The Future of Linux: Continuing to Inspire Innovation and Openness

The first 25 years of Linux has transformed the world, not just computing, and the next 25 years will continue to see more growth in the Open Source movement, The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said during the opening keynote of LinuxCon/ContainerCon in Toronto on Monday, August 22, 2016.

“Linux is the most successful software project in history”, Zemlin said, noting that the humble operating sytem created by Linus Torvalds 25 years ago this week is behind much of today’s software and devices.

But the message of Linux is far more than software, Zemlin said. It’s about the open exchange of ideas that’s world-changing and inspiring. The concept of sharing has changed how the world thinks about technology and how it’s made, he said.

“We’ve learned that you can better yourself while bettering others at the same time”, he said. “We’re building the greatest shared technology asset in the history of computing.”

In the coming years, Zemlin predicts an even more rapid shift to open source, particularly in a world that now makes it nearly impossible to deploy software without collaborating and taking advantage of open resources.

representing Microsoft as a keynote speaker for the first time! I’m excited to share exciting new open source developments from Microsoft and things we’ve learned from our journey with Linux and open source.

The reality is customers use more than one tool and more than one platform to operate their businesses. They need tools that support Linux and Windows, and they need a cloud that allows them to run any application. One of the things I shared with linux.com recently was how blown away I was to see how large Microsoft’s investment in Linux already is. We brought .NET Core, PowerShell, and SQL Server to Linux. We also open sourced Visual Studio Code and just recently PowerShell. And, we are contributing to and participating in numerous community projects. It’s incredible to be a part of it.

Our latest open source and Linux advancements

One of the areas we are focused on is delivering open management solutions. In today’s multi-cloud, multi-OS world, customers need simple, unified tools to reduce complexity. That’s why just last week, we announced that we’re open sourcing PowerShell and making it available on Linux. Now PowerShell users across Windows and Linux can use our popular command-line shell and scripting language to manage almost everything from almost anywhere. My colleague Jeffrey Snover wrote a fantastic story about the journey to open source PowerShell and how customer-centricity brought us here

Today, I’m also excited to share that OMS Docker Container monitoring is available in preview. By nature, containers are lightweight and easily provisioned, so without a centralized approach to monitoring, customers may find it difficult to manage and respond to critical issues quickly.

Our experiences with Linux in Azure, where nearly 1 in 3 VMs today are Linux, have brought us closer to our customers and what they need to succeed in a rapidly advancing world. We have made significant investments in making Microsoft’s platform a great place to run open source software, and I will be working with my team to accelerate this effort over the coming months.

Choice and flexibility are important tenets of our platform. Also critical are our efforts to contribute to open source projects, integrate open source technologies in our platform, and forge commercial and community partnerships with the ecosystem.

The Linux operating system kernel is 25 years old this month. It was August 25, 1991 when Linus Torvalds posted his famous message announcing the project, claiming that Linux was “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu.”

But now, Linux is far bigger and more professional than Torvalds could have imagined. Linux powers huge portions of the Internet’s infrastructure, corporate data centers, websites, stock exchanges, the world’s most widely used smartphone operating system, and nearly all of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The successes easily outweigh Linux’s failure to unseat Microsoft and Apple on PCs, but Linux has still managed to get on tens of millions of desktops and laptops and Linux software even runs on Windows.

As its importance has grown, development of Linux has steadily shifted from unpaid volunteers to professional developers.

Torvalds himself oversees development of the kernel as an employee of the nonprofit Linux Foundation, which is funded by contributions from corporations and individuals. Linux is important enough to the bottom line of major technology companies that they don’t mind employees contributing to the kernel on their employers’ dime. Intel and Red Hat led the way in corporate contributions to the kernel from December 2014 to July 2016

The Future of Linux: Continuing to Inspire Innovation and Openness

The first 25 years of Linux has transformed the world, not just computing, and the next 25 years will continue to see more growth in the Open Source movement, The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said during the opening keynote of LinuxCon/ContainerCon in Toronto on Monday, August 22, 2016.

“Linux is the most successful software project in history”, Zemlin said, noting that the humble operating sytem created by Linus Torvalds 25 years ago this week is behind much of today’s software and devices.

But the message of Linux is far more than software, Zemlin said. It’s about the open exchange of ideas that’s world-changing and inspiring. The concept of sharing has changed how the world thinks about technology and how it’s made, he said.

“We’ve learned that you can better yourself while bettering others at the same time”, he said. “We’re building the greatest shared technology asset in the history of computing.”

In the coming years, Zemlin predicts an even more rapid shift to open source, particularly in a world that now makes it nearly impossible to deploy software without collaborating and taking advantage of open resources.

13,500 developers from 1,300 companies have contributed to the Kernel since the entire project went up on Git in 2005

Linux now runs most of the websites you visit and runs on everything from gas pumps to smartwatches. The OS teaches kids to program thanks to the Raspberry Pi and it helped the French police save millions of euros. Heck, even Microsoft is releasing code for Linux. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

For a bit more insight into the history of the OS, I’d recommend Rebel Code and
Just For Fun. These books, released around the time Linux was coming into prominence, tell the fascinating story of Torvalds and his not “big and professional” side project.