Open Source Software:
Community Development on a Global Basis

Bdale Garbee

Open Source & Linux CTO

Hewlett-Packard

HP Linux Market Leadership

More than One Million HP Linux Servers sold since 1998

#1 in Worldwide Linux Server Revenue and Units1 for Past Two Years

#1 in x86 Worldwide and Linux Server Units and Revenue1

#1 in Itanium Unit and Revenue Market Share1

#1 in Disk Storage Revenue2

#1 in SAN Revenue2

#1 in SAP Installations >40%3

1 IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, November 2004

2 IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, March 2004

3 SAP 2004

While it may have started as a hobby for many of us, Linux

and related Open Source software is now big business!

Beyond Doing Business...

Where does innovation really happen?

It often comes from completely unexpected places

Sometimes “amateurs” do something “industry” or “the establishment” doesn't believe they can do...

Recognize these guys?

Does this help?

Community Development Model

A key attribute of Linux and many Open Source applications is that they are developed and supported “by the community”

What does that mean?

No one company in charge

A range of contributors with varied interests, abilities, and motivations

Freedom of choice

Users have flexibility in how they acquire support for Open Source technology

Any user can become a developer, or pay someone to develop or support Open Source software on their behalf

Community

My dictionary defines “community” as:

A body of people having common rights, privileges, or interests, or living in the same place under the same laws and regulations.

We all participate in traditional communities

the towns we live in, the schools we attended

churches, sports teams, volunteer organizations

The Internet enabled the formation of a new class of communities that did not previously exist.

People with common interests or values

Potentially broadly geographically distributed

Map of Debian Developers

The Debian Project

'The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system.'

Debian is one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions, and runs on everything from handhelds to mainframes.

Debian's technology, policies, and packages form the basis for a rich variety of custom and derived distributions.

1626 people

11 released architectures

9929 source packages

17406 binary packages

The Broader Impact

The Community Development model, and licenses like the GPL that it is based on, lower the barrier to entry

Any user can potentially become a developer

The essentials are connectivity, suitable skills, and motivation

Open Source makes sense to many governments

The freedom to pick and choose, and customize/localize

Security

Investments

Less total cost than proprietary software

Local investments in education and building a software industry are better than sending hard currency overseas.

Motivated communities of people with a common interest can accomplish astounding things, even when there's no obvious direct economic return.

Companies like HP working hand in hand with partners, competitors, and individual developers around the world to advance technology with a minimum of legal and financial overhead... is a beautiful thing!

If you really want to “help make the world safe for bits”, put your skills to work applying Open Source code and principles in your real-world communities...

Questions?

Linux is very popular at the edge of the network – web server, file/print server, mail server, firewall, etc.

As Linux has matured, it has gone beyond the network edge and is continuing to make inroads deeper into the data center:

ISVs are standarding their development on Linux

More customers are considering line of business apps on Linux

Linux is going beyond the 1-2 cpu deployments. The 2.6 kernel offers opportunities for greater scalability.

Linux kernel development community was one of the first and still one of the best examples of this new class of community.

2005-03-09T00:57:06