Mark Shuttleworth's recent closure of
Ubuntu Linux bug No. 1
("Microsoft has a majority market share") placed a meaningful, if
somewhat controversial, exclamation point on how far Linux has come
since Linus Torvalds rolled out the first version of the OS in 1991 as a
pet project.
Microsoft may not (yet) have been taken down on the
quickly fading desktop, but the nature of computing has changed
completely, thanks in large part to Linux's rise as a cornerstone of IT.
There's scarcely a part of computing today, from cloud servers to phone
OSes, that isn't powered by Linux or in some way affected by it.
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But where from here? If Linux acceptance and development are peaking,
where does Linux go from up? Because Linux is such a mutable phenomenon
and appears in so many incarnations, there may not be any single answer
to that question.
More important, perhaps, is how Linux -- the
perennial upstart -- will embrace the challenges of being a mature and,
in many areas, market-leading project. Here's a look at the future of
Linux: as raw material, as the product of community and corporate
contributions, and as the target of any number of challenges to its
ethos, technical prowess, and growth.
Linux: Bend it, shape it, any way you want itIf
there's one adjective that sums up a significant source of Linux's
power, it's "malleable." Linux is raw material that can be cut,
stitched, and tailored to fit most any number of scenarios, from tiny
embedded devices to massively parallel supercomputers.
That's
also been one of Linux's shortcomings. Its protean nature means users
rarely use "Linux" -- instead, they use a Linux-based product such as
Android, or a hardware device built with a Linux base such as an in-home
router. Desktop Linux's multiple (and often incompatible) incarnations
winnow out all but the most devoted users.
"How end-users
experience Linux is definitely fragmented," admits Jim Zemlin, executive
director of the Linux Foundation. "But that's one of the powers of
Linux.
"It's a building block that has allowed Google to build Android and
Chromebooks, Amazon to build the
Kindle,
Canonical to build Ubuntu, and much more. All of those experiences are different for the user, but there is choice for the consumer."
Mark
Baker, Ubuntu Server product manager for Canonical, which leads the
Ubuntu project, puts it in almost exactly those words: "Open source
delivers freedom of choice." Open source naturally encourages
modularity, he says, so "with open source you can choose the best
components for your situation," whether you're a user working on a home
machine or a systems architect developing a data center.
But Al Gillen, program vice president for system software and an
analyst at IDC specializing in operating environments, questions the
value proposition of such total freedom going forward. "Linux is open
source, and as such, anybody can fork off code and turn it into
something else. However, the industry has shown that forks without value
go away, and there is great value associated with staying close to main
line code."
Android users have experienced this most directly
with the fragmentation that exists between different editions of the OS.
None of that is, strictly speaking, Linux's fault, but as with the
myriad desktop distributions before it, Android fragmentation
illustrates the tension that arises between allowing the freedom to
change the product and the fallout of inconsistency of implementation.
Ironically, that might mean the best thing for Linux, going forward, is to double down on Linux as raw material.
Eric Sammer, engineering manager at
Cloudera, doesn't see Linux alone as having users "the same way as something like Firefox or the
Apache Web server."
Linux "is targeted toward operating system builders, not the end-user,"
and so it needs "tons of other software -- much of it tightly coupled,
from a user's perspective (such as a boot loader) -- to form a complete
system." As Torvalds himself noted in the release notes for the very
first Linux kernel, "A kernel by itself gets you nowhere."
Both
Gillen's and Sammer's words are echoed by how Linux's biggest uptake
with users has been, again, Android, with all its attendant value added
by Google and the app ecosystem developed for the OS. The malleability
of Linux is only a first step toward an actual product -- as its most
successful advocates understand.
Corporate contributors: Asset or obstacle?Another
of Linux's hallmarks is that it's a collaborative effort; out of the
contributions of many come one. But where are those collaborators coming
from?
Answer: Corporations -- mainly, those who stand to benefit
themselves from supporting Linux for their own future endeavors. Aside
from
Red Hat
(apart from Canonical, the most widely recognized corporate vendor of
Linux solutions), top contributors include Intel, IBM, Texas
Instruments, and even Microsoft.
Much of Linux's flexibility is
due to such contributions, which expand Linux's ability to run on
multiple platforms and on a broad spectrum of devices. Enlightened
self-interest is the main motive here: Microsoft's own kernel additions,
for instance, largely revolve around allowing Linux to run well under
Hyper-V.
Sammer believes the prevalence of corporate-backed contributors is
"due to the barrier of entry to any project as complex and critical as
the Linux kernel. Your average C hacker doesn't have the time to get up
to speed, build the credibility with the community, and contribute
meaningful patches in their spare time, without significant backing." In
his view, corporations most often have the resources to support such
endeavors, with universities and research organizations being further
behind.
But has the prevalence of corporate contribution to Linux
turned the OS into a mere corporate plaything? Is that Linux's future,
to be a toy of the monoliths?
What matters most is not who's
contributing, but in what spirit. Linux advocates are firm believers in
contributions to Linux, no matter what the source, as a net gain -- as
long as the gains are contributed back to the community as a whole.
Mark Coggin, senior director of product marketing for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, believes "the best innovations are those that are
leveraged, and improved by the greatest number of participants in the
open source community."
"We put all of our innovations into open
source projects, and seek to gain acceptance by those upstream groups
before we incorporate them into our supported products like Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. We hope that everyone who works to enhance the Linux
kernel and the userspace projects also takes a view like ours," Coggin
says.
It's also not widely believed that corporate contributions
are a form of "hijacking Linux," as Gillen puts it -- a way to make
Linux "less applicable to other major user contingents." He's convinced
commercial support for Linux and commercial enhancements to Linux "are
an asset to the Linux development paradigm; not a negative."
Likewise, to Zemlin, Linux development "is not a zero-sum game."
"What one developer does in the mobile space to improve power
consumption can benefit a developer working in the data center who
needs to ensure their servers are running efficiently," says Zemlin.
"That shared development is what makes Linux so powerful."
Corporate
contributions are not the enemy to him, either: "Having people paid to
work on Linux has never been a bad thing; it has allowed it to be
iterated upon quickly and innovation to be accelerated."
The real
issues, as Baker notes, come when "some very large Web companies make
some changes available and push them upstream, but decide to keep others
in-house to give them an advantage."
Version 3 of the GPL -- the
license Linux was released under in an earlier version -- was developed
in part as a response to such behaviors. However, it only prevents
taking code
others have written and redeploying it as a Web
service. There's no inherent (or legal) way to prevent code developed
in-house from being kept in-house -- which might well simply be part of
the ongoing social cost of offering Linux freely to the world.
The biggest threats to LinuxIf corporate
co-opting is less likely than ever, thanks to the mechanisms that keep
Linux an open project, what real threats does it face?
Nobody
takes very seriously the idea that Linux is about to be wiped off the
map by a rogue patent threat or lawsuit. One of the biggest such legal
attacks, SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM, widely construed as a proxy
attack on Linux, failed miserably.
Coggin is of this mindset:
"Linux's huge success, with a vast network of developers and widespread
global adoption, means that it is highly resilient. Although patent
threats arise from time to time, as they do with many technologies, it
seems unlikely that a patent or combination of patents could pose an
existential threat to Linux."
Plus, competition in the form of other closed source products, or
even those with more liberal licensing (such as the various BSDs),
hasn't really materialized to the degree that Linux runs the risk of
being pushed aside.
Sammer sums up the biggest legitimate threat
to Linux in a single word: complacency -- the complacency that goes with
becoming a market leader in any field.
"If you're vying for
first place," he says, "you're usually more open to change of process,
of mindset, of road map, of status quo, whatever. I can't help but think
of Firefox losing so much to Chrome so fast, or the commercial Unixes
losing to Linux, or all the other examples of such things."
In
roughly the same vein, Zemlin sees a threat in the form of a lack of
experienced Linux talent to support the demand; hence the
Linux Training program.
Gillen sees a threat coming from a transition that "over time, moves
the majority of the Linux user community from the enterprise customer
over to service providers."
Such a move would put Linux users at
the mercy of people who may consume Linux and provide it as a service
but don't return their innovations to the community as a whole. It may
take a decade or more for such a shift to happen, but it could have
"negative implications for Linux overall, and to commercial vendors that
sell Linux-based solutions."
Another possible threat to Linux is
corporate co-opting -- not of the code itself, but of the possibilities
it provides. Baker is worried about the rise of mobile devices, many of
which, although powered by Linux, are powered all the more by corporate
concerns
"That's why we need alternatives like
Ubuntu and
Firefox,"
says Baker, "to provide real alternatives for those who do not want
their experience of the Internet to be determined by Apple or Google."
Of
those two, Google -- by way of Android -- is the main offender in this
accusation. Many of the arguments against Android revolve around it
being a Linux-powered OS that's little more than a portal to Google's
view of the world, and thus isn't true to the spirit of Linux.
In
short, the biggest threats to Linux may well be from within --
unintended by-products of the very things that make it most attractive
in the first place. Its inherent mutability and malleability has so far
given it an advantage over complacency and co-opting, but it isn't clear
that will always be true.
Where from here?Linux is unquestionably here to stay, and in more than one form. But how it will do that and at what cost are up for debate.
The most obvious future path for Linux is where it becomes that much more of a
substrate for other things -- a way to create infrastructure -- and where it becomes that much less a
product
unto itself in any form. The real innovation doesn't just come from
deploying Linux, but deploying it as a way to find creative solutions to
problems, by delivering it in such a way that few people are forced to
deal with Linux as such, and by staying a step ahead of having it put
behind technological bars.
Coggin puts it this way: "Linux is
emerging beyond that of a packaged or flexible operating system to
become more of an infrastructure platform. With this, we see developers
and architects using Linux to build next-generation solutions, and
creating next-generation enterprise architectures." Much of this work is
already under way, he claims, in "cloud, big data, mobile, and social
networks."
Gillen, too, agrees that Linux "is going to be a very key part of
public cloud infrastructure, and as such, it has ensured itself a
long-term role in the industry."
"Linux already runs the cloud,
of that there is no doubt," says Baker. "It needs to maintain its
position as the platform for scale-out computing -- this means staying
ahead of new technologies like ARM server chips and hyperscale,
software-defined networking, and the overall
software-defined data center." Such work ought to complement other ongoing efforts to create open system hardware designs, such as the
Open Compute Project's.
One possible downside of Linux becoming an ubiquitous infrastructure
element is it becoming as institutionalized as the commercial, closed
source Unixes it has displaced. But Zemlin thinks Linux's very
mutability works in its favor here: "If you would have asked Linus
Torvalds or other members of the community a decade ago if Linux would
power more mobile phones than any other platform, they certainly
wouldn't have expected that. We'd rather just watch where it goes and
not try to forecast since we most certainly will be wrong."
Another important future direction for some is, as mentioned above,
"go[ing] mobile in a bigger way independently of Google," as Baker puts
it. Projects like Mozilla's Firefox OS for phones are one incarnation of
this, although it's unclear how much of a dent such a thing will make
in Google's existing, and colossal, market share for Android.
Lastly,
and most crucially, there's the question of who will be responsible for
ushering Linux into its own future. While Linux can be forked and its
development undertaken by others, history's shown that having a single
core development team for Linux -- and equally consistent core teams for
projects based on it -- is best.
That puts all the more burden
on the core team to keep Linux moving forward in ways that complement
its existing and future use cases, and not to protect it -- perhaps
futilely -- from becoming something it might well be in its best
interests to transform into.
If Linux's future really is
everywhere, it might well also be in a form that no one now can conceive
of -- and that's a good thing.
Infoworld.com
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