The future of Linux

[Jon maddog Hall]

Jerry,

gaf at blu.org said:
> I'm doing a presentation on Linux for a group on Monday night and I am
> struggling with "The Future of Linux" topic. I tend to look at things more in
> a what is rather than a what will be perspective. Could you help me out a bit
> on this, possibly by pointing me to a couple of sites that I could borrow
> from.

Jerry, I can not really point you to any "sites" that might have this
information, I can only give you some guidance as I see it.  I am copying the
gnhlug group on this, since I think it is a fine topic for additional
information and discussion.

Since the kernel group has not clearly defined what will be in 2.7 or even
opened up a 2.7 pool at this point, it is hard to say what the future of
"Linux" (the kernel) will be.

Indeed, with the announcement of the sale of the world's largest Supercomputer
as being a 10,000 Itanium processor SGI Altix system running Linux, and the
recognition of Free and Open Source Software being embedded in a watch, it is
hard to see what significant changes will be done to the kernel.  Nevertheless,
I am sure that eventually there will be changes.

Some of the things that are going on that will definitely affect the market
is the recent work done by IBM and SuSE on meeting the Common Criteria Security
models and achieving CAPP/EAL3+ security certification, and the fact that they
have made all of this work, code and test suites open and available to other
distributions (think "Red Hat") and hardware vendors to use as they wish.
Whether you appreciate the security certification process or not, the fact that
the Linux kernel is now certified allows it to meet one more "checkmark" on a
purchase form, and this is then reflected in additional purchases and business
in support organizations for those secure installations.  Secondly, you have to
applaud the openness of IBM and SuSE with the way they did this work.

Some of the virtualization work going on that allows people to have better
control of processes' use of hardware facilities is also good.  I go to
some of the events such as OLS, LinuxTAG and others and see things like
User Mode Linux (UML), and Cooperative Linux, as well as the many spin-offs of
Knoppix stuff, and this really excites me (I am a geek, I get excited by stuff
like this).  The Knoppix effort was a real enabler, allowing people to make
their own specialized releases.

Nevertheless, I think (and Linus has also stated this) that the real future of
"Linux" is outside of the kernel, in the upper layers....and therefore is not
the future of "Linux", but the future of "Free and Open Source".

The work that continues to be done in deployment of Beowulf systems, the library
work to handle multiple threads, the new X work being done by Keith Packard and
others, GNOME, KDE, and all that is really great.

The audio/video projects, Free and Open databases, even Free and Open ERP and
CRM projects are taking Free and Open Source far beyond what I ever thought it
would be.  Even more important, people are FINALLY beginning to understand the
real value and benefits of Free and Open Source Software.  Take a good, hard
look out on SourceForge.net at some of the projects out there.  Take a look at
some of the commercial databases like Ingres and Interbase opening up their
code and you can see where the development of code is going.

In our LUG this week I made the observation that software was moving from
a product based solution to a service-based solution, with the service being
along the lines of a "brain surgeon" in ability, training and compensation.
Several of my members felt that software has ALWAYS been a service industry,
with closed-source proprietary products being a detour along the way.

This collaborative development effort is even beginning to affect other
areas of intellectual industry.  People are beginning to question whether it
is REALLY worth while to hold their ideas secret, or whether it is worth more
to collaborate freely and move forward more rapidly then they could ever do
by themselves.

I believe the second one will win, and in more areas than just Free Software.
I believe that Richard Stallman will be able to smile at a dream accomplished.

I hate predicting the future, for it is very hard, but I do believe that
2004 and 2005 will be the years of the Free and Open Source desktop, 2006 and
2007 the years of "GNU/Linux at Home" (with associated games), and by 2010 we
will have enough GNU/Linux systems to declare "World Domination".

After that I will be doing my retirement project:

	maddog's mansion of microcomputing and microbrewing

Warmest regards,

maddog
-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director           Linux(R) International
email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St. 
Voice: +1.603.672.4557       Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association

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