Psychological barriers

Paul Murphy again, this time in Linux: no longer a winner?:

But what's scary for Linux is this: the applications and GNU components we think of as Linux don't depend on the Linux kernel - meaning that the only barriers to mass migration by Linux developers to Solaris or the BSDs are psychological.

The article perfectly describes my experience of the last year or so:

• An increasing number of customers recognize that Linux alone is not a answer, it´s a technological answser. A possible answer, but maybe not the best one
</li> Linux is at first a social phenomenon. The influences of the "big business" are capable to rip off this special face. Linux positioned itself as an alternative to commercial unixes. It was a reaction to the closed world of unix.</li>
• Where is really the difference of a commercialized open source linux and a commercial open source unix? A long long time one of the unique selling point of Linux was "We are the good ones!" But now, not really a difference.
• The psychological barrier is at first the fear of an obsolescence of knowledge.

And to make the usual bold statement to the end: Linux was an attempt for an standardized unix environment, and it will fail out of the same reasons like all attempts at the end. And it will have the same long life as all other unixes. But the nimbus to be one and only answer to all problems that the press gave Linux is gone.