It's been a good news, bad news kind of week for Linux. On the one hand, some supporters remain deluded that the open-source operating system has a legit chance of taking on Vista. At the same time, Novell CEO Ron Hovespian took a hard look at the Linux landscape and came to a conclusion not too different from my recent rant about their being way too many distros. (OK, he didn't say precisely that.)What Hovespian did do, according to the report in the authoritative but terminally cheeky Register, is essentially point out that the multiplicity of distros makes it expensive for vendors to prep their ports:

"Despite nearly a decade of success for Linux, one fundamental issue has not been solved by the community: helping ISVs overcome the expense and time needed to port applications to different distributions that use different APIs and packages.

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To that end, Hovsepian called for a re-doubling of efforts to standardize the way ISVs certify software using a vendor-neutral process. 'Certification is not transferable across distributions... the risk we have is we are going to fragment the ISVs,' Hovsepian said."

Ron is absolutely right. Unfortunately, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a vendor-neutral certification process based on the Linux Standard Base to become a industry-wide practice.

Which means that Linux is going to continue to suffer from a dearth of applications (I know, more apps run on Linux than ever before. My point is, it's still not enough to put Linux on an even keel with Windows.)

Here's my recommendation: Let's stop messing around with the 350 distros which don't matter, and stick to Red Hat, Novell/OpenSUSE, and many Ubuntu and be done with it.

Second Leg

Now that Hovespian has implicitly given his imprimatur to the notion that too many distros are damaging to Linux's health, maybe we can put this whole debate to rest.

It's interesting how the needle has moved. When I first suggested that the availability of 359 distros had turned Linux into "a forking mess," I was roundly criticized.

My friend Brian Proffitt at LinuxToday even characterized my idea as "inane." (I'm happy to report that he assured me he was referring to my column, not to me personally.)

However, a couple of weeks later, Brian had his ear bent by Jeff Waugh of GNOME and Canonical, leading Proffitt to do a follow-up column where he wrote of Waugh:

"He is not denying that choice is an inevitable outcome of open source development, but he is concerned that too many developers are pursuing new projects for the sake of choice itself."

In summary, all I can say is, hail the likes of Hovespian and Waugh, who are bringing much-needed reality-based thinking to the open-source community. If only we could get the fanboys to listen.