Revenue from new licences of the Linux operating system fell last
year, following two years of rapid growth. However, a shift in the
business model around the open-source operating system is setting
Linux up for a boost in revenue through 2006, a recent survey
shows.
Sales of new Linux operating system licences fell 5% from 2000 to
2001, according to a survey released last week by research company
IDC. Over the next five years, revenue from the sale of Linux
systems is expected to grow from $80m (£52.25m) in 2001 to $280m in
2006.
The decline in Linux revenue from new licence shipments was part of
a wider decline in server software during 2001, according to IDC.
Additionally, the number of units of server operating systems
shipped in 2001 was flat compared with the previous year.
Microsoft's Windows operating system was the only system to show
revenue growth from 2000 to 2001, said Al Gillen, research director
of system software at IDC.
IDC tracks its data for new licence revenue by adding up all of the
copies of an operating system sold as part of a configured system
or in a box.
This tracking method has not always been a good indicator of how
widely Linux is deployed because the operating system can be
downloaded freely from the Web.
Additionally, users can install a single copy of Linux on any
number of computers, which is not possible for Windows users
because of licensing restrictions. As a result, revenue collected
from the sale of Linux licences does not correlate directly with
how widely it is distributed, according to Gillen.
"Historically, it's been harder to track. But that's changing,"
Gillen said.
IDC research showed that customers are changing their habits over
how they deploy Linux in the enterprise. Increasingly, Linux users
will install a single copy of Linux on no more than two or three
machines, Gillen said.
"It's our belief that over time the industry is going to move to a
smaller number of deployments [per copy]," he added.
This shift is partly the result of business models being
constructed around the open-source operating system by vendors such
as Red Hat, SuSE Linux and IBM.
"The vendors are moving to a model where they are offering support
for only one machine per licence," Gillen said.
Under that model, customers must purchase a licence for every
server that they want supported by the vendor. Red Hat, which holds
the lion's share of the Linux server software market, follows that
licensing model.