Yesterday, Linux Foundation member IBM announced its adoption of a new
corporate policy that will govern its global participation in the standards
development process. It also revealed a list of standards reform
recommendations generated through a discussion among 70 standards experts
from around the world, and called upon all stakeholders, from the open
source community, to vendors, to government, to academia, to join in a
dialogue that can both raise the bar for standards development as well as
facilitate the implementation of open interoperability standards in open
source software.

The IBM policy details a set of principles that are intended to regulate
its participation in standards development, as well as a list of action
items that will direct its efforts in seeking the reform of that process.
IBM’s goals in this pursuit will be to seek greater transparency, openness
and inclusiveness in standards development, and also to facilitate the
integration of that process with the development of open source software.

The Linux Foundation applauds this action, and supports IBM’s call for
raising the bar in the standards development process. In particular, the
Foundation, which uniquely supports both open source software and open
standards, appreciates IBM’s leadership in recognizing the importance of
promoting the advancement of these two essential technology tools in a
coordinated way. Submarine patents, overly restrictive intellectual
property policies, and undue vendor influence are of equal concern to
proponents of both open standards and open source software, and the best
solutions will be those that address the needs of both disciplines.

Like IBM, the Foundation is working for similar goals. Accordingly, the
Foundation calls upon others to support the principles laid out in the IBM
announcement, and make common cause with this worthwhile effort.

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Sometimes a consortium can play a smaller supportive role that is really powerful. Helping people and organizations to pull together in the same direction can accomplish amazing things. It’s very gratifying.

The Linux Foundation, in concert with several well-known industry names (hint: they start with letters like I and G), has hired a key contributor to the Linux kernel development community, the system administrator for kernel.org. It’s an important position. kernel.org is crucial to the Linux kernel’s collaborative development environment. It is the actual physical space — in cyberspace — where kernel developers get their work done. Without it, nothing happens.

What is kernel.org? It’s not for beginners, but it’s an essential resource for those perfecting the current and building the future versions of Linux itself. Keeping the kernel.org site running smoothly is crucial to connecting Linux’s famously geographically dispersed contributors. It is the primary site for the Linux kernel source and git, the distributed revision control / software management project created by Linus Torvalds. The site is mirrored around the world through the help of countless others. From the Kernel.org namespace you can jump to FAQs, mailing lists, site updates, comments, and a lot more.

Making sure that this resource is available is an under-appreciated but essential piece of the puzzle. Others in the industry saw this need and partnered with us to fund this full-time position.

Fundamentally, this is why the Linux Foundation exists: To provide (some of) the services that an open community needs but that no corporation could provide directly. We marshal the forces of our members — they would have a hard time hiring the person directly — who are extremely generous and supportive. That’s putting money where your mouth is. The model works.

John ‘Warthog9′ Hawley joined the kernel.org administrator team in 2005 as one of the five kernel.org administrators. Working on system operations, the wikis, the kernel.org Gitweb, the GeoDNS patches to ISC’s BIND name server and a number of other things for kernel.org. His other OSS exploits include working on Syslinux, OpenSSI, and PXE Knife a set of interfaces around common utilities and diagnostics tools needed by an average systems administrator. In his free time he enjoys cooking extravagant meals and watching bad movies.

I expect now that John is in a full time role there will be a long list of projects coming in from the kernel team.

Incidentally, Linux kernel developers may be flung far and wide around the globe most of the time, but a chunk of them with be in Portland, OR next week for the Kernel Summit 2008. If you are interested in receiving information on the event, please contact angela (at) linux-foundation.org.

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This week week we saw news centered around two studies on desktop computing trends: one from Forrester Research and one from IDC. Both reports come from highly regarded firms and both seem to point to contradictory trends.

Bad news first. Linux fans are now being compared to Cubs fans. For you non-sports enthusiasts, the cubs haven’t won a world series since 1908. According to Ben Gray of Forrester, “as optimistic as Linux enthusiasts are and will forever remain, they’re beginning to sound like Cubs fans with the never-ending hope of ‘There’s always next year.’” The report cites survey research showing Windows Vista migrations as “ramping up” in the enterprise while Mac makes inroads and Linux continues to muddle along. The report states that “IT operations professionals need to prepare for a more decisive shift in their desktop operating system (OS) strategy.” In other words, when it comes to Microsoft Vista it is time to fish or cut bait. Tough advice in slow economic times.

Which leads me to the good news. IDC released a report this week citing Linux growth in a sector of computing which I have written about at length for over a year; the low cost netbook. According to IDC, “[the] PC Market Continues To Resist Economic Pressures With A Boost From Low Cost Portable PCs.” Most of these PC’s are Linux based with a smattering of Windows XP based netbooks as well (Vista doesn’t run well on these light weight PC’s). It seems while Forrester is predicting a gloomy future for Linux on the desktop, IDC is reporting on growth in a sector of computing where Linux does very well.

What are we to believe? First, both firms are calling the data like they see it. Forrester did a survey of their clients which are largely enterprise users of technolgy - typically the slowest to change. In fact, they even admit it, “Microsoft released Windows Vista to the general public more than 18 months ago — which is typically how long IT departments need to test their applications and hardware against any new OS.” IDC on the other hand is looking at quarterly PC tracking data which tends to pick up on rapidly developing trends in the market. IDC’s Loren Loverde, director of IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker states, “We continue to see a rapid transition to Portable PCs around the world, even as economic pressures rise. The trend reflects the increasing importance of computing, not just in the home or office, but as an integrated part of our lives. Falling prices, more design choice and competition for PC makers to capture this market continue to drive a rapid transition.”

According to Forrester there may not be a sea change to Linux desktops in the immediate future in the slower moving enterprise. However, in the broader world of PC sales it is worth noting that Linux based portable netbooks may be a leading indicator of things to come. Plus, from the looks of things the Cubs are having a pretty good year so far.

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First let me state the obvious. If Google’s new browser is successful then the desktop operating system just became a lot less important. This is great news for Linux.

That begs the question: If Google’s new browser isn’t even available on Linux, why is this great news for Linux? Because in a world where most people access their applications through a browser it makes little sense to have PC’s that are loaded with a heavy and bloated operating system. In particular in makes a LOT less sense for people to PAY for a heavy and bloated operating system. Count on seeing a Linux version of the Google browser very soon.

Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch said it best.

“When combined with Gears, which allows for offline access (see what MySpace did with Gears to understand how powerful it is), Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows.”

Most people are looking at the Google announcement as bringing much needed competition to the web browser front between Microsoft’s IE, Apple’s Safari, and Mozilla’s Firefox. This misses the bigger point. The real battle is about what the future development platform for mobile devices, personal computers, set top boxes, and more.

The last several decades of computing have been ruled by the owner of the development platform. Windows has been successful because the large majority of business applications and consumer applications ran exclusively on that platform. If you wanted to use an accounting application or automate your sales force you needed to run Windows software on your desktop to do it.

Internet applications are changing all of this by making the need for desktop specific code irrelevant. There is an entire generation growing up spending the majority of their time only using a web browser. They are on Facebook, their email is Yahoo mail or Gmail, they shop on Amazon, they use Google apps, they run web based instant messaging clients. That generation will just as easily spend their workdays logged into Salesforce.com or other hosted applications in the Internet cloud.

How does this relate to Linux? The future of the desktop client is moving towards accessing cloud-based applications in a browser through multiple devices and multiple mediums. Wireless phones, set top boxes, netbooks, desktop PC’s over a variety of networks is the future. The personal computer is not the future; it is hundreds of devices running on dozens of chip sets, with thousands of different components that is the future. This is a world where the personal computer starts to be priced and feel more like a cell phone and a cell phone looks more like a PC. In this world Linux is really the only answer. It supports every imaginable chip set. It is free. It can be custom branded. And no single entity can control it and thereby become a bottleneck to innovation.

Google’s vision is perfectly aligned with this world. They have made their browser open source and based on industry standards. They want to maximize the ways in which people can use the browser to create interesting and unexpected applications. They want to make sure that the doorway to the Internet, the web browser, remains free and competitive because for them the internet IS their killer application. Firefox has already gone far to this end and Google will inject even more energy into a competitive open browser. As long as more people use the web Google becomes for successful because search becomes more valuable for them.

Good for the internet. Good for Google. Good for Linux. Not bad.

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