NetApp - On The Edge

Linux Kernel Summit 2009

Linux is the new monopoly, in a good way.

The comment was made this morning at the Linux Kernel Summit in Tokyo during a discussion about embedded Linux. It was coupled with the assertion that Linux is or soon will be the dominant operating systems in all segments of the market except the desktop. I have no way of supporting or refuting that, but to even make the statement and then inspect it for accuracy means that Linux has gone completely mainstream. Gone are the debates of when will people adopt Linux. That is so last century.

It is likely that the TV you have today is running Linux. The discussion this morning was not whether it was running Linux but which version and why - and the challenge of maintaining patch sets for these embedded use cases. TV manufacturers are conservative - older stable kernels perhaps more prevalent here. Cell phones are more likely to be running more recent kernels.

Power management is a hot topic for embedded applications (as an aside, California is poised on passing a law requiring lower power footprints for HDTVs). More recent Linux kernels have increasingly sophisticated power management support. I love quantitative performance presentations (sadly, sometimes I see presentations on performance where measures and numbers are MIA). Boot times for embedded Linux are being driven down with analysis on where time is being spent during the boot process (a bit over 2 seconds for a TV to fire up).

An increasingly popular embedded Linux solution is the Android mobile operating system from Google. Google has the heft in the market to draw a lot of support for an open operating system for mobile phones. 

While the open source movement is not synonymous with Linux, Linux is certainly extraordinarily visible. A lighting rod for disputes on patents and licensing, backed by every major computer company still standing. All of this is irrelevant to this meeting. The kernel maintainers and key developers are gathered here for a high bandwidth face-to-face to sync up and set agendas for the coming year. And talk about the development methods around Linux.

The afternoon sessions are about to start, and there are more performance topics on the agenda. 

NetApp is a proud sponsor of the Linux Kernel Summit. We participate in part with our contributions to the NFS code in Linux, and other areas.

How to Participate in the Linux Community

The Linux Foundation (of which NetApp is a member) has recently launched a resource for the Linux community - The Linux Developer Network. The site is currently in beta mode (like the perpetual Beta state of Google Mail? :-).

One very interesting resource is a small book entitled How to Participate in the Linux Community. A welcome practical guide for developers and engineering managers alike in how to participate in Linux kernel development.

Supporting Open Source Is A Privilege

I was particularly happy to see NetApp well represented in a recent paper describing contributions to the Linux kernel. NetApp is in the top twenty companies contributing code to the Linux kernel - much of it through our support of the Linux NFS Client. I got involved personally in getting NetApp more involved in Linux kernel development as our customers in 1999 started to increasingly use Linux in their data center operations. What I love about the Linux community and the people that comprise it is their openness to contributions - both bug fixes and significant feature enhancements.

NetApp has a long history of using open source, and I firmly believe that the use of open source should be followed by investing in the communities developing it. Indirectly, our membership in The Linux Foundation is part of that support. In the past, we've directly funded separate programs for NFS testing and SAN attach scalability in Linux through The Linux Foundation.

We use parts of FreeBSD in our products, and we're trying to support the work of that community also. Again, direct code contributions from our developers is our greatest contribution in my mind. But donations to organizations is also important - with a lot of these contributions coming from my CTO Office - such as our support for the FreeBSD Foundation (gotta check into status of our 2008 donation I notice!). Being a storage company we've found that sometimes providing highly reliable storage for development activities is the best way to help out some projects.

It is a privilege to be able to give back to these communities - important not only to NetApp but more importantly to our customers.

And personally, I enjoy the time I spend with the open source developers. Always engaging. And while I'm definitely not trying to start an open source war, my personal experience is that the Linux community does really know how to celebrate. I'm looking forward to the next Linux Kernel Summit! (And where are we with the sponsorship on that this year? Another thing to check up on:-)

A conversation with Jim Zemlin

What started out as a face to face conversation with Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, morphed into an e-mail interview as weather and San Francisco parking tickets reared their ugly heads in the New Year. I am on the board of the Linux Foundation (NetApp is a member company). Jim and I were catching up - and he helped me write my next blog entry.

Brian: Good afternoon, Jim. Great weather we're having in San Francisco this New Year.

Jim: The weather here is terrible. I suspect it is due to global warming and in the spirit of relating everything to the Linux Foundation we have a Green Linux initiative to enhance power management of Linux and make the world a better place.

Brian: So, NetApp is a member of the Linux Foundation, before that, we were a member of OSDL [one of the predecessors of the Linux Foundation]. NetApp, as you know, is the most innovative storage vendor in the industry, and our product is based on proprietary software for the most part. I know why we are a member, but I'm curious from your perspective, where do we fit in to the Linux Foundation and open source?

Jim: NetApp, like many other companies in the world, depend on Linux for a variety of things. First, it is important for NetApp's customers to understand that their products will work effectively with Linux. Because Linux is the fastest growing platform on the planet, I suspect there are a lot of NetApp customers that fall into this camp. Second, NetApp uses Linux in some of their products and by doing so benefits from the collective R&D that goes on in key open source projects such as the Linux Kernel or other components of open source software. Keeping a close eye on these projects and building up relationships with the other participants in these projects is something that is important to NetApp. At the Foundation we provide a forum within which NetApp can work with their industry partners and the community to benefit all of those working on making Linux and open source better.

Brian: Yes. The other place we're playing is in direct support and contribution to the Linux code base. We employ Trond Myklebust (the Linux NFS client code maintainer), and have a couple projects underway in NFS and other storage technologies that are generating code for inclusion in Linux. And certainly Linux is used by many of our development engineers as a development platform. What's it like to be the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation? Your day to day?

Jim: Lots of different things. First, I make sure that the people that work at the Foundation, including Linus Torvalds, get paid on time and have the best possible work environment we can provide. Second, I work with our members in order to act as a spokesperson on behalf of the industry, whether that takes the form of debunking competitors FUD or promoting new aspects of growth for Linux. Third, I make sure our technical initiatives to support Linux through open standards provide benefit to ISV's looking to target the platform. Finally, I work with our legal team to make sure that Linux and the work of the key developers of the platform is unfettered from legal threats. There are lots of other things I do at the Foundation day to day, but with dozens of people on staff working on these initiatives it keeps me pretty busy.

Brian: Yes, by the way, the Legal Summit that the Linux Foundation held in Boston in October was pretty informative from what I gather from our lawyer who attended. Part of the benefits of being a member! The Collaboration Summit was a great success it seems - I plan on attending the next one. So Jim, besides hanging out with me, what do you enjoy most about your job?

Jim: I enjoy meeting smart people. I get to travel the world and see how Linux is used in innovative new ways, whether that is a cutting edge device manufactured in Taipei or the One Laptop Per Child initiative which uses Linux to help children in poverty.

Brian: Actually, I feel the same way - I've met some cool people through my involvement with Linux and open source. The conversations are thought provoking. A lot of talent there - and some of that talent is at the Linux Foundation itself. So tell me, what's your impression of Linus Torvalds?

Jim: Linus is one of the smartest and most humble people I know. I am truly impressed with how much he has accomplished with Linux. His ability to work with people to create consensus, to write phenomenal code, and do it all while raising a wonderful family is truly impressive. His analytical mind is without question, but what impresses me the most about Linus is his emotional intelligence and his true humility. It is inspiring.

Brian: I've mused on the management style around Linux development. It seems very unstructured - yet works as a collaboration in ways that many much smaller projects I've seen haven't. There's a tremendous amount of trust it seems amongst the development community, and an underlying common purpose - where contributions weigh most in the voice you have. So, Linux is fully accepted in the enterprise today, it is embedded in many of our customer environments, and it is embedded in many products. By all measures it has been an outstanding success for the Linux community. What challenges do you see facing Linux in the next couple years? What role will the Linux Foundation play?

Jim: I believe that as Linux grows and expands there will be several challenges. First will be one of continuing to allow more people to participate in the development process. Large parts of the world have not yet joined in the development process in China, India, Eastern Europe and other areas due to language barriers or low awareness of Linux. We hope to help that by providing forums where key developers can spread the word about Linux and open source in these regions. Another challenge for Linux as a platform will be consistency. The Unix wars are evidence of what can happen when an operating system fragments. Through our work at the Foundation with the Linux Standard Base we hope to provide a degree of consistency across the various versions of Linux so that developers can easily target the platform. Finally, I believe we will need to continue to respond to competitive FUD about legal risks around Linux or other ridiculous claims and I believe the Foundation is in a good role to make that response.

Brian: Well, I look forward to working with you in the coming year within the Linux Foundation! The weather hasn't improved much during this conversation... I'm wondering if I need to go out and get some sandbags? Have a Great New Year! Gotta run!