market, but has become huge in
the server arena with versions like RedHat, Debian, CentOS and others.

Q: I have a Windows PC, does this mean I need Windows web hosting?
A: No – That does not matter.

So, which one is better for a basic website?

Performance-wise, it is hard to tell any difference at all. With Linux, you tend to get more “bang for the buck”, since there are not the extensive licensing fees as are associated with a Microsoft product. You will notice that in web hosting plans, the Linux accounts typically cost a little less than the Windows hosting accounts.

For the beginning webmaster or hobbyist, Linux seems to be a good starting place due to it’s affordability and versatility. You may find it interesting that about 2/3 of all web sites are hosted on Linux platform. About 1/4 are Windows driven.

For the advanced web developer, the opposing platforms represent different flavors of technology associated to each. For example, Microsoft developers can use “Access Database” and “ASP Script”- while
Linux developers can use “MOD_PERL” and “MYSQL Database” (with HostNed, PHP, CGI and Perl are supported on both platforms). All of this garble is simply different technologies for driving dynamic and very complex sites (like auction sites or shopping malls).

Whichever one you choose, it is not a big deal. Both Linux and Windows are excellent server platforms that can be a very fast and reliable vessel to serve up your website to the world!

By: Dan Wright