Ask The Linux Foundation's Executive Director Jim Zemlin What You Will

In addition to sponsoring the work of Linus Torvalds, The Linux Foundation supports and promotes a wide variety of resources and services for Linux. Their recently released 2014 Linux Jobs Report surveyed more than 1,000 managers and corporations, finding in part, that the demand for "Linux Professionals" was up 70% from last year. Jim Zemlin is the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation and he has agreed to answer any questions that you have about the report and the state of Linux in general. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

Comments

Fragmentation

[advid.net]

Regarding Linux kernel...

Is there a fear of some kind of fragmentation after Linus leadership ends ?

I'm not saying Linus will stop leading anytime soon, but this will happen one day for sure.

Maybe not a fear, but concerns, ..., call it.

Keeping the eco system coherent

[daurtanyn]

Is the Linux foundation doing anything to insure the various distributions each incorporate the improvements done in the various distributions?

I'm worried about the long term branching side effects. We have Debian, Red Hat, Oracle, and others adding functions and improvements.

What is being done to insure both hybrid vigor and "re-mainlining" of promising branches?

political barriers to functionality

[bzipitidoo]

There are many things Linux can't do thanks to political barriers, not technical ones. An example is backing up or just playing a copy protected DVD. CSS and region encoding are easily overcome. It's schemes like ARccOS that cause difficulties. Another example is the mess NVidia and AMD/ATI have made of graphics drivers. Theyve pledged to improve, but they've dragged their feet so much one wonders how serious they are. Maybe no legitimate business will ever again dare to pull stunts like Sony's music CDs with the root kit, and Turbo Tax's fooling around with the zero sector of their customers' hard drives, but they aren't yet scared or enlightened enough to stop trying other crap.

Many software and hardware companies feel they can safely ignore libre OSes. Worse, some still view libre as antithetical to standard business practices, and a death sentence for their business if they so much as use it. To them, libre is hippie pinko Communist. The walled gardens of the likes of Microsoft and Apple are philosophically more comfortable. They don't just accidentally create software that cannot be easily ported, they purposely do that.

How do you get businesses and people to play ball with libre software? I want the attitudes that go with intellectual property and copy protection to die, and the very concepts to be so abhorrent that no self-respecting business will ever again think it an ethical and righteous thing to do. Freedom of speech and religion are accepted and enforced. Freedom of knowledge deserves the same.