Community-cation

Last week, Saugatuck Technology published a new whitepaper that detailed the affect open source software has had on business and the affect business has had on open source.

The big takeaway--at least the one most touted in the follow-up blogs and news reports about the paper--is that open source is driven more by the contributions of corporations and vendor-run projects than by individual developers.

It's getting to be near the end of the year, and--inevitably--there is a new round of year-in-review and year-ahead articles filling up the technical media cycles. There's just something about January 1 that compels journalists and bloggers to wrap up the last 366 days into a nice, neat package and predict how things are going to go during the next 365 days.

Today's a big day over at openSUSE: they've released version 11.1 of that distribution, and my friend Joe Brockmeier is sure to be busy handling all of the attendant chores with this event. Of course, I can't feel too sorry for him, since it's 72 and sunny where he is right now, and it's 20 with a snow storm here.

With the end of the year approaching, it becomes natural to look back at the year past and sum up what's happened. Curiously, even though I should be in the mood for this, having just sent out the usual Proffitt Family Christmas newsletter, I find myself looking ahead more than looking behind.

Tokyo, Japan was the host for the latest LF event: the Linux Foundation Japan Symposium, and video from the conference is now available on the Linux Foundation's events pages.

On November 19, 102 attendees came to Otemachi KDDI Hall in central Tokyo to get the latest news and information on developments around the Linux operating system. This seems small, but reports on the ground said this was a lively and interactive crowd.

You may have noticed the addition of a new articles on LDN today: the excellent "Anatomy of the Linux Kernel" from M. Tim Jones.

Conneseurs of the Linux trade press might be thinking to themselves, "hey, this article looks very familiar." And they would be correct: this is a piece that originally appeared on IBM developerWorks back in June, part of the "Anatomy" series Tim has written for that site.

Some interesting news just came over the wires: Oracle, that really big database company you may have heard of, and Emulex, a smaller host bus adapter vendor you may not have heard about yet, just announced that donation of block I/O data integrity infrastructure code to the Linux kernel.

In fact, the code is already in Linux 2.6.27.

In mid-October, Cisco Systems quietly announced the start of a new contest, one which could have a big impact for any team of skilled Linux developers. How big? Try $50,000 for the winning team.

The contest is an international competition for developers to code a Linux-based application for Cisco's Application Extension Platform (AXP), which sits on the company's routers. Cisco is clearly looking to build interest in and an application pool for the AXP, and giving away $100 grand in total prize money is a pretty good way to kick-start the process.

I was talking to a new freelance writer for LDN this afternoon, and when the subject came up about how I decided what topics to cover.

The fact that the Linux kernel now has an estimated development value of $1.4 billion is an intriguing development—it certainly represents a significant milestone for the Linux kernel community. After we published the "Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution" whitepaper, out of curiosity I wondered where in the overall development history of the Linux kernel the $1 billion number was actually reached.

Yesterday, I caught wind of some good news. It was the kind of good news that is immediately good for me and ultimately good for Linux. It was announced by MLB Advanced Media, major league baseball's online division, that video on MLB.com would no longer be delivered via Microsoft's Silverlight format but instead with Adobe Flash technology.

The US elections are (blessedly) over, and like any political junkie, I am suffering from withdraw symptoms. After months of polls, blogs, and cable news, I find myself craving the process of democratically electing something, anything.

So you can imagine how excited I was to see that some LDN users were starting taking advantage of our Brainstorming tool. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain what this section of the LDN is all about and encourage everyone to participate!

For the record, I like the Twitter. But darned if I can figure out how someone would make money from it.

The concept of micro-blogging is straightforward: in 140 characters, you tell the world at large what you're doing, how you're feeling, or why your life is so good/bad. I know quite a few people who use it, and like it, but I know quite a few more who think the whole exercise is just silly.

There was a little bit of schadenfreude in my heart this week when I surfed over to the Linux Hater's blog and discovered that its author has decided to close up shop.

Standards are often taken for granted though they are not easy to achieve.

This thought was the result of an unexpected weekend project where the kitchen sink faucet decided to spring a leak. While I am no Joe the Plumber, I decided to save some time and money and fix the problem myself.

The whitepaper "Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution" published this week was a really fun bit of collaborative effort. It basically boiled down to Ron Hale-Evans analyzing the Fedora code, me scoping out the kernel code, and Amanda McPherson pulling it all together into a coherent document.

It's not everyday you learn that your employer could be part of a massive 20-year old conspiracy of "IT systems monopolists" to keep Microsoft from stealing their mojo.

Well, shoot. This never came up at the company picnic. (Awk-ward...)

One of the recurring themes at this year's End User Summit was this whole notion of consumers vs. prosumers of Linux and open source software technology. "Prosumer" is not one of my usual words... I got it from Monday keynote speaker Anthony Williams, one of the authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

A lot of work has been done behind the scenes this week for the End User Summit in New York next week. Thanks to the talented people working on the show, I think it will be an excellent event. This is not, mind you, self-promotion--they've put me in charge of the slide shows, which shows my co-workers know how to best utilize me. :)

Well, this wasn't unexpected, but it's sad news nonetheless. According to an announcement from IDG today, the show known as LinuxWorld has gone into the history books.

Here in the US, it's been an interesting week in the financial and government worlds. And I mean "interesting" in the Chinese-curse sense of that word. Like most folks in the country, I've been watching the news with one eye on politics and the other on the ticker tape. Lost in some of the conflaguation of news was the announcement of our new event, LinuxCon, scheduled for September 2009 in Portland, Oregon.

I gotta say, I'm pretty excited today. We've announced the 2009 event schedule, and we've added a new event for the Linux community: LinuxCon.

This is a conference that, like our other summits, is specifically geared towards a certain segment of the Linux community. The Kernel Summit we just hosted, as one example, is for the kernel developers. The upcoming End Users Summit, as another example, will be an opportunity for corporate end-users of Linux to share their goals and wishes for Linux in their organizations.

Some good news for the Foundation this week, as we welcomed a new member, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, to our organization. Coming off of our successful Linux Kernel Summit, and the Linux Plumber's Conference that we helped underwrite, it was a good cap to a positive week's worth of news.

The big news at the Linux Foundation this week was not one but two--count 'em!--two events in the lovely Portland, Oregon. Let OSCON pack up and prove it knows the way to San Jose--we like the Rose City, just fine, thank you.

I read this morning that Microsoft has hired a former colleague of mine, Peter Galli, to be a Senior Communications Manager on Microsoft's Platform Strategy team.

I was glad to hear Peter had landed somewhere after Ziff Davis went through its latest round of layoffs a couple of months ago. Granted, not so happy he landed at Microsoft, but it appears his role there will be similar to my role here at the Linux Foundation: community manager.

Since coming onboard with the Linux Foundation, one of the things that I have missed is taking a look at the week gone by to see what's what. I'm glad to say that things have settled down enough that I can now take the time to provide some analysis to what's happened this week.

I have a confession to make: I've pretty much made it a small goal in life to see Mark Shuttleworth get married. Or involved in a steady relationship.

I've reached this conclusion after meeting him a few times and thinking "he's such a nice young man, he should find a girl and settle down." Apparently, there's something about Mark that brings out my inner shadchen. That, and the fact that my wife keeps asking about him anytime I mention I've had a conversation with him. Hmmm...

A former co-worker of mine just passed along the news that OSCON was going to move to San Francisco next year.

For people who went to OSCON this year, myself among them, this was hardly a surprise. It was pretty much the buzz on the conference floor at this year's show... a buzz that continued a couple of weeks later at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. O'Reilly, the event organizers, cited travel as a reason for reason not to go.

Most of us have stories about how we have done right by some family member and installed Linux for them in place of that other operating system. I myself have rescued my parental unit from the clutches of Vista.

So yesterday I was getting that "must-fiddle-with-my-computer" feeling again and I heard about this new extension for Firefox called Ubiquity. Good timing, I was in the mood for a new toy.

Ubiquity is really brand new: its release from Mozilla Labs is 0.1, this baby is right out of the delivery room. Despite that, it's a pretty solid piece of software, as prototypes go.

A lot of folks have been asking me what's going on with me on LDN, since they haven't seen me writing very much online. The truth is, I have veen writing, a lot. It's been mostly e-mails, telling people what's going on with LDN, getting things organized, plotting the next phase of my plans to rule the-- er, provide a high-quality resource for Linux developers.

This morning I was rolling through my blog feeds, catching up the latest news in the world o' Linux, when I noted an interesting piece of artwork in Celeste Lyn Paul's obso1337.org blog.

So there, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal Thursday morning, I read that Jerry Seinfeld will be participating in a $300 million PR blitz-o-rama to promote Vista. (A PC Pro article reports the same thing.)

Really? Has it come to this?

One of the things that still challenges me as a long-time Linux user is dealing with source tarballs. While I have no problems with simple make and make install commands, there are times when dependency he--er, heck still drives me nuts (though, admittedly, that's not a far drive).

Such was the problem when I was faced with a new Linux computer, a couple of long trips, and a need for some mental junk food.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the MAX in Portland, heading back to my hotel after an... interesting post-OSCON party hosted by Sun. (Sumo wrestler suits? Really?) I was riding the train with a friend who lives downtown and I was explaining to her just exactly what my new job with the Linux Foundation was and what we wanted to do with the Linux Developer Network.

So, having made it through the launch of LDN yesterday, I thought it would be nice to take a step back  and point out what is the coolest functionality of the new site: the Linux Application Checker. This thing, I have to say, is one sweet application.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be there at the beginning of something big. Like when three guys from Seattle decided to open up a new coffee store in 1971. Or when some kid decided to build a new operating system for his PC to do a university project.

It's easy to look at things that are huge now and remember that once upon a time, all of the hubbub was just an idea.

If you're lucky, though, you might just have a chance to be there at the beginning. When something huge begins as somethng small. Today I feel pretty lucky.