In the business world, money has long been the dominant success benchmark. A hundred years ago being a millionaire was enough, today it’s about being a billionaire. In open source software however, things are a bit different. Success is often defined not only by how much money is made, but instead by a company or project’s level of community contribution, involvement and participation. The gold standard for this type of success has long been the Linux Operating system.
Recently there has been an increased use of software companies attempting to position themselves using Linux as an analogy within a particular software vertical. Essentially these companies are claiming to be “The Linux of an industry.” A prime example of this is the once proprietary focused VMware announcing a recent update to it’s open source CloudFound project. CTO Steve Herrod said, not once but twice, that VMware wants to be the "Linux of the Cloud" and that the company realizes that developers require an open source platform to develop the new generation of applications. An interesting maneuver given the company generates the majority of its revenue selling traditional “closed source” licensed software.
Yet another example came about earlier this month when San Antonio, TX based web hosting provider Rackspace, unveiled its rebranding effort as “The Open Cloud Company.” This move builds on the momentum they have seen with their OpenStack project, which many in the industry have been calling “The Linux of the Cloud”
I had the opportunity to speak with Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at the Linux Foundation, for his insights into this phenomenon. During our lengthy conversation, he told me that this trend has to do with the success that Linux has had over the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, Linux, as well as others in the industry, strived to become the Microsoft of a particular area. Today companies are striving to become the so-called “Linux of technology” because of the unprecedented level of impact Linux has had on almost all parts of the modern technology landscape.
Zemlin puts Linux as a cultural phenomenon into perspective saying the Operating System “now has more than 10,000 lines of code added to the its kernel every day. It is the largest collaborative project in the history of computing. It not only sets the pace, it has the defined the very fabric of how modern software is built and deployed.”
He goes on to note that “Software is built differently today than the last time we experienced a technology shift. What Zuckerberg proclaimed as the "Hacker Way" is pervasive, in large part due to the early work of people like Torvalds [The original creator of Linux]. As for the cloud, a lot is still unclear. Standards and APIs are evolving. It is still unclear what the reference implementation will be. Which OSS projects will gain vs. lose.“
Krishnan Subramanian, a well-known cloud pundit, doesn’t think the term fits most cloud related companies yet. “It will be natural to compare a project like OpenStack (or any other open source cloud projects for that matter) as the Linux of cloud. However, there are some important distinctions between Linux and other open source cloud platforms. Linux is the result of scratching an itch for end users whereas cloud platforms are just scratching the itch of smaller service providers (against the likes of Amazon and Google). Linux is still controlled by a benevolent dictator and that is a big reason for its success. None of the dominant open source cloud platforms have a benevolent dictator; instead single vendors or a conglomerate of vendors drive most. Unlike Linux, vendors’ interests are primarily driving these projects. I would love to see a Linux for cloud but I am not seeing any credible project that could fit this description yet.“
Zemlin said he loves that Linux is quickly becoming the brand that software companies are attempting to become, saying “In a world of tissue, when you’re Kleenex, you’ve won."
(The Linux Foundation is hosting LinuxCon and CloudOpen August 29th-31st in San Diego. The annual conference provides a much needed collaboration and education space for the Linux & cloud computing communities. Catch Reuven Cohen along side- Marten Mickos, Eucalyptus; Cole Crawford, Open Compute Foundation; Sam Ramji, Apigee as they discuss Cloud API’s & Vendor Lock-in)
