Notes from the Collaboration Summit

Your editor has certainly attended no shortage of Linux-related conferences. Many of those are developer conferences, which are invariably interesting events. Others are oriented around marketing or outreach, with rather more variable results. The Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit, which ran from April 8 to 10, is unique, though, in that it attracts representatives from throughout the Linux ecosystem. Developers are not in short supply (though it seemed like there were fewer than last year), but those developers spend three days talking with corporate executives, industry analysts, and, crucially, a number of high-profile users. This mixture of people creates a very different dynamic which supports a whole range of interesting conversations.

One of the first events was the kernel developers' panel, moderated by your (normally rather immoderate) editor. Panelists James Bottomley, Matt Domsch, Dave Jones, Christoph Lameter, Ted Ts'o, Arjan van de Ven, and Chris Wright discussed a variety of topics ranging from kernel quality (getting better), code review, development process participation, hardware support, and more. Your editor was not able to take notes from the panel; perhaps the best report which has come up so far can be found in this InformationWeek article by Charles Babcock.

IDC analyst Al Gillen spent half an hour going through a bunch of chart-heavy slides on the future of Linux in the marketplace. Overall, things look good, in that a market worth $20 billion in 2007 is expected to go up to $50 billion in 2011. There were lots of associated details which have been reported elsewhere. One interesting aspect was watching how the analyst trade copes with "non-paid" Linux deployments - which, according to Mr. Gillen, is 43% of the total. There was talk about how "monetizing" these deployments is a challenge for those looking to make money in the Linux marketplace. He expressed surprise at just how many companies are confident in their ability to support Linux deployments on their own. But he also talked about just how important that non-paid base is for the support of the entire ecosystem. Non-paid deployments may be a "challenge" to those who would prefer to be paid, but their absence would be a rather larger challenge.

How Google could Win the OS Wars

By Matt Hartley

For a number of years now, Google has been waging a battle to win over your desktop without ever settling for one OS platform. Opting to play it safe by not entering the platform wars, Google has ensured that most of their offering are available on a cross-platform basis. This decision has allowed Google to gain considerable ground without ever needing to fire a shot across the bow of the Windows flagship.

But what if they were to put this mindset aside, and find themselves in a position to take on Microsoft in a more direct way? Clearly, in order for this to happen it would mean that Google has to enter uncharted territory. Competing directly with the big gorilla of proprietary software – Microsoft.

Experiment by proxy – gOS.

Ever since its initial release, gOS has been touted as non-Google supported. Even its name simply translates into "Good" OS, not Google OS as some initially speculated.

Regardless, the fact remains that gOS has allowed Google to see what it might be like had the search engine giant decided to enter the OS market using a variation of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, along with the gOS distribution layout.

Overall, gOS has been received as an over-branded mess by most who dare to give it a go. Chaotic menus, redundant use of online applications along side of offline applications – there’s little doubt that Google has seen what not to do. While there are some areas that gOS has done well with, overall more time has been put into branding than development.

Even while fully understanding the repercussions of duplicating the mistakes made by the gOS group, could Google storm the heavily fortified Microsoft market share and perhaps even gain substantial ground for Linux users in the loyal-to-Redmond hardware market?

I think they might be able to make it work, so long as they utilize the following commonsense strategy.

All the tools are there for the taking.

Thanks in part to fantastic efforts like the desktop Linux community movement, Google now has the raw material at their disposal to take desktop Linux to the next level. At the same time, however, there are areas Google would need to address in order for them to compete on level playing field with the proprietary alternatives out there. The Google enhanced needs include:

Commentary: the Linux Foundation and the future of Linux

IBM sponsored the event, and they are the biggest supporter of Linux in the corporate world. The foundation membership is made up of almost all the large and and many of wanna-be-large IT firms around the globe -- including Adobe, which is one of the foundation's newest members. You can find a complete list of members on the foundation website.

There is no doubt that the time and money the corporate world has spent -- and keeps spending -- to support Linux development has been beneficial to Linux, and therefore to all of us who use the platform. When world-class IT gurus like Torvalds are freed from the demands of a day job not directly related to kernel issues, it's a good thing for all of us. Likewise work on projects like the LSB, which can smooth a few rough edges keeping some from adoption. But still, I worry about the price.

Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves

by chromatic
12/11/2003

One persistent misfeature of open source development is thoughtless mimicry, copying the behaviors of other projects without considering if they work or if there are better options under the current circumstances. At best, these practices are conventional wisdom, things that everybody believes even if nobody really remembers why. At worst, they're lies we tell ourselves.

Perhaps "lies" is too strong a word. "Myths" is better; these ideas may not be true, but we don't intend to deceive ourselves. We may not even be dogmatic about them, either. Ask any experienced open source developer if his users really want to track the latest CVS sources. Chances are, he doesn't really believe that.

In practice, though, what we do is more important than what we say. Here's the problem. Many developers act as if these myths are true. Maybe it's time to reconsider our ideas about open source development. Are they true today? Were they ever true? Can we do better?

Some of these myths also apply to proprietary software development. Both proprietary and open models have much room to improve in reliability, accessibility of the codebase, and maturity of the development process. Other myths are specific to open source development, though most stem from treating code as the primary artifact of development (not binaries), not from any relative immaturity in its participants or practices.

Not every open source developer believes every one of these ideas, either. Many experienced coders already have good discipline and well-reasoned habits. The rest of us should learn from their example, understanding when and why certain practices work and don't work.
Publishing your Code Will Attract Many Skilled and Frequent Contributors

Myth: Publicly releasing open source code will attract flurries of patches and new contributors.

Reality: You'll be lucky to hear from people merely using your code, much less those interested in modifying it.

While user (and developer) feedback is an advantage of open source software, it's not required by most licenses, nor is it guaranteed by any social or technical means. When was the last time you reported a bug? When was the last time you tried to fix a bug? When was the last time you produced a patch? When was the last time you told a developer how her work solved your problem?

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Dancing Barefoot

Dancing Barefoot
By Wil Wheaton

Some projects grow large and attract many developers. Many more projects have only a few developers. Most of the code in a given project comes from one or a few developers. That's not bad — most projects don't need to be huge to be successful — but it's worth keeping in mind.

Interview: How a hacker became a freedom fighter

One of the founding fathers of "free software" and an esteemed elder of the hacking community, Richard Stallman has made defending people's freedoms his life's work. That usually means supplying hackers with software and attacking copyright law. But as he tells Michael Reilly, his advocacy of personal freedoms extends to the protection of true democracy and of the human rights increasingly being trampled on in the US and elsewhere

Is it true you used to live in your office?

Yes it is. I lived there for half of the 1980s and most of the 1990s.
What made you do that?

It was convenient and cheap. To walk home to another place when I was sleepy was a very bad thing: first of all, if I was sleepy, it might take a couple of hours before I could get it together to put on my coat and my shoes and so on. And after that, walking home would wake me up, so when I got home I wouldn't go to sleep either. It was so much better to just be able to go to sleep where I was.

What does "hacker" mean to you?

A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness. I know many people think it means security breaker, but since "hacker" is what we call ourselves in my community, I won't accept a derogatory meaning. If you want to refer to security breakers you should call them "crackers". You can be a hacker in a lot of different media, it doesn't have to be with computers. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology there's an old tradition in which people "hack" buildings and public spaces, by putting up the famous "Nerd Crossing" road sign, for example. It didn't involve breaking any security and it was playful and clever.

On playfulness, when did you start saying "happy hacking" as an alternative to goodbye?

At some point in the 1970s. I wanted some way to say goodbye and give good wishes to other hackers and "happy hacking" seemed like a good way to do it. It became a habit.

When did you make the leap from hacker to activist?

It happened in 1983 when I started the free software movement. I came to the conclusion that free software was the only way a computer user could have freedom, so I launched a movement to bring this about.