Linus Torvalds, founder of the Linux kernel, made a startling comment at LinuxCon in Portland, Ore., on Monday: "Linux is bloated." While the open-source community has long pointed the finger at Microsoft's Windows as bloated, it appears that with success has come added heft, heft that makes Linux "huge and scary now," according to Torvalds.
Is "Tux" getting pudgy?
No. Of course not. It has simply grown as its adoption has expanded. This is the problem with success: you get pulled into an ever-widening array of tasks.
So, while Torvalds declared "We are definitely not the streamlined, hyper-efficient kernel I envisioned when I started writing Linux," Linux is also not the limited-purpose/function kernel he initially envisioned. It's powering everything from corporate data centers to over half of all new smartphones shipped, as the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin noted in his opening keynote.
Even so, it begs a question: will Linux become more like Windows as it becomes even more successful?
I suspect that successful open-source projects, generally, will increasingly look more like Microsoft as they grow. Simultaneously, Microsoft is slowly learning from open source, and I think it will capitulate, too.
Will we meet in the middle? Probably. For now, Linux may be getting a bit chubby, but that's likely cause for celebration, not hand-wringing.
Update @ 6:43 A.M. on Tuesday, September 22, 2009:
One thing that I forgot to mention, but which is critical to the success of Linux, is that there really is no such thing as monolithic "Linux." Linux is highly modular and can be trimmed down/beefed up to fit a wide variety of applications...on the developers' terms, not Red Hat's, Novell's, Canonical's, etc.
So, unlike Windows, which can only be what Microsoft dictates, Linux can truly be all things to all people, as "fat" or as "skinny" as the developer wants it to be. Ubuntu is obese compared to sub-100 KB uClinux distributions, for example. Both serve different, and useful, purposes.
As the founder and program chair for the Open Source Business Conference, I know what a business conference looks like. And as a regular attendee of the excellent O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), I know what a great developer event looks like, too.
But this year's inaugural LinuxCon, put on by the business and developer-friendly Linux Foundation, is trying to bring the two worlds together this September in Portland.
I think it might succeed.
Linux and all open-source software has matured to a place where end-user involvement in the development process is no longer a nice-to-have, but a requirement, as I suggested earlier today. This collaboration is a critical piece of the development process for any open-source project or company, and it's something the Linux Foundation continues to demonstrate itself well-qualified to generate.
LinuxCon comes at an interesting time in the industry, one of economic uncertainty that Linux and open source are well-suited to overcome. Linux and open-source expertise translate across companies. Knowledge isn't necessarily specialized on one product; it is focused on technologies and a transparent development process where everyone learns by contributing. It's a really smart place to focus a career.
It's also a great place to grow one's understanding. Developers can learn the business issues driving Linux and open-source adoption, while business-minded folks can participate in developer sessions that should provide insight into optimal ways to profit from open source. It's the first time that the Linux Foundation will bring all of the Linux stakeholders into one place to work on the technology and business aspects of advancing the operating system. And, it's open to everyone. No invitation required.
So consider yourself invited.
The LinuxCon program is now public and includes some exceptional speakers, perhaps the biggest name being Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel. LinuxCon also includes Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical), Bob Sutor (IBM), James Bottomley (Novell), and others. I'm privileged to join the LinuxCon faculty, hosting a panel called "Beyond the Hype: The True Cost of Linux and Open Source."
I've become a huge fan of the Linux Foundation. I think it's doing great development work with Linux (including Moblin), but it's also doing a great job of growing and coalescing the Linux community. LinuxCon is a great example of this. I'm looking forward to it.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
It should be obvious, but the more I talk to people about open source, and where and how it's useful, the more I'm surprised by how overinflated (or underinflated) expectations often are for open source.
One case in point is with the utility of source code as a way to save time and money, rather than reinventing the wheel. For example, Alfresco, my employer, was able to get its initial content management product to a 1.0 state in less than six months because it heavily borrowed from successful open-source projects such as Hibernate, Spring, PDFbox, and others.
However, as Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds notes in a recent interview, it's not always that easy. Speaking of the possibility of including Sun's OpenSolaris code in Linux, the Torvalds remarks:
One of the problems is that taking code from other projects is hard. You can't take the code as is, right? Solaris is very different in many areas from Linux, so if you take Solaris code, you have to fix it for all the differences.
Quite often, it's actually more work to try to take code from another project than it would be to just write it yourself from the start, from scratch.
In some cases, it's worth the effort, but it is effort. For those who think that adopting open-source software is easy, you clearly haven't been involved in it for very long.
Open source doesn't make development or business easier. It's a different way of doing development that has its own significant benefits and some downsides. I think that it leads to superior code, but don't expect the road to be smooth.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
I admire Linus Torvalds' candor (this is the guy who freely admits his own family doesn't use the Linux desktop, after all), as well as his foresight.
In an excellent interview posted on Simple-Talk, Torvalds covers a range of topics, including the Linux operating system's place in history:
I can certainly imagine the Linux kernel becoming obsolete--anything else would just be sad, really, in the big picture.
He is absolutely right. Much as we may pine for this or that project to achieve market dominance, it is one of the cardinal virtues of open source that there are no legal or business policies that would entrench it as a monopoly. People may choose to use it for a long period of time and to the exclusion of other products/projects, but there are no nefarious designs in the code to make it so.
Hence, Linux may fade away. At some point, we should certainly hope so, in order to make way for the next phase of operating system, one that is preferably open source.
Other interesting tidbits from the interview are Linus' comment on patents:
... Read moreLeave it to Linus Torvalds, founder of the Linux kernel, to speak his mind. While many point to Linux as superior to Windows as offering superior security, Torvalds doesn't want anyone to make a fetish of security, including the OpenBSD people to whom he addresses this classic missive:
...[O]ne reason I refuse to bother with the whole security circus is that I think it glorifies - and thus encourages - the wrong behavior.
It makes "heroes" out of security people, as if the people who don't just fix normal bugs aren't as important.
... Read more
I really like this list of the top-ten Linus Torvalds' quotes, as compiled by Computer Business Review. Linux is Linux in large part because Linus is Linus: A strong personality but disarming and approachable.
That latter attribute plays out in my top-two favorite quotes:
Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100 mph.
And...
When you say, "I wrote a program that crashed Windows," people just stare at you blankly and say, "Hey, I got those with the system, for free."
Classic.
Linus Torvalds woke up on Mars today (or maybe it was Oz), and had this to say about Windows Vista and Apple's OS X:
I don't think they're equally flawed. I think Leopard is a much better system. On the other hand, (I've found) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary. I think OS X is nicer than Windows in many ways, but neither can hold a candle to my own (Linux). It's a race to second place.
I guess when you're famous you can say inane things and get away with it. Yes, Linux does some things better than Mac OS X and Microsoft's Windows Vista on the desktop (security, maybe), but let's be honest: the Linux desktop is "utter crap" compared to either OS X or Windows when it comes to the thing that matters most: usability.
If normal people can't use it, it just doesn't matter how beautifully architected it is. Sorry, Linus. Everyone has to be wrong sometimes. This is your turn to shine.
That said, I found his comments on whether Google is a good open-source citizen much more illuminating:
... Read moreLinus Torvalds has sage advice for those companies looking to get involved with "the community." You don't. You join it by contributing code or you hire someone who already is doing so.
This has been Stephe Walli's counsel to Microsoft for years. For companies looking for a shortcut, Linus has a suggestion:
...[T]he easiest way is to find a person who is already a member of the development process or maybe not a very central one, but really - central enough that he's been involved and knows how things works and basically bring that person into the company.
One way or another, companies need to increasingly insert themselves into the open-source conversation. Actions speak louder than words. Code speaks loudest of all.
I made this same point over the weekend in a post or three. But when it comes from Linus Torvalds, it means more.
When asked in an InformationWeek Q&A how Linux compares with Windows, Torvalds didn't go into a marketing discussion of Feature Y over Feature X. Instead, he discussed the strength of Linux's process/approach over Windows' "We are Microsoft--trust us to be your god" approach:
I think the real strength of Linux is not in any particular area, but in the flexibility. For example, you mention virtualization, and in some ways that's a really excellent example, because it's not only an example of something where Linux is a fairly strong player, but more tellingly, it's an example where there are actually many different approaches, and there is no one-size-fits-all "One True Virtualization" model....
...I mention that as a strong point of open source! Why? Because it actually is a great example of what open source results in: one person's (or company's) particular interests don't end up being dominant. The fact that I personally think that virtualization isn't all that exciting means next to nothing.
... Read more
Some developers think that free and open-source software would go along its merry way without commercial interest. Not Linus Torvalds. In an interesting interview, he suggests that Linux would have been dead on arrival had it not been for commercial backing:
Linux really wouldn't have gone anywhere interesting at all if it hadn't been released as an open source product. I also think that the change to the GPLv2 from my original "no money" license was important, because the commercial interests were actually very important from the beginning. The commercial distributions were what drove a lot of the nice installers and pushed people to improve usability. You need a balance between pure technology and the kinds of pressures you get from users through the market.
What we don't need, however, is the commercial interest of the kind Microsoft brings to the table:
... Read more
