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<title>Linux Day at H-P Labs LG #39</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">Linux Day at H-P Labs</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:">Paul R. Woods</a></H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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As you might have noticed recently, several large companies have begun
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to take an interest in Linux. The Hewlett-Packard Company is one of
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these, the first official involvement being their announcement of Linux
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support for a line of PC Servers, announced in late January. Shortly
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thereafter, though not as a direct consequence, a group within H-P
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sponsored what they called "Linux Day at H-P Labs" which was held on
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February 9th of this year.
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<P>
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Interested people gathered from all over the corporation to the H-P
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Labs buildings in Palo Alto to hear from Bob Young, of Red Hat, and
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from Linus Torvalds himself. Jean Bozman from IDC also spoke,
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detailing the tremendous growth that Linux is experiencing.
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<P>
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The large conference room that was built for groups of 160 people
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failed to hold a standing-room-only crowd that spilled out into the
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hallway, so an overflow room had to be used, besides. Additionally,
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teleconferencing was used to bring the program to people who couldn't
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travel to the conference in person.
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<P>
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I was very interested in what Linus and Bob said and thought that I
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would pass along what I heard. Their comments were informative and
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filled in the history of how Linux came to be in its current position.
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<P>
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<H4><font color="maroon">Linus Torvalds</font></H4>
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<P>
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When Linus got the idea in 1991 to write what has become Linux, he had
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six month's experience with Unix. He liked it much more than other
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OSs, but there was a slight problem. Actually several hundred to over
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a thousand problems, those being the dollars it would cost to buy a
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commercial Unix he could use at home. At that time, all Unicies were
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priced for large institutions, not for individuals--especially not poor
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students. As a portion of the hardware cost, buying Unix for a PC
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doubled, at least, the cost of the platform. Linus began working on
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his OS to provide himself and others with a low-cost (free) Unix-like
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OS for personal use. After the initial release, interest snowballed
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and the number of contributors increased. As Linus put it, a lot of
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people put in a lot of work and he gets all the credit.
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<P>
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The people who contribute to Linux are motivated by personal
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satisfaction, not money. Many people do their best work for personal
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satisfaction. In a commercial setting, where the programmer is being
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paid to develop, his manager might not allow him to refine, count
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cycles, etc., like he can do on his own time. In many cases, it would
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not be viewed as cost effective to allow engineers that sort of time.
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Whether it's for personal satisfaction, a desire to impress others, or
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competition among kernel developers, a lot of craftsmanship goes into
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much of the code.
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<P>
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Linux benefits from a development staff so large that no company could
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afford it. And much of the work is so meticulous that, in a commercial
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setting, the cost would be too high to recapture the programmers'
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salaries. The absence of monetary concerns has created a product that
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is better than any company could afford to produce. The result of
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Linux being free is that it has good technology due to collaboration,
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and it is good for individuals to use and learn on.
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<P>
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Despite his desire for free software, he does not believe Open Source
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Software (OSS) should be the only way to license software. In his
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opinion, OSS is good for "black and white" technical issues or
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infrastructure.
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<P>
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It took two-and-a-half years between versions 2.0.0 and 2.2.0 of the
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kernel, but still there are criticisms that Linux releases too often,
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because of the 36 sub-releases of 2.0. Linus said that since the
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kernel developers mostly compile the kernel, other things that break
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get found by non-kernel developers. Releasing often allows these things
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to be found early. Within the first two weeks of the 2.2 release,
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there are already two patches. He went on to say that if what you have
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is working for you and there is no obvious reason to upgrade kernels,
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then don't.
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<P>
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Linus' wish list for future kernels:
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<P>
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1. parallel processing improvements (this seems to be a favorite
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topic for him. One of the major improvements from 2.0 to 2.2 is in the
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SMP capabilities),
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<P>
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2. a journaled file system [not because he thinks it is good, but
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there have been many requests], and
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<P>
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3. improvements for clustering (again parallelism).
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<P>
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In response to a question about porting Linux to PA-RISC, he said that
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a partial port has been done and appears to work, but there is not a
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lot of demand from end users. (It was unclear to me whether he was
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referring to the MkLinux port reported in Linux Journal #44 (see
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http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue44/2355.html), or some other work.)
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<P>
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When asked about types of programs for which kernel optimizations are
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considered, he mentioned that web applications (which spend 90% of
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their time in kernel-land), benefit far more than compilers, for
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example, which spend very little time in the kernel.
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<P>
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When asked what H-P could do to help Linux: "H-P can release specs."
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and "...stay away from legal problems with employees releasing under
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the GPL [on their own]."
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<P>
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Quotes from this talk:
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<P>
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"Operating systems shouldn't be as exciting as they [currently] are."
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<P>
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"2.2 doesn't do everything. It does everything you'd want to do."
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<P>
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"Set up a skunk works to develop a journaling file system within H-P. I
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dare you."
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<P>
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Talking about the increasing complexity of kernel code management:
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"[the] system is so complete that it is harder to add new features."
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<P>
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And, about how some companies deal with the GPL: "...more lawyers than
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engineers...a dark and awful place."
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<P>
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<H4><font color="maroon">Bob Young, Red Hat</font></H4>
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<P>
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To make sure we remembered who he was, Bob Young set his red hat on the
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lectern at the beginning of his talk. He was also wearing red socks.
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Red must have become his favorite color. He had no slides saying that
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he saved such multimedia presentations for non-technicals<6C>-like venture
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capitalists. Red Hat currently consists of about 100 engineers and
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marketing people in the hills of North Carolina where, according to
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Bob, salaries are low.
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<P>
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Bob made an analogy where he compared a "car" to a brand of car, and
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Linux to a brand of Linux, Red Hat. He considers Linux to consist of
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the kernel (the engine) and all the other programs, shells, and
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utilities that make it useful. He said that, although you could build
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your own car, we "usually" rely on a car maker to put all the parts
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together for us. So, in this way, we "usually" rely on Red Hat,
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Caldera, Debian, SUSe, etc. to assemble a useful distribution of Linux.
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<P>
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Bob's background was in leasing computers to large companies. In those
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days, once a company bought into a computer vendor's product, they were
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pretty much stuck with them, because one vendor's machines didn't work
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with any other's. He noticed that these companies didn't like that
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their second computers would cost much more than their first ones.
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This amounted to a loss of control in that the companies, once they had
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decided on a particular vendor's systems, were more or less stuck with
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them, unless they wanted to spend a lot of money and effort switching
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over completely to another vendor. The PC answered this loss of
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control by allowing companies to pick and choose PC components that all
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interoperated, mostly. Linux does for computer software what PCs did
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for hardware. Linux was intended to be Unix-like, differentiated by
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its licensing scheme. It has given control to the user that is not
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available from commercial OS vendors, including non-Unix flavors.
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<P>
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Red Hat started with FreeBSD (other free OS) while Caldera was pushing
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Linux. Bob wondered why Linux was getting to be so popular. When he
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found out why, he was waiting for some alternative hardware company
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like Next or Be to pick up on Linux. They didn't, so he did.
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<P>
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Bob said that Linux benefitted from Linus' relative isolation in
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Finland. If there had been a group of locals form as the main
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contributors, then any distant help over the internet would be more
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likely to be shut out, because the remote person wouldn't be there to
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discuss and defend ideas. With everyone having to work over the
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internet because of the distance, all ideas had equal chance. Having
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developed a way to work over the internet also encouraged a broader
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cooperative base.
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<P>
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He also explained that there are two types of programmers: those that
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write company-internal applications, and those that write commercial
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software; the latter are more likely to be Linux contributors, because
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of their mindset toward the end product, i.e., users versus sellers.
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He used an example to explain why cooperatively developed software is
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more likely to be better software than commercial software. Imagine a
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radio astronomer has an idea for software to help point his radio dish.
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He could develop it in isolation, then try to market it to the "three
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other" radio astronomers that might be interested in it. He would also
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be the only one to support it and fix any bugs found in it by the
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customer-users. The other way he could do it is to involve the others
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from the start in the development of the software. Bob's argument is
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that the software that would result from this collaborative effort
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would be better than what the commercial model would produce. Also,
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any bugs could be fixed by more people, and thus would be fixed faster.
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Bob calls this arrangement a "meritocracy". Linux benefits from being
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a meritocracy because the contributors do their work for the benefit of
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the code they themselves want to use. They also get credit among the
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development community.
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<P>
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Periodically, the Unix community undergoes unification, but between
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these times you see mostly division due to proprietary development from
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each of the vendors. When asked about the other Linux distributors,
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and the danger of the same divisions happening among them, Bob pointed
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out the expense of code forking. If one of the vendors forks the code,
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they then become the only ones who can maintain the code, which he
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believes would be very expensive. He estimates that code maintenance
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represents about 90% of the cost for a traditional commercial software
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vendor. Red Hat wants their developments to be adopted by Linus. In
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this way, Bob views all of the Linux distributors as partners.
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<P>
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Red Hat doesn't want to be in the shrink-wrap distribution business.
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They would rather make their money from support. Bob pointed out,
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though, that the harder they try to get out of that business, the more
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shrink-wrap they sell. Now they are quite a large software
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manufacturer.
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<P>
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Quotes from the talk:
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<P>
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"DOS is not an operating system; it is a bad collection of device
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drivers."
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<P>
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Question from the audience: "Is the browser part of the operating
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system?"--big laughs
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<P>
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<H4><font color="maroon">The Rest of the Day . . .</font></H4>
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<P>
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In the afternoon session, a dozen presenters from within H-P spoke
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about Linux in their current projects or products. This is all pretty
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new stuff so I am not allowed to write about it in detail. However, I
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can give some general information about the areas in which Linux is
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finding place. This covers the spectrum from internal use only, to
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embedded Linux in full commercial products.
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<P>
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In the area of EDA (Electronic Design Automation) software H-P obtains
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some tools from EDA vendors, while other tools are written internally.
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One participant spoke about several internal EDA tools that had been
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ported to Linux.
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<P>
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Another story of porting internally written software to Linux was from
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a division that produces a commercial IC tester. Wanting to take
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advantage of the Intel platform, they had to decide between Linux and
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NT and found that the Linux port was much simpler and less expensive.
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Also, by purchasing a handful of proprietary libraries, they were able
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to make the user interface on the new platform appear the same as on
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the old.
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<P>
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Another couple of speakers shared their groups' use of embedded Linux
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in the rapid prototyping of products; one in the area of networked
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peripheral control, and the other in the area of telecommunications
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measurement.
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<P>
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There were also some strictly software products that have been or will
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soon be ported to Linux for general availability, including OpenMail,
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H-P Web JetAdmin, and Firehunter ISP management software (see
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http://www.hp.com for more information).
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<P>
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Finally, there is a group at H-P Labs porting Linux to IA-64. They
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demonstrated an emulator that can run the 64-bit code on a P133. A
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talk and paper will be given at Linux Expo in May.
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<P>
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One of the most important things I learned by attending Linux Day is
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that there is a lot of interest in Linux within H-P.
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1999, Paul R. Woods <BR>
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Published in Issue 39 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, April 1999</H5></center>
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