[Discuss] MS and Novell

[pw]

Thor Heinrichs-Wolpert wrote:
> Both RedHat and SuSe have employees that help Oracle work on the distro setup.  SuSe also maintains a mailing list and installation guides to help with Oracle installs.
> 
> RedHat and SuSe are similar in some areas (common core, kernel and some common packages).  Their approach to security is very different and they are going in different directions there.  Novell has also added SuSe into their Zen systems management, so if I was an ITIL shop, I could use that toolset and be 100% ITIL compliant fairly easily.  Our Linux guru has looked at the Zen stuff and found it to be very cheap, and that was without taking into account the time needed to document and setup an ITIL compliant environment without it.  Again, this is one item that has made it easier to consider bringing in Linux into these Microsoft environments as they don't need to spend thousands of dollars in showing compliance, as they can leverage Novell's work, like they leverage Microsoft's work in showing compliance with state standards.
> 
> Thor HW
> 


Compliance with government standards is a big issue. Are all states
adopting the same IT standards, I mean is it just a laundry list of
ANSI specs, or are some states more rigorous than others? What
would the most difficult level of standards be if a particular
distro wanted to compete with SuSe or RedHat? Would
it be possible for other distros to meet the same standards?
(say, to run Oracle)
If not what does that say about opensource and software freedom
of choice, and all those historical gnu-linux bug-bears that have
become the mantra of more conservative linux users?

Peter