Linux distributors including Caldera, SuSE and TurboLinux are expected to join forces tomorrow to unite on a common distribution. The news was scooped by eWeek"s Peter Galli, under the headline Linux vendors gang up on Red Hat, which gets to the point pretty well.
Galli was told that the alliance hinges on a common distro. Whether this involves more than just joint marketing agreements, or extends as far as a new Computer Associates-style umbrella operation, we"ll have to wait and see.
Having decided that it"s better to hang together than hang seperately, the distros are silent, for now:
"You can make guesses, and they"ll be probably right," a spokesman for one of the distros told us this morning.
Apart from Red Hat, which bought a strong tools and embedded business, and has the lion"s share of the commercial market, it"s difficult to see who"s making money off Linux right now, apart from IBM