The Future of Linux

14 July 1998

Phil Hughes Questions

• Jeremy Allison said 20% to 25% of shipping Intel systems.
• Linus Torvalds said that he's always been bad at predicting things and basically weaseled out of answering the question...
• Sunil Saxena also declined to speculate.
• Larry Augustin said that Linux would be the #1 Unix by 2000, and something else that I missed.
• Robert Hart mentioned the Datapro report that showed only two OSes increased their corporate market share in 1997; Linux was one of them. He said the doubling time was 12 months, which would imply between 20 million and 40 million Linux users; ``I'll be surprised if we don't go beyond that.''

World domination: how much longer?
[reference to Linus's rather famous stated goal in his .sig or .plan or something]

• Linus Torvalds: ``That used to be a joke... [much laughter] ...and it's becoming less and less so.'' He said his ego hopes it will happen in 5 to 10 years; but realistically he hopes that, in 5 to 10 years, no one dominates the industry.

What is Samba's role in Linux's acceptance?

• Jeremy Allison first asked for a show of hands; it appeared that roughly 40% of the audience used Samba. Then he gave the short answer to the question: Samba ``essentially allows people to remove NT servers.'' He noted that SGI is officially adopting Samba [recall that they, like HP, are now selling NT systems as the low end of their product line] and that ``some crazy folks are running it straight off of [CDs??] with 200 users'' (mostly universities who ``do not want NT''). By the end of the year he hopes that Samba will be able to completely replace all primary NT Server functions.

Corel's Network Computer is running Linux, as is Cobalt's MicroServer (a 7-inch cube)--these are basically Linux appliances.
[not sure what the question was, exactly...]

• Larry Augustin commented that other companies are taking notice and saying, ``Hey, we could do that, too.''

Open Source is obviously just another fad...isn't it?

• Larry Augustin was the first to disagree; he said that Open Source is here to stay--for example, it allows a company like Netscape to compete on its own terms against Microsoft, not on Microsoft's terms. It also supports a Darwinian model: if one vendor's support is lacking, you've got the source and can take your money (and business) elsewhere. That's not possible with the closed-source model epitomized by Microsoft.
• Robert Hart expanded on that point: it's all about control. If you need a new feature or bug fix or other customization, you can simply hire someone to do it for you. ``You don't need anyone's permission; just do it!'' I believe he related an example of a company with a large application that was in dire need of a bugfix; they were willing to spend essentially any amount of money or manpower to get the thing working, but their vendor was unresponsive and they had no real alternatives.
• Jeremy Allison claimed that he was fundamentally ``a lazy programmer'' and that the Open Source model is a way of letting the users do the work. [more laughter] He mentioned that some incredible Samba patches occasionally turn up in his e-mail--often oddball customizations that are only useful to a few people, but to them they're extremely useful. ``Imagine asking Microsoft to do a custom NT Server for your site.''

What will be the long-term effects on Linux of Microsoft's recent win against Netscape (i.e., bundling MSIE in Win98)?

• Linus Torvalds dismissed the Department of Justice and the US legal system as important factors in Linux's future; ``the only thing that will matter is the market.'' In fact, he claimed that it's an advantage since there are lots of companies who find it hard to compete when Microsoft sees what they're doing and simply incorporates similar technology directly into the OS. In the Linux arena they can find a niche and compete (echoing Larry's comments above), as Corel has, for example. ``That's one reason why, in the end, a monopoly just doesn't work. [pause] Maybe that's just me...''

What do we need to do to get apps (such as from Adobe and Quark, which are the only non-Linux apps used by Linux Journal) ported to Linux?

• Robert Hart said that there are just two things: let them know you want Linux ports, and show them that there's profit to be made.
• Larry Augustin related an article seen on Slashdot earlier in the day about Informix's unannounced Linux port and said the key is to tell vendors, ``If you port it to Linux, we will buy it.'' [Three days later, Slashdot and InfoWorld Electric report a sudden reversal of plans at Oracle: they will be porting Oracle 8 to Linux after all. In fact, they say that they've had it running internally for a while already. See also InfoWorld Electric's article on Informix's official Linux announcement, expected next week.]

With regard to the Linux Standard Base (a standard for base-level compatibility across Linux distributions), Red Hat and Debian's standard package formats, Red Hat's early adoption of glibc vs. everyone else, etc.: are we doing this right? Are there too many Linux ``standards''?

• Robert Hart had three points in response. First, there's a lot of discussion between the various distribution makers, precisely for the purpose of avoiding fragmentation. Second, there's a danger of stultifying and crushing the rapid pace of development and the incredible customization choices available to users if there's too much rigidity and standardization. Third, to the other distributions: ``Please get with it--glibc is the only actively maintained C library.''
• Larry Augustin countered that he's seen a lot of users who, when they upgraded to Red Hat 5.x, found that ``everything broke.'' [Thanks to Jason Riedy for the reminder that just installing the older libc 5.4.x somewhere in the library path isn't sufficient; most shared libraries used by older apps need to be duplicated, as was the case in the changeover from a.out to ELF binaries a couple of years ago.] ``You're in the big time now. Some things (like Informix) users can't simply recompile--try to make things easier for people and remain compatible.''

What if Microsoft plays the Linux game? For example, Open Windows 99 or Internet Explorer for Linux?

• Linus Torvalds first noted that he's working at a company [Transmeta] whose product won't be available on the Internet. He went on to say that he has a lot of respect for Microsoft's PR machine, and ``let's hope they do.''
• Jeremy Allison apparently interpreted ``Open Windows 99'' as a hypothetical Microsoft release based on Linux and said that he would welcome MS Linux--the GNU General Public License (GPL) limits abuse. ``If they change it, we'd get the source code,'' to which Linus muttered, ``We could fix it, too.'' [much applause and laughter]

NASA, NIST, the US Postal Service, (IRS?)--is the US Government the first step toward world domination?

• Linus Torvalds: ``I hadn't really thought of that, but now that you've planted the idea...'' [more chuckles]

Copyright © 1998 Greg Roelofs.