From: arne@vajhoej.dk   
      
   On 10/15/2025 8:16 AM, Dan Cross wrote:   
   > In article <10cmovf$3a740$1@dont-email.me>,   
   > Arne Vajhøj   wrote:   
   >> On 10/13/2025 10:03 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>> On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 21:20:43 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:   
   >>>> Few/no CIO's want to support the hundreds of millions of lines   
   >>>> of open source code their business rely on themselves.   
   >>>   
   >>> The whole point of having all that code is that they didn’t need to write   
   >>> it themselves.   
   >>   
   >> Yes. But they want free beer more than free speech.   
   >>   
   >>> You have to take responsibility for your own business, don’t you?   
   >>   
   >> They don't want to write or maintain their own OS.   
   >>   
   >> They don't want to write or maintain their own platform   
   >> software (web/app servers, database servers, message queue   
   >> servers, cache servers etc.).   
   >>   
   >> They don't want to write or maintain their own tools   
   >> (compilers, build tools, IDE's, source control, unit   
   >> test frameworks etc.).   
   >>   
   >> None of that stuff is their business.   
   >>   
   >> They want to focus on their business the applications   
   >> that help them produce and sell whatever products   
   >> or services.   
   >   
   > Every single one of the FAANG companies do all of those things.   
   > At Google, we used to joke that, "not only does Google reinvent   
   > the wheel, we vulcanize the rubber for the tires."  Spanner,   
   > Piper/Fig/Jujutsu, Prodkernel/ChromeOS/Android, CitC, gunit, Go   
   > (not to mention the work on LLVM/Clang), Blaze/Bazel/Skylark,   
   > etc, are all examples of the things you mentioned above.  And   
   > that's not even to mention all the custom hardware.   
   >   
   > For organizations working at hyperscale, there comes a point   
   > where the off-the-shelf solutions simply cannot scale to meet   
   > the load you're putting on them.   
   >   
   > At that point, you have no choice but to do it yourself.   
   Few companies are like Google.   
      
   For a few reasons:   
      
   1) As you mention they may have special customization needs   
       due to their scale.   
      
   2) But even if they did not need that, then their numbers   
       are special. If cost of creating a competent Linux team   
       that can deliver support at Redhat level is less than   
       number of Linux instances multiplied with what Redhat   
       would charge per instance (and I am sure that Google would   
       get a gigantic discount if they asked), then it makes   
       financial sense to DIY. But it requires a huge number   
       of Linux instances.   
      
       My napkin calculation / RNG says you will need more   
       than a million Linux instances for the math to work.   
       Google has that. Most companies does not.   
      
   3) Google is not just a company using IT to produce   
       products/services - Google is also a company doing   
       IT for other.   
      
       Google Search is an IT user where it is not a given   
       that they want their own distro.   
      
       But Android and ChromeOS is Google delivering an   
       OS to other. The OS is their business in that case.   
      
       And one facet of GCP is that Google is taking   
       over OS support from Redhat/Canonical/SUSE when   
       companies moves their workload from on-prem to   
       GCP managed services. Linux support is their   
       business.   
      
   Arne   
      
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