Panel declares: Linux here to stay

By James Niccolai
IDG News Service, 11/11/98

San Francisco - With goliaths like Intel and Oracle throwing their weight behind Linux, the open source Unix-like operating system has staying power, industry officials and the software's creator, Linus Torvalds, said yesterday in a panel discussion here at Oracle's Open World.

Intel next year plans to launch a broad developer support program aimed at extending the capabilities of the Linux operating system for Intel platforms, said Ken Shand, Linux program manager with Intel's enterprise server group.

"We're getting ready in 1999 for a large program to support this Linux community-hopefully, not just one or two points but in a broad way," Shand said.

The Intel program will get under way by seeking out developers who are experts in various aspects of Linux development, including symmetric multiprocessing technology, and provide them with Intel systems for testing and technical support, Shand said.

Netscape plans to offer Linux versions of all of its server software products, said John Paul, senior vice president of Netscape's server products division.

Meanwhile, Oracle will release versions of Oracle 8.5 for Linux early next year, and is currently testing a Linux version of Oracle Applications for future release, said Allen Miner, vice president of strategic alliances with Oracle's Intel technologies division.

"Basically, what Oracle wants to do with Linux is help it dominate the world," Miner said.

With the kind of industry blessing shown here, Oracle might get its wish. Momentum has been gathering behind so-called open source software, also known as freeware, ever since Netscape went public with its Communicator source code early this year. Linux is among the better-known open source products available today.

Proponents say the open source model is compelling because it allows literally thousands of developers to make improvements to a software product, the best of which can be incorporated back into the original version.

Critics, such as Microsoft, portray the freeware community as a semi-organized rabble of hobbyists, and question whether such a group can be trusted to act as caretakers for software used to run mission-critical applications.

"I would turn the question around, and ask, 'If it's a hobby for us and a job for you, then why are you doing such a shoddy job?" retorted Torvalds, who developed Linux while he was in college.

Despite not being developed by a single, commercial venture, the evolution of Linux has been successful and the platform has proved to be "self-governing," Torvalds said.

Internet service providers and several large corporations are already deploying Linux on a broad scale, though many businesses are unwilling to admit they use Linux because of the stigma surrounding open source software, the panelists said. "That's one of my pet peeves; there's a lot of companies that use Linux and they won't come out of the closet yet," Torvalds said.

Boeing, Nortel and telecommunications provider BellSouth are among the larger companies who have adopted Linux, Oracle's Miner said. The addition of Intel, Oracle and Netscape to the roster of names supporting the software will help grow that user list, Intel's Shand said.

One reason Linux will be popular is because the operating system provides businesses with an alternative platform to Windows NT, which is rapidly gobbling up the market for mid-size Intel-based servers, Netscape's Paul said.

"All companies like to have an alternative to turn to and I think customers want an alternative to NT," he said. That is a notion that fits in with Torvalds' goals, too.

"I'm no longer looking at the Unix market when I'm looking for competition, I'm more focused on NT and Windows 98," Torvalds said. Other Unix vendors have "given up" on the desktop, he added. Linux's popularity won't be limited to the U.S., and the platform is growing into a world-class product with distributors in both Europe and Asia as well as in the U.S., Torvalds said.

Tokyo-based Pacific HiTech is developing a Japanese language version of the operating system for its local market, while the German arm of Oakland, Calif.-based SuSE is a key distributor in Europe, Torvalds said. The U.S. market is served by Caldera and Red Hat, which recently secured an equity investment from Intel, he said.

Because the copyright for the Linux kernel is owned by many people, companies don't have to worry about any one organization co-opting the software, Torvalds said. "One hundred people own parts of the Linux copyright, which means that even if I wanted to turn to the 'dark side' I couldn't," he said, drawing laughter from the crowded hall.

Linux doesn't support the large, multiprocessor configurations that commercial Unix versions do, and is "somewhere in the middle of the pack" in terms of capabilities compared to other flavors of Unix, Torvalds said.

Intel's Shand offered a more sobering view. The operating system needs "a lot of other features" before it is ready to take on Unix in the enterprise, including better fault tolerance and systems management capabilities, he said.

Linux's multiprocessor support is unlikely to go beyond 8- and 16-way configurations for the next five years, he said. But future scalability will be derived by deploying those 8- and 16-way systems in clustered configurations.

The Linux creator might not be the person who will lead the charge for scalability, however. Torvalds developed Linux originally for his personal use at home, he said, and he remains more interested in writing software for use by "the normal person."

Currently employed by Transmeta, a secretive Silicon Valley start-up company, Torvalds has turned down many lucrative employment offers from Red Hat.

"If I went to Red Hat that would put an implicit stamp of approval on them and I don't want to do that," he said, although he praised the company for the quality of its product.

If the panel's view of Linux is an accurate one, Torvalds' job prospects don't look so bad for the future.

"The momentum behind Linux is so great, I can't see what would stop this continuing to snowball," Oracle's Miner said.