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Two main representatives of the Linux community -- Open Source Development Labs and Free Standards Group -- have merged to form the Linux Foundation. The group is supported by several major firms, including Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, NEC, Novell and Oracle, which serve as founding platinum members. The groups first formally discussed the idea at the OSDL meeting in Japan two months ago, and quickly approved the foundation at a special board meeting shortly thereafter.
Re: Linux Heavyweights Form New Foundation
Posted by: DennisByron 2007-01-24 06:51:22 In reply to: Erika Morphy
It's instructive that the "Linux heavyweights" referenced here are pretty much the same "Unix heavyweights" who in merging OSDL and FSG took exactly the same tack as 11 years ago (see press release February 11, 1996) in merging X/Open and the Open Software Foundation (OSF). I think they used the same press release and just changed the names.
X/Open like FSG was a specification and certification “group” that tried to help overcome the by-then fatal forking of UNIX. OSF like OSDL was a consortium founded by DEC, HP, IBM and other corporate players to promote a single UNIX. Look at the top 12 information technology (IT) suppliers’ activity last year in both the open source software engineering movement (and in their use of the open-source business model over the last 10 years) and you will find the same sorts of things are happening today to the Open Source/Linux movement and happened then in the Open Software/Unix movement:
• Open source software is primarily used in large enterprises—especially governments where politics replace common sense. OSS software is not actually replacing more popular mainframe and server software. It’s just replacing earlier versions of UNIX (vis a vis your graphic).
• As has been true for the history of the IT industry, independent software vendors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and enterprises of all sizes embrace a hybrid “open-choice” approach, one that combines OSS and today’s leading popular infrastructure software stacks?
The channel and enterprises want open choice, not open source,” and the IT industry will give it to them. So:
• The winners in this are the CIOs that saw open choice as the better way over pure open source. Choice is what CIOs have always wanted. The losers (and this was pre-ordained at the founding meeting of the Share IBM mainframe user group in 1955) are the true believers at Groklaw.net and such sites who didn’t realize that this is just déjà vu all over again. This OSDL/FSG announcement is the proof point.
• For ISVs the OSS takeover of UNIX and the leading IT suppliers’ takeover of OSS means higher costs if they choose to support more than one stack. But ironically the decreasing number of platforms (basically there is only zOS, OSS’ LAMP and Windows remaining although Apple might disagree) means that ISVs can even be successful if they stick with a single platform as in the heyday of the AS/400 application ecosystem. And real open choice also means ISVs can mix and match within the stack (BEA WebLogic running on Linux, for example, is a very popular pairing according to IDC).
• For OEMs (e.g., Linux on Tivo), I think the Free Software Foundation extremism and GPL licensing brouhaha is going to scare them away from OSS and they will make simple business-centric choices between an older UNIX and Windows CE until the legalities sort themselves out.
X/Open like FSG was a specification and certification “group” that tried to help overcome the by-then fatal forking of UNIX. OSF like OSDL was a consortium founded by DEC, HP, IBM and other corporate players to promote a single UNIX. Look at the top 12 information technology (IT) suppliers’ activity last year in both the open source software engineering movement (and in their use of the open-source business model over the last 10 years) and you will find the same sorts of things are happening today to the Open Source/Linux movement and happened then in the Open Software/Unix movement:
• Open source software is primarily used in large enterprises—especially governments where politics replace common sense. OSS software is not actually replacing more popular mainframe and server software. It’s just replacing earlier versions of UNIX (vis a vis your graphic).
• As has been true for the history of the IT industry, independent software vendors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and enterprises of all sizes embrace a hybrid “open-choice” approach, one that combines OSS and today’s leading popular infrastructure software stacks?
The channel and enterprises want open choice, not open source,” and the IT industry will give it to them. So:
• The winners in this are the CIOs that saw open choice as the better way over pure open source. Choice is what CIOs have always wanted. The losers (and this was pre-ordained at the founding meeting of the Share IBM mainframe user group in 1955) are the true believers at Groklaw.net and such sites who didn’t realize that this is just déjà vu all over again. This OSDL/FSG announcement is the proof point.
• For ISVs the OSS takeover of UNIX and the leading IT suppliers’ takeover of OSS means higher costs if they choose to support more than one stack. But ironically the decreasing number of platforms (basically there is only zOS, OSS’ LAMP and Windows remaining although Apple might disagree) means that ISVs can even be successful if they stick with a single platform as in the heyday of the AS/400 application ecosystem. And real open choice also means ISVs can mix and match within the stack (BEA WebLogic running on Linux, for example, is a very popular pairing according to IDC).
• For OEMs (e.g., Linux on Tivo), I think the Free Software Foundation extremism and GPL licensing brouhaha is going to scare them away from OSS and they will make simple business-centric choices between an older UNIX and Windows CE until the legalities sort themselves out.
