Some interesting news just came over the wires: Oracle, that really big database company you may have heard of, and Emulex, a smaller host bus adapter vendor you may not have heard about yet, just announced that donation of block I/O data integrity infrastructure code to the Linux kernel.
In fact, the code is already in Linux 2.6.27.
The fact that the Linux kernel now has an estimated development value of $1.4 billion is an intriguing development—it certainly represents a significant milestone for the Linux kernel community. After we published the "Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution" whitepaper, out of curiosity I wondered where in the overall development history of the Linux kernel the $1 billion number was actually reached.
The whitepaper "Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution" published this week was a really fun bit of collaborative effort. It basically boiled down to Ron Hale-Evans analyzing the Fedora code, me scoping out the kernel code, and Amanda McPherson pulling it all together into a coherent document.
It's not everyday you learn that your employer could be part of a massive 20-year old conspiracy of "IT systems monopolists" to keep Microsoft from stealing their mojo.
Well, shoot. This never came up at the company picnic. (Awk-ward...)
A lot of work has been done behind the scenes this week for the End User Summit in New York next week. Thanks to the talented people working on the show, I think it will be an excellent event. This is not, mind you, self-promotion--they've put me in charge of the slide shows, which shows my co-workers know how to best utilize me. :)
Here in the US, it's been an interesting week in the financial and government worlds. And I mean "interesting" in the Chinese-curse sense of that word. Like most folks in the country, I've been watching the news with one eye on politics and the other on the ticker tape. Lost in some of the conflaguation of news was the announcement of our new event, LinuxCon, scheduled for September 2009 in Portland, Oregon.
The big news at the Linux Foundation this week was not one but two--count 'em!--two events in the lovely Portland, Oregon. Let OSCON pack up and prove it knows the way to San Jose--we like the Rose City, just fine, thank you.
Since coming onboard with the Linux Foundation, one of the things that I have missed is taking a look at the week gone by to see what's what. I'm glad to say that things have settled down enough that I can now take the time to provide some analysis to what's happened this week.
A couple of weeks ago, I was on the MAX in Portland, heading back to my hotel after an... interesting post-OSCON party hosted by Sun. (Sumo wrestler suits? Really?) I was riding the train with a friend who lives downtown and I was explaining to her just exactly what my new job with the Linux Foundation was and what we wanted to do with the Linux Developer Network.