Sun COO fears Linux fragmenting

Slashdotters talk about a CNet interview with Sun COO Ed Zander in which he brings up the often-repeated fear that Linux will fragment: “The thing with Linux today — I call it the bathtub. I can throw source in there. It’s all floating around and it’s available to everybody. But I as a
vendor can take anything I want out of that bathtub and call it Linux.

Now if you think that’s going to work for application developers, call me in a year or two when IBM’s Linux is different than HP’s Linux is
different than Dell’s Linux and (a customer) will have to recompile five times. You’ve broken it effectively. So you cannot depend on one Linux.”