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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