Explore by tag: mcpherson

So the bloggers over at ZDNet have once again proclaimed the end of the operating system. Larry Dignan says:

The operating system may be losing its luster. In fact, you could argue that the operating system–Linux, OS X and Windows–will become an application that just happens to boot first. And hardware vendors are on to the OS’s diminishing importance.

He goes on to say:

My working theory: The OS is being slowly downplayed as hardware vendors and Web developers grab more control over the user experience. The OS will never be totally irrelevant, but it will be increasingly less important. It’ll be plumbing. Simply put, the OS is being squeezed between hardware vendors that are cooking up their own applications to handle key tasks and the so-called Webtop, which will deliver programs through the browser.

I actually agree with much of what Larry says, even though ...

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At the last Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, the late Joe Barr wrote up this exchange on day one of the conference:

The summit’s first panel yesterday, a State of Linux Roundtable, was made up entirely of Linux kernel hackers. During the Q&A session that followed, a gentleman from Nortel introduced himself and told the panel that Nortel was running Linux on one of its switches, and it worked just fine, but the company had to make a number of patches to the kernel to get it to work. He wondered how Nortel could get its patches into the mainstream kernel.

While I was pleased the kernel panel helped him with his request, I know that approach doesn’t scale. Not every developer can attend our Summits face-to-face after all. This wasn’t the first time I had heard this call for help: in Japan, in Korea, in Taiwan ...

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Deb Gage at the San Francisco Chronicle recently profiled a voting machine that will be given a tryout at a mock election at Linux World, opening today. Attendees of the conference will have the ability to cast their vote for one of the two candidates on the US presidential ticket. Besides obvious political fervor of many open source devotees, what’s the connection between this machine and Linux?

Dechert and a couple of colleagues founded the Open Voting Consortium, a nonprofit group dedicated to delivering “trustable and open voting systems.” In addition to lobbying against proprietary voting machines, they have spent the last several years working with scientists and engineers around the world to design and build a voting machine of their own.

Probably many of you have heard of the Diebold voting machines that were designed for use in elections in this country. They are closed and proprietary systems ...

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The 8th Linux Foundation Japan Symposium took place last week in Tokyo.  The goal of these symposiums is to bring leading Linux luminaries to present and interact with local senior software developers, with the goal of increasing open source participation by talented Japanese developers and also fostering Linux usage in the Japanese IT industry.

Andrew Morton was on hand to speak about the status and direction of kernel development, covering kernel process material and specifically highlighting areas that need to be worked on including solid state disks and the linux-next tree.

James Morris presented on the SE Linux project, Thomas Gleixner spoke about the advantages of the Completely Fair Scheduler and Paul Moore talked about labeled networking.  Toshiharu Harada,project manager of TOMOYO Linux, was  able to explain to the developers in attendance about how to participate in Linux development and provided words of encouragement to other young developers like ...

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Yesterday as I was sitting in a cafe having a drink, I caught up on my New York Times business section. In a review of the new class of Mini-Notebooks, I wasn’t surprised to see Linux mentioned. After all Linux is the dominant OS in these new class of computers, described by the Times as bigger than a smart phone but smaller than a laptop. While I wasn’t surprised to see Linux mentioned, I was surprised by my reaction.

Just last year I would have leaped out of my chair (spilling my drink) and shouted to uninterested cafe neighbors, “Hey, look! The New York Times is writing about Linux on the desktop!” I’m used to reading about Linux in server applications. The New York Stock Exchange for instance. But until recently, Linux on the desktop was relegated to the technologist’s ghetto. If you didn’t love ...

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A few weeks ago we posted video from the first day of our Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit as well as a dozen personal interviews with interesting folks who attended. (And believe me left out so many interesting people it’s painful to think about.) I’ve just been catching up on the personal ones, most of which taught me something new.

As I watched and/or listened it struck me how many communities within communities were represented at the Summit. When we created the event our mission was to bring members of the Linux ecosystem together who normally don’t collaborate enough, but who should. Developers tend to talk to developers, industry talks to industry, end users yell at their vendors, but often don’t get to talk to the “community.” So far it seems to have been moderately successful. [Sometimes I struggle writing about community since it can mean ...

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Last week, I recorded a podcast with Dennis Byron, analyst at eBizQ. Dennis wanted to talk about how open source is the fundamental enabler of Software as a Service, an idea he started writing about after a conversation with some guy named Jim Zemlin.

I was happy to talk about this with Dennis because I think it’s an under-the-radar topic. Just the week before I had a reporter ask me how Linux is going to deal with the threat of cloud computing. The threat? I told her that virtually all of the major cloud computing initiatives (except Microsoft’s) are built on Linux. (There is a potential displacement there for Linux distribution vendors but that’s another topic.) Linux as a platform is the enabling backbone of software as a service and cloud computing.

Recently, Bernard Golden at CIO Magazine wrote a very interesting article on the “migration of ...

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In the past I have done media interviews with reporters who question if open source is good for a developers career. Basically they have the outdated notion that open source is for hobbyists and time off from “real jobs.” In reality, open source developers are much in demand. The kernel developers I know certainly have no shortage of job opportunities. Why?

Open source (especially platform software like Linux) is used in more and more companies, in more and more uses. Check out the Linux Kernel Development paper to see a long list. Because it’s open source you have a multitude of companies tied to the product and its success. In the Linux world, the platform is used by companies in the desktop, server and embedded markets. A member of the Linux community is not tied into one company since his or her skills or transferable to all of the ...

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“Man bites Dog.” It’s the classic example of how news works: editors pick the unexpected. Recently, Joe Barr from Linux.com wrote on his mixed feelings about attending the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. Specifically he mentioned disappointment that the desktop was not a central topic of discussion at the meeting. I think Joe is a good journalist and have enjoyed working with him on stories over the years. I also think Linux.com is a fantastic source of Linux content, both for articles and increasingly video. In this case, I can understand where Joe is coming from given the specific session he attended, but I would like to clarify a few points in his article about the general level of attention desktop Linux received at our Summit. I’m puzzled how our agenda, or Joe’s article for that matter, could be the source of this slashdot headline. Then ...

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Earlier this week at the first day of the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, VIA Technologies, a supplier of chipsets and x86 processors, announced they will be opening up their specifications and code to help open source developers support their components. This is significant news for Linux developers and most importantly Linux users who will see better support for the multitude of VIA components within PCs and mini-tops.

Or as SVN says:

VIA Technologies, although very popular with Linux ultramobile PC vendors, has never been very open about its own hardware. Until April 8, when, at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at the University of Texas Super Computing Center here, the company announced that it will start opening up its chip sets to the open-source community.

The company also plans to adhere to a regular quarterly release schedule that is more aligned with Linux kernel changes and distribution releases. The announcement ...

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We’re very happy to announce today that Adobe has joined the Linux Foundation as a member. I’m always happy to welcome new members of course and to recognize those companies who make a stand and commitment to paying Linus salary (amongst other things). But I’m especially happy because this is another point in our on-going case that Linux is the platform for Web 2.0 development today and cloud and cross-device development tomorrow. As I’ve said before, developers are the “indicator species” of a platform’s future. (There’s a joke in there about frogs and penguins but I digress . . .)

If you bring the developers, the end users will come. That is why everyone from Microsoft to Apple to Adobe and so on are fighting so hard for developer momentum. So this is why it’s not a coincidence that Adobe joins the LF now, with ...

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One of the core mission’s of the Linux Foundation is to increase participation and adoption of Linux throughout the world, especially in areas not well integrated into the Linux ecosystem. We focus on developers first, because we feel local development leads to local adoption, especially as countries realize that Linux and the GPL allows them to build local software economies instead of shipping jobs and money to some other location (like Redmond, for instance.)

We regularly hold Linux Foundation Symposiums in Japan where key Linux developers meet with local developers to increase participation and encourage collaboration. These events have been very successful. Andrew Morton, for instance, has been quoted as saying he’s seen an increase in successful patches to the kernel from Japan by about 20% percent. While you can’t trace everything back to our regional outreach efforts, I do think it has a direct effect.

Building ...

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(Never in my wildest dreams did I envision myself putting those two words into one headline, but leave it to the world of open source technology. . .) Much has been made of Wal Mart’s move of the Linux $199 notebook from in store Wal Mart to online sales. At first I was shocked by the attention, wondering how the story was placed in the first place. (I can guarantee Wal Mart didn’t call the AP or write a press release on this change. They’d have to employ an army of thousands to keep track of their stock changes day by day.)

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. A lot was made in the press that Wal Mart was selling the Linux-based PC in the first place. Then a ton of noise was made when it was said that the PC had sold ...

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There’s been interesting debate going on recently on the future of applications: where they will be developed, how they will be delivered and on what platform.

On our last Linux Foundation Open Voices podcast, Mark Shuttleworth said:

And so, if you look at the speed of adoption of Facebook applications, for example, it’s far greater than the speed of adoption of any traditional piece of software which you would have to download and install and you have to have different versions you have to manage and so on.

I think he’s right about speed of adoption of apps on Facebook. (How often do you download applications to your desktop anymore? I rarely do.) But something comes before speed of adoption, and that’s speed of development. I think if you looked at the sheer numbers of new applications being developed for any platform (desktop/server/mobile), Facebook ...

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My first computer was a Commodore 64. I loved programming it, with my favorite program filling up the screen with “Amanda Amanda Amanda Amanda” when you hit the enter key. (A slight hint at future narcissism or just healthy self esteem? Hmm. You decide.) Anyway, this trip down memory lane was spurred by an announcement of an upcoming Linux Installfest at Bay Area schools. Sounds like kids today have quite a few more options.

On March 1, there will be a a great community effort to donate recycled hardware to underprivileged schools and students in the Bay Area. Part of the announcement is below:

“Untangle (http://www.untangle.com) and the ACCRC (http://www.accrc.org)are organizing a Linux installfest to donate hundreds of open source computers to Bay Area schools on recycled hardware. The goal is to donate 500 computers to underprivileged schools. They’re calling on the ...

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