LinuxCon: the open source ecosystem is not a zero-sum game

Linux and open source development is not a zero sum game. This was a clear message from the Ubuntu technical architect Allison Randal in speech at LinuxCon, but sentiment had been formulated in several ways-week round of all here. Processes in which the company makes a great open source a better world for all.

"Free software is fundamentally superior model for software development," Randall repeated several times. In addition to the classic Linus Bill ("given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"), Randall made the claim that people long to be part of something greater than themselves, and free software development met, in spades.

According to Randall, the future of technological innovation is not theft limited resources away from each other, but the creation of new resources and new opportunities for the creation of new resources — together in a rich ecosystem. The term "ecosystem" made several times in my chat with Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus, IBM Academy of technology and Dan Frye, Vice President IBM open systems development. FRY, it is clear that the efforts of IBM Linux should be a "solution" as opposed to a product company. IBM does not make their own Linux distro, but they work hard to make the kernel and other key open source projects that bring value to IBM customers.

It's all about collaboration and working together with other members of the open source software. Sometimes this means cooperating with direct competitors, but IBM "gets it" that this collaboration on open source creates new resources for all, and they are cutting the throat of competition for a finite number of clients. Of course they strenuously compete in various markets, and sometimes they strenuously compete with companies with whom they collaborate with open source. But this is not a zero sum game.

Wladawsky-Berger continued the explanation of "solutions", indicating that the skyscraper ever built by a single company. Legions of small companies specializing work together under the leadership of the project manager to coordinate and implement their specific tasks in the correct order. This ultimately how IBM provides yourself as a leader in the ecosystem of open source work to enable new workloads for their clients.

There are many ways to thrive in the open source ecosystem. Whether his continued commitment to excellence of the kernel (a la Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman) or commitment to the preparation of viable, use tools for all users to avoid reinventing the wheel. Yocto project works on this for the embedded space, like SUSE, under the leadership of fresh Attachmate, allocates them open build services help people roll packages for several distributions. SUSE also exchange their SUSE Studio to enable ISVS and companies to develop and maintain their own Linux for use in devices and a "golden master" to create images. You do not need to be SUSE customers use these tools.

But all this cooperation is not always natural. Companies are still beholden to shareholders and their bottom line, after all. So sometimes it takes a neutral third party to get together the parties concerned, neutrality and Shepherd communication channels. It is here that the Linux Foundation comes into play. They provide most of the framework and management of communications between competitors, which have led to unprecedented technological progress in many industries.

"Free software is fundamentally superior model for software development," said Allison Randal. Eucalyptus systems Marten Mickos took it one step further: "any company with the strategy IT should open source strategy. It is important to recognize and embrace! is a large ecosystem of Linux and open source software and find a way to work within it to increase the number of available resources, for which to compete.

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LinuxCon: all about the cloud

Nearly every major at LinuxCon, and of course each private conversation I had with the people here are engaged in some kind of "cloud". How Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said in his keynote, no single definition of "cloud" exists. There is no doubt that Amazon really pioneer default cloud offering, but there are a lot of work going on to build a better, more reliable and more open solutions cloud.

Red Hat has the OpenShift, their platform as a service and CloudForms, their infrastructure as a service offering. Long term, according to Whitehurst is that programmers the company will start to build something on OpenShift and not worry about any of the underlying infrastructure. If the product is ready to be deployed inside the country, it will go to the CloudForms client installation inside the company firewall. In principle, developers will select the platform and you can own and manage the operations of this platform.

Canonical pushes ensemble, their "service orchestration solution. Instead of thinking about applications, Canonical wants to see people start to think about services. Instead of deploying the Web server application that talks to a database application for reporting and to receive input from visitors to the Internet, instead of thinking about the "blog tools" that can be deployed through a series of recipes. According to the Canonical Allison Randal Canonical feels that Amazon AWS sets a high standard and Amazon API must be accepted by everyone. This allows users of cloud services have some modicum of portability: if my ISP cloud connectors to their prices, I should be able to smoothly move to a different provider or cloud-my own private cloud — because the fundamental mechanisms for interacting with him (published API) must be the same between the suppliers.

When Randall told me this, I was initially skeptical. If your ISP cloud connectors to their prices, it is a business task. This is not specific to the cloud or the technology sector as a whole. There is real value in the ability to switch from one cloud provider to another or make the decision public cloud House? Then I listened to Marten Mickos keynote. Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL AB, now in eucalyptus systems, innovative solutions to the private cloud. His principal stopped for a couple of very interesting things.

Firstly he briefly cleared up confusion around public and private clouds and how you can use both. Turn on the phone. Telephone infrastructure has been around for about a hundred years, and nearly every company still performs its own internal PBX system. This is a pretty solid lines of clouds.

But the most interesting thing that raised Mickos the importance of the principles of free software in relation to the decisions of the cloud. With the old paradigm of Linux distributions four freedoms provided by the GPL was crucial to ensure the long-term success of the platform, because it explicitly allows derivative works. Moving to the cloud, however, we look at the image, not distributions, and the whole notion of the derivative work is fuzzy at best. How are the four freedoms applied to situations, cloud GPL?

Suddenly a lot more sense Randall in the commentary. So, too, whether OpenStack, is the result of cooperation between RackSpace and NASA establish a framework of common, open cloud.

Mickos has its major repeating that Linux has gone from the destructive forces of innovation. Its concluding comments, the very nicely in line with Whitehurst keynote: Linux is now the default selection for the deployment of new technologies and is the basis on which to build the best future technological advances. Whitehurst and Mickos said that the transition that we are now seeing in the cloud, at least as fundamentally radical as the transition from MAINFRAME to client server.

As innovation continues over Linux in the cloud, Mickos offering some very insightful tips: we must strive to ensure that no one, which we opened closes.

Photo credit: clouds, karindalziel, on Flickr.

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Red Hat CEO at LinuxCon: I have no idea what will happen next

Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, just made a terrific opening keynote presentations for LinuxCon. Whitehurst is not just a businessman, he is also a geek. He used prior to joining Red Hat Linux and open source, and the opportunity to be the CEO of the company the most successful open source software in the world was a dream come true for him. After a quick summary of some of the major Linux milestones seen over the past 20 years, he jumped in the heart of his keynote: what's next? Whitehurst wasted no time in answering this question: "I don't know."

This somewhat unusual response from the Director-General, but it makes sense for anyone even moderately familiar with Linux. Linux has witnessed so many growth markets so much that it's almost silly to try to make predictions about what's next for Linux. (Indeed, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin has been saying "this is the year of the Linux desktop" in the past four years!)

However, he had some concerns about the fact that the OS and ecosystems may soon turn. Here is a brief overview of some of the most important items of Whitehurst's presentation:

Linux is a transformational technology. "Linux Technology gives the achievements and innovations that have nothing to do with Linux". I.e., Linux supports the development of new business models and new technologies.

The freedom to use Linux for any purpose, without fee, has raised many of the things we now take for granted: Amazon, Facebook, Google. Can any of them have been successful insofar as they are if they are required to purchase expensive proprietary software before they rolled out their products?

In addition, Linux allows a rapid and low cost prototyping, making it easier to innovate and to evaluate what works and what doesn't. According to Whitehurst "when you're looking for innovation, you're looking for what is happening in open source."

Linux has gone from catch-up for commoditizing existing innovations in flexible, open path and now go to leading innovation. Leading innovation today occur in open source first and then the large companies are working to ensure that innovation for yourself. Hadoop, Cassandra, etc. are examples of open source innovation, which are now warmly supported by large companies.

Another striking example of this kind of innovation-all your favourite term, "The Cloud". Why is it that there is no single, solid definition of clouds? That's because not one company or supplier smashed it, so they don't get to contextualize it. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PAAS) and other large, complex technology does not have a small group of drivers. Rather, they arose from a larger number of technical professionals working together.

Open source development model, used by Linux have seen some wonderful and in some cases ironic, cooperation. United States NAVY, for example, was in need of a kernel real-time deterministic characteristics in order to develop anti-missile technology for their fleet. Linux does not have such a kernel, so the Navy contributed to it. Directly benefited from Wall Street, where 80 percent of all stock markets rely on Linux and real-time kernel for trade.

National Security Agency wrote Linux security enhancement extensions that are currently the most important part of Red Hat and some other distributions. The work done by the NSA did it so safe that Linux is now the most secure operating system, certified by the Russian Government.

Open source ethos runs deep. Whitehurst said he had had with Facebook in a recent conversation Technical Director, in which he was asked "why do you guys release so much of your infrastructure work for free, when you know your competitors are going to use it, too?" answer: it is a moral issue. They believe that to make the world a better place for all contributors and competitors alike. If they can make someone else in the data center more efficient, or more reliable, it is incumbent upon them to do so.

Whitehurst ended with the observation that the principles of mass collaboration will change the world.

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