IT organizations are simply not equipped to deal with intellectual property theft issues within a product they have deployed widely. They have neither the legal expertise nor the budget to even properly assess the risk, let alone effectively mitigate it.
The key licenses that surround Linux, for the most part, have yet to be fully tested in court. These initial tests seldom go the way the drafters intended, because judges are not technical and the issues are complex. With the proliferation of firms whose existence is supported solely by the protection of intellectual property they have acquired, these tests are fast approaching and will likely, over time, identify the weaknesses in the current approach. The SCO-IBM lawsuit is the latest example of these kinds of tests, as are NTP's patent lawsuit against Research in Motion, Intergraph's litigation against Intel, and even Sun's Java lawsuit against Microsoft. The market may soon be defined by the ability to litigate rather than the ability to develop, and products like Linux, which have a weak defense, may simply not survive this market phase.
One of the things that most concerns me, because it was major failing in previous anti-establishment (read "anti-Microsoft") initiatives, is the behavior of the most visible advocates for these alternative platforms. Microsoft has clearly been blessed with challengers who apparently never learned not to run around blindfolded with sharp objects pointed at their own hearts.
Many Linux users are outspoken and militant. Like their OS/2, MacOS, and Unix predecessors and counterparts, they make personal attacks and broad public statements. Some avid Linux defenders make statements that are unprofessional, and filled with words we wouldn't accept in the workplace. These defenders are clearly doing damage to the credibility of their effort. Moreover, they bravely, or foolishly, often identify themselves by company and position. Public "debates" about Linux contain behavior that could easily violate HR rules as the arguments drift into language that has become unacceptable in the enterprise and has little to do with the topic being debated. These arguments create embarrassing situations which could, in some cases, percolate up to board levels.
Not all Linux folks are like this, any more than their predecessors were. The bad behavior is limited to only an increasingly vocal, and apparently growing, minority. But an enterprise, by nature, has a huge number of employees who are held to solid policies about appropriate workplace behavior that have to be enforced. Any product that promotes behavior that violates some of the most critical of these policies should be on the short-list of things to be avoided in an enterprise. Clearly any "alternative" platform that has backers who can't control their language, or worse, use methods which now are classified by several governments as terrorist acts, should be on the list of things you would like your competitors to use but would avoid yourself like the plague.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
