There is a huge flaw in your comparison in that you imply that proprietary software will always implement requested patches.

Linux end users have a few advantages:

1) Because they can shop around with the source code they can approach several sources for a fix to their problem. This has to increase their chances over a single commercial source that will implement only if it sees the $$s to do it.

2) Linux programmers are just as likely to respond to a few dollars as proprietary software -- perhaps more so.

3) Because they can inform themselves with the source they can ask much better questions and find a wider educated community on the web. This also increases their chance of finding someone else with the same problem who might have already found a solution. Proprietary code tends to be left with something like 'printing doesn't work on my networked seikosiesha printer' -- open source will allow them to have someone determine the modules or libraries that have the problem.

You're right in your implication that a company without computer consultants, and with no will to understand the code they run or pay someone to help them with their problems is without much support unless they look for it --- but the same is absolutely true of proprietary software, perhaps more so.

Just burbles from some poor guy who can't read EULA's. I doubt seriously that MS, IBM or Sun would actually make a modded version of their OS for any customer. From the promises I've read in the EULAs there certainly isn't even a willingness to hold themselvs responsible for guarenteeing the basic functionality of the products they want so much money for.

If the agreement I have to accept from the big commercial software vendors basically dis-avows any and all responsibility for anything and everything, and promises to leave me on my own if anything goes wrong, then what do I gain from using commercial software other than the right to be audited? At least with open source software there is an interested community that frequently has answers to problems. Yes, that community is usually very hard on people who ask questions that have already been answered, but isn't that better than a place that guarentees that you will get no answer -- and wants your money too?

As I seriously doubt any of those companies would be running vanilla kernels, why would they be approaching the kernel maintainers in the first place? There seems always to be this confusion between "Linux" and "Linux Distributions". Linux is fairly useless on it's own to most. You need applications to make it useful. Unless you are going to bundle it up yourself, you usually need to install a "distribution" such as Redhat, Suse, Debian etc.

If changes required are indeed to be made to the kernel, and the changes will benefit all linux kernel users, then talk to the kernel maintainers, it will likely be added, and it will be added a lot faster if contributions of development or funding are made.

If the changes will only benefit the company itself, or are application orientated, then first stop would be the hardware vendor (If it's driver related), then the distribution maintainer, failing that a third party developer could be used or hire an in house developer.

The advantage of linux over a commercial OS is that you don't have to go
begging, you just do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. With all
the money saved on licenses there should be plenty of cash left over for
this. Don't bother going to redhat and paying for there overhead, pay
an individual, its quite easy to find thousands of names of developers in
the credits for various open source projects.

An interesting point in the article is the problem of a company requesting a change, but having difficulty because the developer is employed by a competitor.

This is the crux of the commercial world. If the request is for a general change to the kernal or other system app, there wouldn't be any issues at all, as the change is good for all.

However, if the change requested is for commercial gain, or commercially sensitive, then it isn't an Open Source issue. Since the competitor employs a Unix programmer, they obviously think it gives them some sort of commercial advantage. Maybe it is also in the other company's interest to employ one as well.

Job offers accepted!

This is Open Source, folks. That's the point. If you need some code, write it. If you are not a technical company, you have all the usual ways of acquiring code -- outside developers, etc., including the resources of the open source community, who can handle small projects on an ad hoc basis more easily because of the transparency of the open source environment.

I think that it's just that we're unaccustomed to the new possibilities. It won't seem strange once we've figured it out.

'Fraid I have to agree with 'Silly Premise'; if a company doesn't have the where-with-all to put a coder or two on staff and develop the software that will give their company product an edge, consider shutting the doors. Simply put, develop in-house without involving closed-source suppliers. Instead of whining about it, they should do something about it...

Two things that unclear for me in this article:

1. Are you really talking about Linux, the kernel? If a company in the $1B range, as in your example, is interested in new kernel feature(s),I assert that they have the resources available to become a "community" member and give back by hiring a "like minded" kernel hacker or two as you suggested. Certainly HP, IBM and other tech companies have done so, why not non-tech companies? Certainly they would benefit greatly from having a kernel expert on staff.

2. If this is not a kernel issue, Linus' announcement is a non-issue unless the project has the same "signature" requirement. You only mentioned Apache and linux in HP printers. As I said above, HP supports kernel development. I'm sure that most projects with OSDL affiliation would welcome corporate support.

Thank you for your timely and thought provoking piece.

This is a ridiculous story that seems to ignore the whole premise of Open Source. Nobody is stopping anybody from writing code. If multi-billion dollar corporations can't afford to hire a coder or two then how do they expect free software to suddenly morph into their magic solution?
And the apparently unspoken assumption that closed source companies would cater to their every whim is naive and out of touch with reality.

Or they could ask the Vendor that they got the product from. Linux on it's own is not a product and therefore doesn't come with the same privileges. Linux products come from Linux vendors and there is no reason that you can't ask the vendor to make a change to the product. Almost every major linux distribution modifies most of the major packages from their default in some way. How is this worthy of an article without that answer?

They are free to write features they want ... hire programmers to do it ... either GPL it if they distribute or keep it internal if they don't ... it is not a hard concept to fugure out!