Linux Foundation wants to work with Microsoft

Jim Zemlin is the executive director of the Linux Foundation. Formerly executive director of the Free Standards Group, Zemlin also has served as vice president of marketing for Covalent Technologies, providing products and services for the Apache Web server.

Zemlin has also been a keynote speaker at industry and financial conferences including Gartner’s Open Source Conference and Linux World. Zemlin discussedLinux topics ranging from overtures to Microsoft to the progress of Linux on the desktop.

CDNNow: What’s the role of the Linux Foundation?

Jim Zemlin: We obviously are the home of [Linux founder] Linus Torvalds. We sort of focus on three main areas in terms of the platform. The first area is to promote Linux as a technology solution, and that’s across embedded, mobile, server, desktop computing. We respond to competitive marketing on behalf of the platform, so when competitors are out spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about open source or if there is a general lack of understanding of open-source licensing practices or governance practices, our organization plays a role educating [the] industry and end-users on those issues. We protect the platform by allowing people like Linus Torvalds to work as fellows at the foundation so that they can be neutral actors in a mass collaboration project like Linux. We manage the Linux trademark. We have a legal defense fund for the platform. We work with the USPTO (Patent and Trademark Office) on patent quality issues. And we do that work to improve the quality of software patents and protect the platform. And then finally, we work on the standardizing the Linux platform.

CDNNow: What kind of legal protection does Linux require? And has anything ever come of the Microsoft protest that there’s Linux code that they patented or something to that effect?

Zemlin: What they were talking about were patents that Microsoft holds in a range of areas. They didn’t actually disclose what those were, but in general felt that they overlapped with other technology. No, nothing ever became of it because everybody holds patents on everything out there lately in software.

CDNNow: You have a legal defense fund. Should people have legal concerns about using Linux?

Zemlin: Just like any other major software platform, there’ll be patent trolls or opportunists who try to harm the platform. The SCO Group was a good example of that. In fact, the legal defense fund was created to assist in defense of the platform in the SCO lawsuit. And so that’s a good example.

CDNNow: What became of that?

Zemlin: SCO lost the lawsuit, it was found that there were no copyright infringements that were there in the Linux platform, and it was proven that Novell indeed owned the copyright to the software that SCO alleged was theirs. And SCO was de-listed from Nasdaq and is now in bankruptcy proceedings.

CDNNow: Is there anything happening as far as using the GNU General Public license version 3 for Linux, or is that just not happening?

Zemlin: It’s not happening today. In the future there may be, but I think it’s unlikely at this point. Linus, who is fairly influential in the license decision, has publicly stated that he’s not interested in GPL3 at this time.

CDNNow: Linux has established itself on the server. What progress is being made with Linux on the desktop?

Zemlin: It’s an interesting year for Linux on the desktop. We are starting to see some of the major levers of platform adoption for desktop computing be pulled more dramatically this year than they ever have. If you think about what makes a desktop platform successful, the fact that Windows comes pre-installed on most computers when they’re purchased on the marketplace obviously [is a] big advantage. And you’re starting to see companies do the same with Linux. You’re starting to see companies like Asus and their Eee PC. It’s a small subnotebook that costs, I think, less than [US]$400. It comes pre-installed with the Linux platform, and it really enables them to target a whole new demographic that they’ve never been able to effectively sell into before, you know, in Asia, women over 30, or people who could never afford a $600 to $1,000 PC. And you’re seeing those offerings now being replicated from Everex with their CloudBook product. Lenovo is now shipping Linux on its X series line of products. You’re starting to see for the first time… Dell announced last year that they are shipping pre-installed Ubuntu Linux specifically, on their notebooks. So you’re starting to see OEMs pre-ship Linux for the first time, which is interesting, but if you look kind of underneath that, the more interesting picture is — why are they doing that? What is compelling them? Is it because Linux is more functional than it’s ever been? The answer there is yes, it is more functional. But that functionality combined with the economics of the situation, where if you think about the bill of materials for a PC, [if] you’ve got Microsoft in there, I think the OEM [cost] is somewhere between $50 to $75 to license Windows. On a $300-400 PC you’re talking 30-40 percent of the price of the computer, which is a significant amount of money. So not only is it one of the largest components of the actual PC, but it’s the highest margin component, right? If you look at the stock market, you can see Microsoft has about a 30 percent net profit. You’ve got Intel making like 15 percent profit margins. Then you’ve got Dell at like 5 percent. And so when companies like Dell or Asus or Lenovo or all these companies look at those profit margins, they say, “Why wouldn’t I just create my own operating system and ship it with the device? I’m therefore higher up the food chain with a higher margin product on a lower priced PC that I can use to penetrate larger markets.”

CDNNow: But Windows is still on 98, 99 percent of PC desktops anyway, so do you think that number or that percentage will decrease?

Zemlin: Yes. Yes, I think it will actually.

CDNNow: What’s the penetration of Linux on handhelds?

Zemlin: Pretty high. I’ll have to get you a specific market size number. It’s in the tens of millions sold.

CDNNow: We keep hearing about how, except for the United States and maybe a few other places, most Internet access is going be done on handheld devices.

Zemlin: Yes. Let me walk you through what’s going on with Linux in that market. Similar economics [are] interestingly in effect there. [With] Motorola, for example, the Razr product is a Linux-based device. Now people don’t know that because it’s branded Motorola and it has a user interface, it doesn’t say Linux all over it. What you’re seeing in the Linux in mobile world is the emergence of several Linux-based platforms. Google has a platform called Android. That’s a Linux-based platform, and they’re building an SDK around that and working with handset manufacturers and telecommunications carriers to get that platform adopted in the market. There’s a second group called the LiMo Foundation, [which] is an organization largely made up of handset manufacturers like Samsung, LG, Motorola, and others who are creating a mobile Linux reference platform for their devices. There’s an organization called OpenMoko, which is creating a completely open-source phone. So what you’re seeing there [are] several organizations creating a Linux-based smartphone and trying to provide a development platform for those devices. The reason that they’re choosing Linux is the same reason that PC world is starting to choose Linux. If you’re a Motorola or an LG, would you rather, per device basis when you’re selling tens of millions of devices, license Windows Mobile or the Symbian platform from Nokia, or would you rather have Linux, which is collaboratively designed, which supports every major architecture?

CDNNow: So are Microsoft’s days as the dominant provider of desktop and server and maybe even handheld operating systems numbered?

Zemlin: Monopolies don’t last forever, so I mean, I think they’ve got a long way to go. It’s just natural over time that people a

CDNNow: Wouldn’t the emergence of Linux kind of say that maybe Microsoft never really was a monopoly, that there was always room for somebody else to compete in there and that’s what Linux is now doing?

Zemlin: It obviously was a desktop monopoly for a period of time. It was never a pure monopoly on the server.

CDNNow: Apparently, Microsoft is going to get together with the Eclipse Foundation next week. Are there any accommodations between or collaborations between Microsoft and the Linux Foundation?

Zemlin: Not at this time, but we’d love to do it.

CDNNow: What would you like to see?

Zemlin: We’d like to have a place where developers can come and work on making Linux more effectively interoperate with Microsoft products. And we’d like to do that in the open-source way that’s not tied to any specific marketing agreement, that’s not tied to any specific contract, that is an open process that can be participated in by anyone in the community.

CDNNow: What’s the interoperability problem now?

Zemlin: I mean I think there’s always room for improvement around areas like the Samba Project, which is file-sharing; networking around virtual machines, and the management of those across different platforms.

CDNNow: Have you approached Microsoft about any of this?

Zemlin: No, not formally. I mean I think that they know that the offer is out there.

CDNNow: At the MIX08 show last week, one of the topics was the Moonlight, which is about Microsoft’s accommodating Linux with the [Novell-built] Moonlight version of the Silverlight client. Don’t you think that Microsoft is recognizing and accommodating Linux at least to that small degree?

Zemlin: I think they’re trying to be competitive, because certainly if you look at Adobe’s AIR platform and the development tools, they are for sure on Linux. Obviously, Microsoft recognizes that these type of cross-platform new media development tools and runtime environments are critical.

CDNNow: How far can the free software movement go?

Zemlin: The world is moving toward a place where mass collaboration is sort of essential to be competitive. Single companies can’t think of every good idea. [With] Linux, for example, the work that’s done in enabling real-time support in the Linux kernel for mission-critical financial systems on Wall Street, that same technology goes into benefit the mobile world. Power management technology for an extended battery life in Linux in the mobile [space] goes into the server world, reducing the cost of the energy footprint of the data center. So this stuff is extremely sophisticated, and when you talk about free software and how far “free” can go, I think that misses part of the conversation of how far this mass collaboration can go, which I think is the more important precedent to the second part, which is — how do you monetize it. Right? And so what’s clear to me is that Linux, as an example, and other similar — whether it’s Wikipedia or Facebook or Google or any of the other typical examples of incredible work that’s done in this mass collaboration model — are easily monetized. Red Hat has proven that certainly in the open-source world, that they can offer service and support and training.

CDNNow: I don’t think their revenues are approaching anything close to say, Microsoft or Oracle.

Zemlin: Obviously not because they’re an open platform that competes at providing customer value and doesn’t have the luxury of high-margin monopoly numbers. But is that for the bad of mankind? I think not. Yes, the days of high-margin, vendor lock-in monopoly practices in the software business, yes, those are gone, and they’re permanently gone.

CDNNow: Is Linux on par with, say, Solaris or maybe some of the older mainframe systems, and even Windows Server in areas like virtualization and security and things of that nature?

Zemlin: Linux is ahead of them in many cases. There are three to four virtualization solutions on the Linux platform. In fact, the Linux platform in general has done a poor job communicating how effective virtualization technology is on that platform. I think that you’ll see companies like VMware support a lot of virtual machines that run on Linux. You know, the Xen platform that’s being offered by both Red Hat and Novell is incredibly compelling. You’re seeing management tools on the Linux platform that are very similar to mainframe technology. You look at IBM’s z10 mainframe, that’s a Linux-based mainframe platform.

CDNNow: What about the security?

Zemlin: So IBM, I mean, check out the z10. This thing is equivalent to 1,500 x86 boxes, and it takes 75 percent less space and 75 percent less power. And they’ve done a terrific job with a lot of the actually more mature mainframe technology that they’ve had in providing security across different virtualized instances, within that being able to manage those effectively.

CDNNow: With the virtualization and security enhancements for Linux, are they owned by a particular vendor, or are they out in the open for anybody to get?

Zemlin: That’s the best part — the GPL requires that technology to be out there in the open. And the reason that that’s been official, where companies can make money off of that, is they’re innovating at a higher level. They’re benefiting from the work that others are doing around making virtualization more secure in the Linux platform and then innovating on the management of that.

CDNNow: What innovations are being eyed for upcoming versions of the Linux kernel, and when might we see those?

Zemlin: Well, I probably am not the best guy to go down the roadmap of the Linux kernel. Jonathan Corbet, who works with us and publishes something called The Linux Weather Forecast, would probably be the best person to talk about that. But I think you’ll see improvements to the file system, you’ll see improvements in power management, in virtualization technology coming out pretty regularly.

CDNNow: What type of improvements?

Zemlin: More efficient power utilization, more efficient use of system resources. It matters in the context of — does my battery last longer? Am I using less power in the data center? Do I have a file system that scales effectively? These are all things that are coming out and being improved. Is there a way for me to get performance information out of the kernel in an effective way so that I can monitor the platform? And those are all being improved continuously in the kernel itself.

CDNNow: Can Solaris compete with Linux?

Zemlin: I think [with] Solaris, had [Sun] open-sourced the platform maybe eight years ago, it would have been a very effective competitor to Linux. But I think at this point, the competition around Solaris is creating a similar development community to the Linux development community, which has thousands of developers working for hundreds of major corporations around the world. And I think that they’re extremely late to that camp. That type of effort requires a platform that people have confidence in, will be here for years to come. I mean, if I’m a developer and I want to bet my career on being a Solaris guy, I want to make sure I’m making the right bet. And I think people see the handwriting on the wall, they see the massive amount of industry support for Linux across the widest variety of computing, and they make a choice. And that choice is increasingly Linux.

CDNNow: Is there anything else you wanted to bring up?

Zemlin: One of the things I wanted to talk to you about today, just to give you context for what’s going on in Linux, is the concept of the community is starting to become extremely sophisticated in Linux. And I think it’s interesting to watch how many of the developers of the platform are full-time paid commercial developers who participate in a community process as both an individual and as an employee of an organization. How organizations like the foundation are playing a role within that development process to provide legal means, for example, for a kernel developer to get access to proprietary specifications through an NDA program where we sign an NDA with a developer and then coordinate with companies to get the development community access to specifications before those products go to market. Just the sophistication and the means to collaborate, [with] the tools available. The number of new countries that are participating in that. Meetings that are being coordinated throughout the world in order to enhance the development process of the platform. What you’re really seeing is an acceleration of this collaboration that will have huge, huge rewards reaped from it over time.

CDNNow: What type of rewards?

Zemlin: Better technology, better price performance, a cross-pollination of ideas through different technology segments that previously had not communicated with each other. And all of the examples I gave are like — I’ve got to have fast boot time and good power utilization on a mobile phone. Well, it turns out that data centers need the same thing because the cost of power and cooling are higher than the cost of the machines. Right? And so that cross-pollination of ideas, that acceleration of the platform is an incredibly compelling and interesting thing about the Linux platform that’s just, to me, is creating this big snowball effect that we’re just starting to see the very beginning of which right now.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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