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wysiwia writes "Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL, said during an interview with vnunet.com at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco that it's 'inevitable' that Microsoft will release a version of Office to run on Linux within the 'next couple of years'. But when one reads the OSDL survey about the 'Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption' this 'next couple of years' might mean quite a long time. This leads to the question, has Stuart Cohen read his own survey and how does he overcome these inhibitors so MS really will think about MSOffice for Linux." I think the bigger question is 'In reality, how likely is Office for Linux?' I'm not sure that I agree with his assumption.

Here are OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen's answers to your questions, many of which were spurred by the recent release of an OSDL co-sponsored Linux TCO study (that anti-open source commentator Rob Enderle has already/inevitably questioned). (1) A Movement with the Students
by eldavojohn

This may seem like an inane question but why don't I see more of a push to get Linux into the realm of academia?

I know that Ubuntu [ubuntufund.org] has made strides to incorporate themselves into learning environments but where is the effort to alert students (primarily other than computer science majors) to the benefits of Linux?

When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, a friend handed me a CD distribution of Debian that would change my life. I knew of the Linux labs in the University but only now did they interest me. I'm now getting my masters at George Mason University and I don't believe there's a single Linux machine on campus. In fact, the whole Computer Science department has only two Sun servers to offer me an account on! Everything else is Microsoft!

Now you may lay claim that every computer science major these days is running Linux anyway. But how about the other areas of study? I used to take music theory and people would rant and rave about their Macs or one of various composing suites in Windows. I tried explaining that Linux has (certainly more affordable) solutions to offer in this department too but no one would even listen to me. It's not like they were mixing platinum selling records, they were just looking for software to write sheet music with.

I think that both Apple and Microsoft realize that the toys people have in college become the toys they demand in real life. So there are all these [apple.com] efforts [e-academy.com] to garner the student's interest hoping that they will use them in their careers.

They make it free (which Linux already is), they make it easy and they make it available.

So how about it? Why isn't the Linux community minting install discs and distributing literature on campuses? Why isn't Linux tailoring cheap solutions to K-12 schools that don't have the money for Windows anyway? Why do we risk letting someone leave academia without ever experiencing the real fruits of it?

If you are doing this (and I just don't know about it), what steps have you taken?

Stuart:

I have found from conversations with CS professors that while Linux is still finding its way into college curricula, it is being used by students on their PCs and in their university labs. It's also being used by college IT staff for the same reasons it is appealing to corporate IT managers - cost of acquisition, lower cost of management and the ability to prolong the lifetime of legacy hardware. And, in Asia and across a range of developing countries, by contrast, Linux is forming the core of much curricula, especially in countries where governments see Linux as a means to local technology development. In many universities that I visit outside the U.S., I meet with the head of open source for the university. This title doesn't exist in U.S., which implies that the academic tie to local economic development and the advancement of information systems is weaker here than abroad.

I agree that what users become comfortable with in college they take with them into their professional careers. We think Linux has a very bright future in education. We launched a program to bring together leading universities around the world to share their experiences and lessons learned to help accelerate that trend. As a small non-profit, OSDL can't by itself take on the global job of delivering Linux to schools and universities, but we can encourage our members to support Linux in education and we can bring together universities to encourage them to embrace more use of Linux. And we do.

(2) Bias
by MaestroSartori

Since almost all of these studies are funded or organised by a party which appears to be inherently for or against one of the things being studied, will it be possible to find anyone willing to compare them impartially? After all, how many people would believe an Open Source company to be any less biased than MS when it comes to comparing their products?

Stuart:

Questioning the credibility of ALL analyst studies is important. Let me just elaborate on how this particular study originated. I hope the context will help you weigh the impartiality of the study and judge for yourself. Levanta (co-sponsor of the study and a member of OSDL) was the vendor that initiated this study by Enterprise Management Associates. In their own sales scenarios for their Linux product, they were running into organizations that were saying they were apprehensive about Linux because they had read that it was "tough to manage." Levanta believed from its own experiences that the concern did not meet up with the reality -- so they sponsored EMA to get some real-world feedback from end user Linux customers. They also wanted current information. Most of the analyst research published to date was already old, going back as much as four years or more. Linux itself, and the tools available to help customers manage Linux, have come a long ways since then. When we (OSDL) saw an early draft of the report, we were very interested in co-sponsoring the effort because the report echoed what we have been hearing from our Linux User Advisory Councils on three continents for a number of years. It was current information with interviews conducted in November and December of 2005. The customers interviewed were also using current versions of the kernel and current releases of enterprise distributions. It reflected today's market situation. And it was based on real Linux customer feedback.

(3) Security Question
by db32

How can we fix the problem of the way TCO studies handle security? In so many of them every OSS application under the sun gets tallied against Linux systems, regardless of how obscure, or unrequired that application may be. Yet all of the 3rd party things that have holes in them rarely seem to even get looked at when talking about Windows security. Firefox for example seems to get tagged frequently when talking about Linux security in these studies, but Firefox isn't integreated into Linux, and it runs on both platforms. IE on the other hand is integrated into the OS, sure you can not use it, but there is a ton of junk in Windows itself that requires the various bits and pieces of IE to operate correctly. What is it going to take for these studies to finally start comparing apples to apples in regards as to what really is part of the OS and what is required for it to run?

Stuart:

It's difficult to say if this will ever be able to be measured "apples to apples."

Just as with Windows, the Linux platform cannot be judged, security-wise, as a "naked" kernel but rather as an OS with a variety of components. In the case of Linux, the component set is determined by the 200-500 packages offered by typical distributions and variously installed by systems administrators and by end users. However, very much UNLIKE Windows, there are few, if any, applications that pervade typical Linux-based applications stacks and carry with them pervasive security issues the way that IE pervades and exposes most parts of a Windows stack. Indeed, Linux is very modular and compartmentalized, such that even if security/TCO studies illustrate holes and exploits in the Linux stack over time, any given breach will have much less impact and patches to repair exploits are far less likely to perturb the entire stack (especially compared to the havoc wreaked by frequent Windows patches and service packs).

(4) Setting up Linux from Win2K3
by digitaldc

Say I wanted to switch from Windows Server 2003 to Linux in a company of about 400 people with the same equipment I already have, generally speaking how long would it take and how much would I need to invest?

Do I need to hire several Linux experts just to get it up and running?

Would you expect this to be relatively easy or would it be very complicated and time consuming?

Stuart:

It's difficult to answer your questions without more information but I can tell you that comparing legacy and migrated systems costs is never an apples-to-apples exercise. Seldom do legacy applications, both COTS and in-house, port on a one-for-one basis and with comparable acquisition and maintenance costs. Certainly starting from the bottom of the stack and moving upwards, it is easy to show improved TCO for comparable "abstract" loads. Linux on Intel, AMD and power hardware will cost less than per-system licensing and the short deployed lifetimes typical of Windows-based stacks. The LAMP stack is demonstrably more stable and more scalable than comparable proprietary Microsoft equivalents - even moving from WAMP variants will yield benefit in terms of reliability. SAMBA, NFS, OpenLDAP and other user-base technologies will scale more cheaply and reliably than Windows-based legacy.

Cost and ease of migration, however, will always vary based on the depth and breadth of specific dependencies within legacy loads and availability of COTS components (or work-alike replacements) on the target Linux system.

(5) If OSDL believes that Linux has a superior TCO ...
by hweimer

... why don't they use it?

Almost every PDF document on the OSDL website has been created on a Windows PC or on a Mac. Even the Desktop Linux Survey Report - http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005.pdf - shows:

$ pdfinfo DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005.pdf
Title: Microsoft Word DTL_Survey_Report_v4.doc
Creator: Word
Producer: Mac OS X 10.4.3 Quartz PDFContext


Stuart:

OSDL runs on Linux. Many of the reports we publish, however, are formatted by outside vendors or members of OSDL. We don't dictate to others what format they send to us.

But fair enough, we could do better.

I must also say that, while the Linux Desktop is getting better and better with laptops integrated with PDAs and cell phones, it still lacks some features that are standard on other platforms. Take for example the "Linux Desktop Survey" you reference. OSDL's principal analyst Dave Rosenberg wrote the study with Open Office on Linux. Because he had to combine his file with an existing PDF (not available with Open Office today), he found it faster and easier to complete this task on the Mac using Acrobat.

(6) Why Should We Care?
by illuminatedwax

It's a Serious Question. Don't TCO costs end up coming down to how much you will pay employees, how many employees you need, and the price of software? Shouldn't any capable manager be able to estimate the costs themselves? After all, I'm certain TCO varies wildly from workplace to workplace, considering what kind of system is already in place, what software is readily available for an OS, and what skills your current employees have.

My question is: is there really a use for these reports other than for 'defense': positive propaganda versus negative propaganda?

As an aside, do these studies take into account the availability and flexibility of currently extant software? Is there even a way to turn that information into TCO?

Stuart:

Despite the "T" in TCO, meaningful studies must limit the parameters under consideration in order to observe scientific principles. In the recent EMA study, the scope was confined to an area that Microsoft traditionally cites as a strength - systems management. Assuming comparable applications loads, the study showed that IT staffs could manage more Linux-based servers than Windows-based systems. Implicit in this metric is that managing the same number of servers would thereby require fewer or less costly IT resources, with immediate impact on TCO.

Any capable manager should in theory be able to perform such a calculation, but organizations often undercount or ignore real costs of maintaining legacy software, actual headcount needs, and deployment of different types of equipment.

(7) Is it about Linux or better operating systems
by selil

What I would really like to know is why Linux or Windows? Why hasn't there been a really good study that included BSD, Solaris, OSX, or even licensed variants of Unix? Is it all about Linux or is it about better operating systems?

Stuart:

You're right, it should be about the best operating system for you, for your specific needs. Linux keeps winning in the market because it's stable and secure with the ability to handle mission critical workloads. Because our mission at OSDL is to accelerate the adoption of Linux, that's where we focus our resources.

(8) One of the main problems
by petrus4

In looking at Microsoft's TCO claims in particular, I've been unable to avoid noticing that a lot of the company's material on this subject consists of, to put it simply, straight lies. Aside from anything else, nothing is mentioned by them about their licensing fees. How they can state with a straight face that after their licensing fees, Windows can still be cheaper than Linux is beyond me.

Legitimate performance competition is one thing, but I'm curious to know how the ODSL is able to deal with Microsoft's lack of ethics in this regard? Given Microsoft's marketing power, how are Linux advocates able to communicate to people that many of Microsoft's claims in this area are deceptive?

Stuart:

Your comments are very familiar to me. These are the types of thing we kept hearing from our Linux User Advisory Councils - and why when we saw the EMA study, we decided to co-sponsor it. To more specifically answer your question, though - Linux advocates have a powerful weapon at their disposal: real users' experiences. These experiences are very positive and when shared with others, tell the real story. Again, that is why we chose to support this particular study - it's current, it clearly represents user experiences. It's consistent with fact. The other point that is important to make is that it's also supported by market facts -- and that's the growth rate of Linux adoption. It continues to grow twice as fast as Windows and 5x faster than the server market. That means more customers every day are making a business decision to move more of their work to Linux. If Linux has all these problems, then why do people keep making poor financial decisions in a market filled with choices? This logic is catching up to Microsoft. I think Microsoft is a well managed company and they listen closely to their customers. I expect you'll see them moving away from the comparisons they tried to promote in early 'studies' around TCO or security that had no affect on the growth of Linux.

(9) Are the OSS IP Indemnification offerings worthy?
by csoto

We recently had an issue in which Microsoft Office included unlicensed IP (according to a court settlement). Microsoft did not require us to patch existing installations, rather simply protecting our use via the settlement, agreeing to require future installations to include the patch. This seems like a case in which indemnifications worked (although they could have offered some compensation for the extra work - it's cheaper than litigation). For background, see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /topics/ipi.mspx.

How do the OSS indemnification plans stack up? Have there been any significant cases involving IP indemnification?

Stuart:

In fact, there has been relatively little litigation around Linux and open source software in absolute terms (a handful of cases) and when compared to the thousands of suits filed every year around proprietary software, practically none. While companies like HP, Novell, and several embedded players offer a range of IP indemnification, uptake and actual use of the policies have not been that significant. Also, while customers look closely at IP issues, it has not been key decision criteria for customers of any size or located in any particular country.

(10) What difference can OSDL make?
by Goeland86

There's certainly been a good few questions asked already, but the one I'd like to get an answer to is, how do companies see OSDL? Do they believe it's a trustworthy group that knows what they're talking about, or does it look like another one of those 'fad-like' groups that's going to fade away? I don't mean to say OSDL is fading out, I'm curious to know what the real-world perception of it is. I've noticed that while many of my friends use linux and are generally well-versed in what's going on, they're usually totally unaware of the existence of OSDL, or its purpose.

How will this change? How will OSDL become a trusted group for IT managers, especially in a world where most of them have only heard of Microsoft's "Get the facts", or have some shares in MS stocks?

I feel that part of the reason that one of the above posters was asking why isn't linux penetrating the educational market is because the trustees funding the schools have a say in what to use, because they're paying for it, and the trustees will usually have a significant amount of MS stocks.

What's the chance of all of this changing? Or rather, what are the means in place for all that to change?

Stuart:

There are a lot of questions in your question, and I can't speak for how other organizations or companies perceive OSDL since I represent OSDL. But, with more than 70 members, I can tell you that one of OSDL's key attributes is vendor neutrality. OSDL is in a unique position to bring vendors, users and developers together. In doing this, OSDL bridges gaps among companies that alone struggle to move technology forward but when combined can quickly accelerate technologies via common platforms or testing scenarios. As Linux and open source software move into the mainstream of IT environments, the voice of the user, as well as the vendors, will be more and more important. I think the programs we have today and the ones we will announce shortly will help to bridge the gaps with developers, vendors and users. And remember that our mission is advancing the use of Linux and open source software, and not building awareness of OSDL.

---

This morning OSDL and OSDL member Levanta jointly released a study done by Enterprise Management Associates called Get the Truth on Linux Management. For years, a proprietary software company in Washington State has run what they call a Get the Facts campaign about Linux, full of studies that invariably show Linux to be expensive, hard to maintain, and less than totally secure. Stu Cohen, as CEO of OSDL, a group "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise," will happily answer your questions about Linux vs. Windows studies and the myths and FUD that seem to hover over them. Expect Stu's answers to the 10 - 12 highest-moderated questions later this week.

This morning OSDL and OSDL member Levanta jointly released a study done by Enterprise Management Associates called Get the Truth on Linux Management. For years, a proprietary software company in Washington State has run what they call a Get the Facts campaign about Linux, full of studies that invariably show Linux to be expensive, hard to maintain, and less than totally secure. Stu Cohen, as CEO of OSDL, a group "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise," will happily answer your questions about Linux vs. Windows studies and the myths and FUD that seem to hover over them. Expect Stu's answers to the 10 - 12 highest-moderated questions later this week.

An anonymous reader writes "Several major telecom companies have come together to form a new alliance. Founded January 1, 2006 by Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, NEC, Nokia and Siemens, "SCOPE", is helping to promote the availability of open carrier grade base platforms based on Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware / software and Free Open Source Software (FOSS) building blocks, and to promote interoperability to better serve Service Providers and consumers. " It's worth noting that a number of these companies have also been OSDL members, pursuing the same agenda.

Johhny writes "What is it about Ubuntu that has enabled it to grow so much? This distribution has clearly built on Debian's success but it has more than a few other things going for it. Ubuntu has become one of the most popular versions of desktop Linux despite its many differences from some of the other popular versions out there, including its scheduled releases and its counterpart, Kubuntu. The article takes a look at this distribution and tries to find out how Ubuntu defied the odds. This article generated a really informative comments page at OSnews."

Dave Rosenberg, Principal Analyst, Open Source Development Labs, contributed this commentary piece: Despite all the open source software and services companies funded in 2005, the associated business models are still considered experimental and unproven. The new crop need only to look to the past avoid missteps. At the Open Source Business Conference in November, VCs and open source software company executives wondered aloud if what we’re seeing today is a “bubble” of open source start-ups being funded. One journalist’s recap of the event cited $144 million in open source start-ups receiving VC funding in 2005, double the venture capital flow for open source start-ups in 2004. Bubble or not, there is a company that every would-be open source start-up investor should learn a lesson from: LinuxCare.

LinuxCare was born in 1999 -- venture-backed by top tier VC firms like Kleiner Perkins, with total funding in the ballpark of $70 million.

Those were the frontier days for Linux. There was a ton of industry interest and activity despite the fact that the jury was still out with respect to end user adoption. Nobody really knew exactly how Linux was going to be used – would it be for the desktop, servers, etc.? The company used the vast venture coffers to promote the brand and staff star-power (even Linus Torvalds consulted for them briefly)– and LinuxCare quickly became the recognized name for Linux services and support, doing work for big systems vendors like Dell and IBM in addition to developing device drivers and offering education services.

Red Hat had the Linux OS and software, VA Linux had the hardware – and LinuxCare had the services. It was a theoretically perfect enterprise Linux ecosystem triumvirate.

But it wasn't meant to be.

The demise of LinuxCare can be attributed to many factors. The first was that enterprises were slow to adopt Linux – in the early ‘00s, IT spending came to a grinding halt with the dot-com and stock market crash. But the key factor to LinuxCare’s spectacular death spiral was the fact that they were going up against Red Hat, the very company they were basing their business on. Red Hat not only developed their own distribution of Linux, but also started offering support for it. Red Hat offered a one-stop shop for Linux software and services regardless of hardware. Enterprise customers decided it was easier to buy from one vendor. This same sentiment is what drives sales of Microsoft software in enterprises today.

LinuxCare suffered a painful public death over months of executive departures and layoffs, VA Linux abandoned hardware for software, and RedHat, with the cash to weather the tech spending downturn, expanded its revenue streams and became the de-facto enterprise Linux distribution.

It's easy to dismiss LinuxCare as "ahead of their time", which is definitely true. But the fundamental and fatal flaw was that they based their products on someone else's IP, with no IP of their own. When the market tanked abruptly, LinuxCare didn't have the money to weather the storm and didn't have consistent alternative revenue streams to combat the lack of services income.

Some of the executives from LinuxCare went on to start a new company called Levanta, which focuses on Linux systems management. They have since developed IP in software and hardware that can sustain the business beyond the services revenue.Their LinuxCare experience taught them how to build a sustainable technology business model on top of open source software. No longer do they rely on IP that walks out the door every night in their employees' heads.

In the end, it all comes down to IP. Building a business on top of something you don't own is extremely risky. Companies need to develop their own IP to be innovative and have competitive differentiation. And if they don't develop it themselves, they need to acquire or license the relevant code to protect themselves and ensure they aren't caught without alternatives.

An Open Source Danger Zone?

In my eyes, the bubble associated with open source is less related to the millions of VC dollars and more related to the reliance on software and components that are not part of a company's internal IP. When Oracle acquired InnoDB, it had a less than positive effect on MySQL, but MySQL is a smart enough company to not bet the farm on something it doesn't own. It owns enough IP to sustain its products-and it's business from the risk associated with relying on someone else's code.

IT Groundwork has built a business on top of an open source network monitoring project called Nagios. They don't own the copyrights and they don't employ the creator. Kleiner-backed SpikeSource offers "certified stacks" of open source software components, but they don't actually create the open source components themselves.

And in SpikeSource's case, Red Hat announced that they too would offer "certified stacks." Who do think is going to win that battle? Red Hat, the one-stop shop that offers the OS and the apps, or the company that offers merely a portion of the total package. Does SpikeSource have the IP or alternative revenue sources to withstand Red Hat? Let's wish them luckand hope they know the LinuxCare tale.

If there is a bubble, it will burst when the open source projects these new company's products and services depend on go private, fork, or get acquired. The market for open source is so new we haven't seen much of this yet. Only time will tell if the recently funded open source companies can build sustainable businesses, or if this grand experiment will result in a few 800 pound gorillas and many tiny monkeys.

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Commentary by Florian Mueller - Last year, a lot of noise was made by OSRM, the city of Munich, and Steve Ballmer about the risk posed to open source by software patents. This year, we've seen a variety of initiatives by companies that "donated" patents to "protect" open source, and organizations like the OSDL and the Open Invention Network now try to pool such patent pledges.

I've been wary of those patent pledges and pools from the beginning. There's an awful lot of dishonesty in these all-too-obvious attempts to curry favor with the community and reassure customers. While the jury is still out on some of those projects, none of them has so far delivered a single compelling reason for me to believe that they're really going to be more than a placebo. Some make it sound like these pools are a bulletproof vest for open source, but it's more like you have a coin in your pocket and hope that a bullet will be deflected by it. Too bad the coin isn't even in a place where someone would usually shoot you.

While I do agree that open source should protect itself as best as possible within the legal framework that exists, cheap PR plays are not a substitute for a real solution. The pledges that I've seen so far had all sorts of shortcomings:

- Some pledged patents are of little or no value. Among IBM's 500 patents "contributed" in January, there were some that had nothing to do withsoftware, and many were up for renewal soon, with no guarantee that they'd actually be renewed.

- The pledges typically just relate to particular open source licenses (sometimes rarely-used ones) or projects, such as the Linux kernel (which is only a small part of a standard Linux configuration).

- Some pledges are revocable or haveloopholes such as vague conditions under which the patent holder can sue you anyhow.

- So far the quantities of patents involved have been negligible compared to the total number of issued software patents, and even to the number held by the "generous donors." Even in the long run, there'll be hundreds of thousands of software patents in the world that aren't subject to any pledge. In his speeches, Richard Stallman likens software patents to mines in a park: If there are 90,000 mines in the park instead of 100,000, it's still far from being a safe place to walk.

Even if you don't look the gift-horse in the mouth, there are fundamental problems that even the best pledges can't solve:

- You can't practically go about your programming job by always looking up a patent pledge database whether it contains just the algorithms you need. I don't think any programmer would seriously do that! And even if algorithms A and B are covered by patents in a pool, there may be a patent C that covers your particular combination of A and B, and that patent C may not be in the pool.

- Pledges which exclusively relate to open source aren't too valuable. Software under the BSD license is used in closed-source projects all the time. A project like PostgreSQL, which already felt forced to replace a caching algorithm due to an IBM patent, couldn't just base its development decisions on open source considerations alone. Then there are dual-licensing models for GPL software (MySQL is a well-known example) and companies that sell closed source software to finance their open source development efforts.

- These pledges are only made by organizations that don't intend to sue open source projects anyway. Patent holders who are potentially hostile, be it for strategic or purely financial motivations, won't pledge anything. It's nice to firm up the commitment of your allies not to act against you, but it doesn't reduce the number of enemies.

- If a company promises not to sue open source projects over a certain set of patents, it still doesn't mean that those patents can be used by open source projects for retaliatory purposes. However, the patent game is one of mutually assured destruction, like in the Cold War. If NATO hadn't had a single nuclear weapon, and the Soviet Union had promised not to use something like 5% of its nuclear arsenal, then we probably wouldn't live in freedom now.

- Companies usually can't even make their patents available for the purpose of building a counterthreat because those patents are already subject to existing cross-licensing agreements. If a new entity (such as the Open Invention Network) started acquiring unencumbered patents, then one day they might be able to grant a license to a company like Microsoft in exchange for a covenant not to sue Linux with its own patents. That could indeed make a major difference (even if only for Linux), yet it wouldn't help against trolls that have no products of their own. And a strategic aggressor could secretly arrange for such a troll to do the job.

No matter how you look at it, the only way to reliably solve the problem is at the political level: through legislation that excludes pure program logic from the scope of patentable subject matter. Sure, there's no shortage of people out there who say this can't be done, but they're all wrong. We've been toldmany times that the European software patent directive would come one way or the other -- until we got the European Parliament to reject it by a landslide of 648-32. The German Bundestag and Spanish Senado unanimously backed our central demands. The new German government has just vowed to counter, at the international level, "the trend to seal off markets, among other things by means of patent law." The time is ripe for legislative action.

Some members of the legal profession claim that software patents are an unalterable fate because theyhave a vested interest in sustaining the system. It's a tall order, but definitely possible, to change the legislative framework in our favor. In every parliamentary democracy.

Especially in the field of software, the patent regime no longer serves the public interest. In a perfect democracy, software patents would already be history. In the suboptimal democracies in which we live, there are special interests that oppose changes. Those have influence and deep pockets, but at the end of the day the most valuable currency in politics is voter popularity.

If all the companies who have pledged patents to open source, or who have contributed to those pools, decided to seriously campaign for legislation that abolishes software patents, then the problem could be solved for good. As long as they don't do that, they're not for real. Some may even have a hidden agenda of creating patent pools to gain effective control over the open source universe. We've got to watch out.

Florian founded the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign. For his political efforts against software patents, he has been named as one of the "top 50 most influential people in intellectual property" according to Managing Intellectual Property magazine and is a candidate for the title of European of the Year.

Aluminum writes "Logitech, who is always trying to push the input device envelope, has recently released their MX5000 desktop combo. This product not only has a cool touch-sensitive set of media controls, but has a built-in 102x42 pixel LCD screen. The LCD can be used for all sorts of tasks, like viewing media information, as a calculator, or learning about your programmable smart keys. If this was all not enough, the keyboard and included mouse use Bluetooth 2.0 Enhanced Data Rate technology which can transfer up to 2.1 Mbit/s (that's a lot of keystrokes!) and has a range of up to 60 feet."

Noksagt writes "Various outlets report that the OSI may cut down the increasing number of Open Source licenses. Right now there are about 50 approved licenses; incompatible licenses confuse and impede developers and end users alike. The OSDL has been pushing hard for this at LinuxWorld. Sam Greenblatt, a member of the OSDL board, said 'Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL, and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't rid of it.'"

rumba writes "OSDL announced today that Andrew Tridgell, Samba developer, joins OSDL as the lab's second appointed Fellow. Tridgell will continue to lead global development work for the Samba project."

An anonymous reader writes "Key findings from a newly completed IDC market study project that the overall revenue for desktops, servers, and packaged software running on Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008. Additionally, IDC forecasts that while Linux remains a minority player on desktop PCs, Linux penetration in that realm will reach $10B annual revenues, on 17 million units shipped globally, by 2008. A summary of the study is available as a free download from the OSDL."

Anonymous Coward writes "Registration is now open for the 2005 Southern California Linux Expo. SCALE is a grass roots Linux and open-source conference in Los Angeles, CA. SCALE's mission is promote open-source and free software. Demonstrations and exhibits are targeted at everyone from beginners to experts. Speakers include: John 'maddog' Hall (Linux International), John "Maddog" Hall - Linux International, Larry McVoy (BitKeeper), Randy Dunlap (OSDL / Kernel Developer), Kevin Foreman (Helix Project, RealNetworks), Jason Schultz (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and more."

Evilive writes "According to KATU News, Linus Torvalds and family will be moving to Portland, Oregon so he can oversee the Open Source Development Labs. Torvalds says he and his family will make the move after his children finish school next week. Sayeth Linus: 'The plan was to try to acclimatize and have time to grow webbed feet (although I'm told there are implants available) by moving during the summer.'"

millette writes ""Under the enhanced kernel submission process, contributions to the Linux kernel may only be made by individuals who acknowledge their right to make the contribution under an appropriate open source license. The acknowledgement, called the DCO, tracks contributions and contributors. The DCO ensures that appropriate attribution is given to developers of original contributions and derivative works, as well to those contributors who receive submissions and pass them, unchanged, up the kernel tree. All contributors are called upon to "sign off" on a submission before it may be considered for inclusion in the kernel." From the press release. Also seen in the New York Times"

Brainsur quotes a story saying " Linux kernel 2.6 introduces improved IO scheduling that can increase speed -- "sometimes by 1,000 percent or more, [more] often by 2x" -- for standard desktop workloads, and by as much as 15 percent on many database workloads, according to Andrew Morton of Open Source Development Labs. This increased speed is accomplished by minimizing the disk head movement during concurrent reads. "

rhetoric writes "Earlier today at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York, nonprofit Open Source Development Labs announced the creation of a "Desktop Linux Working Group initiative focused on greater use of Linux on desktops throughout the enterprise." A press release is available on OSDL's website, in addition to this Register article." It's all part of their non-secret plan.

rhetoric writes "Earlier today at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York, nonprofit Open Source Development Labs announced the creation of a "Desktop Linux Working Group initiative focused on greater use of Linux on desktops throughout the enterprise." A press release is available on OSDL's website, in addition to this Register article." It's all part of their non-secret plan.

prostoalex writes "Open Source Development Labs announced a new initiative to increase customer confidence in using Linux in business. The initiative is launched in answer to legal claims by SCO Group. So far managers and developers around the world are supposed to boost their confidence in Linux with the help of this little poster, which explains the kernel development process."

prostoalex writes "Open Source Development Labs announced a new initiative to increase customer confidence in using Linux in business. The initiative is launched in answer to legal claims by SCO Group. So far managers and developers around the world are supposed to boost their confidence in Linux with the help of this little poster, which explains the kernel development process."

Ridgelift writes "The Open Source Development Labs have released a paper entitled SCO: Without Fear and Without Research [PDF, HTML version at the FSF] where Eben Moglen debunks SCO's claims to copyright infringement, and also discusses how they contradict themselves by citing that the GPL is both invalid and provides them legal protection. More information at the OSDL site and via an Internet.com article."

Ridgelift writes "The Open Source Development Labs have released a paper entitled SCO: Without Fear and Without Research [PDF, HTML version at the FSF] where Eben Moglen debunks SCO's claims to copyright infringement, and also discusses how they contradict themselves by citing that the GPL is both invalid and provides them legal protection. More information at the OSDL site and via an Internet.com article."

Ridgelift writes "The Open Source Development Labs have released a paper entitled SCO: Without Fear and Without Research [PDF, HTML version at the FSF] where Eben Moglen debunks SCO's claims to copyright infringement, and also discusses how they contradict themselves by citing that the GPL is both invalid and provides them legal protection. More information at the OSDL site and via an Internet.com article."

geoff313 writes " For all of you who might be worried about what financial consequences Linus Torvalds might have to endure as a result of being subpoenaed by SCO, fear not: the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) will pay for its law firm to represent him. the OSDL, who are Torvalds' employer, will announce on Friday that the "OSDL has agreed to fund legal representation for Torvalds and any other employees of the lab who may become involved in the litigation." Just in case you didn't you didn't know, the OSDL is funded by a variety of corporations including (but not limitied to) IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Cisco, Computer Associates, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Nokia. "

Psyke writes "The Australian Financial Review is reporting that 'IBM, Red Hat and a consortium of computer makers backed by the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Intel will push to move the Linux operating system out of the back office from next year.' and 'Meanwhile, the OSDL, which has largely worked on improving Linux's ability to run large servers, said it would work on improving Linux's performance on ordinary desktop computers.'" The article itself is a little off- those companies are working *through* the OSDL of which they are members - along with a number of additional companies as well.

Psyke writes "The Australian Financial Review is reporting that 'IBM, Red Hat and a consortium of computer makers backed by the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Intel will push to move the Linux operating system out of the back office from next year.' and 'Meanwhile, the OSDL, which has largely worked on improving Linux's ability to run large servers, said it would work on improving Linux's performance on ordinary desktop computers.'" The article itself is a little off- those companies are working *through* the OSDL of which they are members - along with a number of additional companies as well.

craigoda writes "NTT, the world's largest telecommunications company has joined the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) (Japanese) to focus on increasing the availability, clustering, and performance of Linux for use as the infrastructure OS in next generations telecommunications systems. NTT's work on Linux will be done through OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) working group. Here is a Dow Jones Business story was released yesterday based on the rumour that NTT was joining. Looking at the OSDL web site, the rumour appears to be true."

thorgil writes "Guessing about the linux-2.6.0 release date is hard, but here is a new angle (pseudo-scientific): I made a graph (gif) based on errors/warnings from John Cherry's (OSDL) compile statistics for linus' linux bitkeeper tree. My guess is around 12th October, 2003. What is your guess and more important, why?"

craigoda writes "OSDL released a Q&A today written by Lawrence Rosen, noted expert on technology and intellectual property law. The Q&A points to serious flaws in SCO's claims that end-users have to pay for Linux licenses." The press release is a little more diplomatic, saying that the document only helps one determine whether or not one should buy a license from SCO.

craigoda writes "OSDL released a Q&A today written by Lawrence Rosen, noted expert on technology and intellectual property law. The Q&A points to serious flaws in SCO's claims that end-users have to pay for Linux licenses." The press release is a little more diplomatic, saying that the document only helps one determine whether or not one should buy a license from SCO.

cshabazian writes "The OSDL has released a position paper raising serious questions about SCO Group's threatened litigation against end users of Linux. The position paper, which casts doubt on SCO's position, was authored by one of the world's leading legal experts on copyright law as applied to software, Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University."

trialsboy writes "A news.com article announces that ODSL has released a set of workloads and test frameworks which conform to the TPC benchmark specifications." (Slashdot parent company VA Software is one of the OSDL sponsors.)

trialsboy writes "A news.com article announces that ODSL has released a set of workloads and test frameworks which conform to the TPC benchmark specifications." (Slashdot parent company VA Software is one of the OSDL sponsors.)

paskie writes "Martin J. Bligh of IBM announced launch of a Bugzilla bug tracking database for 2.5 linux kernel series - it's at bugme.osdl.org. Finally there will be some possibility to easily keep track of known bugs without being subscribed to thousand of mailing lists or googling to death. According to the relevant lkml thread, kernel developers will still prefer discussions to happen on the mailing lists, though. The Bugzilla server and connection is donated by OSDL and IBM folks administer the database."

paskie writes "Martin J. Bligh of IBM announced launch of a Bugzilla bug tracking database for 2.5 linux kernel series - it's at bugme.osdl.org. Finally there will be some possibility to easily keep track of known bugs without being subscribed to thousand of mailing lists or googling to death. According to the relevant lkml thread, kernel developers will still prefer discussions to happen on the mailing lists, though. The Bugzilla server and connection is donated by OSDL and IBM folks administer the database."

The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply cannot be expressed in words. We already mentioned that Mandrake and HP are working on Linux on the desktop (warning, manager-speak). The Open Source Development Lab is expanding its focus through the creation of a working group on "carrier grade Linux" for the telecommunications market. CNET has several LinuxWorld stories up. And let's throw in one more, only tangentially related: IBM has settled with San Francisco for spray-painting their sidewalks.

Bryce writes: "OSDL is going to be giving another enterprise linux award this winter. It will be given at the upcoming LinuxWorld / New York. You may recall that in August at LinuxWorld/San Francisco, OSDL awarded $25,000 to Heinz Mauelshagen in honor of his work on the Logical Volume Manager. So, if you know a project or person who you feel has made a significant technical achievement for enterprise Linux, please take a few moments and nominate them for this award."

Bryce writes: "OSDL is going to be giving another enterprise linux award this winter. It will be given at the upcoming LinuxWorld / New York. You may recall that in August at LinuxWorld/San Francisco, OSDL awarded $25,000 to Heinz Mauelshagen in honor of his work on the Logical Volume Manager. So, if you know a project or person who you feel has made a significant technical achievement for enterprise Linux, please take a few moments and nominate them for this award."

Bryce writes: "OSDL is going to be giving another enterprise linux award this winter. It will be given at the upcoming LinuxWorld / New York. You may recall that in August at LinuxWorld/San Francisco, OSDL awarded $25,000 to Heinz Mauelshagen in honor of his work on the Logical Volume Manager. So, if you know a project or person who you feel has made a significant technical achievement for enterprise Linux, please take a few moments and nominate them for this award."

Bryce writes: "OSDL is going to be giving another enterprise linux award this winter. It will be given at the upcoming LinuxWorld / New York. You may recall that in August at LinuxWorld/San Francisco, OSDL awarded $25,000 to Heinz Mauelshagen in honor of his work on the Logical Volume Manager. So, if you know a project or person who you feel has made a significant technical achievement for enterprise Linux, please take a few moments and nominate them for this award."

Bryce Harrington writes "The GNU Bayonne project and the Open Source Development Lab... announced the availability of large-scale development and testing for GNU Bayonne through OSDL.

The facilities will be used to extend GNU Bayonne's digital telephony capabilities to support large-scale commercial enterprises and carrier-class telco applications. OSDL will initially provide four dedicated high-end servers equipped with a variety of digital telephony hardware.

Initial development at this facility will not only focus on extending GNU Bayonne to support large API applications, but also to test and demonstrate the project's clustering and distributed network call model. The Bayonne software will extend the use of Linux in high-end commercial voice telephony and provide GNU Bayonne services for the next-generation IP based telephony network."

Bryce Harrington writes "The GNU Bayonne project and the Open Source Development Lab... announced the availability of large-scale development and testing for GNU Bayonne through OSDL.

The facilities will be used to extend GNU Bayonne's digital telephony capabilities to support large-scale commercial enterprises and carrier-class telco applications. OSDL will initially provide four dedicated high-end servers equipped with a variety of digital telephony hardware.

Initial development at this facility will not only focus on extending GNU Bayonne to support large API applications, but also to test and demonstrate the project's clustering and distributed network call model. The Bayonne software will extend the use of Linux in high-end commercial voice telephony and provide GNU Bayonne services for the next-generation IP based telephony network."

Bryce Harrington writes "The GNU Bayonne project and the Open Source Development Lab... announced the availability of large-scale development and testing for GNU Bayonne through OSDL.

The facilities will be used to extend GNU Bayonne's digital telephony capabilities to support large-scale commercial enterprises and carrier-class telco applications. OSDL will initially provide four dedicated high-end servers equipped with a variety of digital telephony hardware.

Initial development at this facility will not only focus on extending GNU Bayonne to support large API applications, but also to test and demonstrate the project's clustering and distributed network call model. The Bayonne software will extend the use of Linux in high-end commercial voice telephony and provide GNU Bayonne services for the next-generation IP based telephony network."