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<title>Linux: The Software Gold Rush LG #37</title>
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<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">Linux: The Software Gold Rush</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:alolita@cwareco.com">Alolita Sharma and Bob Adkins</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
Linux carries a similar promise for the global software community as the
1849 Gold Rush did for California. For software products and projects,
Linux is software gold. When electroplated onto cheap, high-performance
PCs, Linux offers all the appearance, performance, and function of the
high-priced, real-gold offerings of the major vendors including Microsoft,
Sun, IBM, and HP. And the analogy can be extended further. Just as the
1849 Gold Rush provided many expected and unexpected benefits to the State
of California and even to the U.S. economy, Linux is poised to provide both
expected as well as unexpected benefits to the software industry.
<P>
The 1849 Gold Rush promoted settlement of the State of California and
provided discretionary cash at critical juncture in US history: funding art,
educational, building, and other projects which would have been delayed by
decades or never would have been accomplished at all.
<P>
Linux is already promoting the settlement of new software areas. Linux has
provided the opportunity for many engineers to contribute to operating
system kernel development, advanced networking, real-time scheduling, and
super-computer design. The results have been an exciting array of
high-quality, advanced software. Without the momentum offered by Linux,
these areas would remain sparsely populated. Today there is a healthy
collaborative community that has "settled" into and is growing and evolving
in each of these areas.
<P>
Linux is capable of much more. In addition to enabling the settlement of
new software areas, Linux provides a fertile seed as a kind of discretionary
cash whose addition to the global software economy will fund advancements in
the software technology and will broaden sources for commercial software.
Linux "gold" can provide the extra resources needed to enable software
projects that would otherwise be infeasible. This is especially important
on a global basis. Today the world's software industry is dominated largely
by U.S. companies. Commercial licensing and royalties feed the U. S.
software hegemony and often stifle initiation of projects or products in
developing countries.
<P>
Linux changes the rules.
<P>
Linux can provide an inexpensive yet strong foundation for large-scale
projects which otherwise face a multiplier of licensing restrictions and
fees. Even in the U. S., reduction of licensing fees multiplied over
hundreds of equivalent machines was a major motivator for using Linux-based
supercomputing to produce the special effects of the movie Titanic.
<P>
The combination of zero royalties and low hardware costs enable the
prerequisite infrastructure of large projects to be built cost effectively.
Furthermore, maintenance and upgrade costs can be controlled by the project
more efficiently. While software evolution is more rapid under Linux than
under commercial operating systems, each project nonetheless can select the
upgrades and maintenance which are appropriate to its own specific
requirements without arbitrary vendor upgrades and artificial external
costs. Support cannot be withdrawn because a complete snapshot of the
source code used for the project is always available.
<P>
For example, many large-scale projects exist which have been developed in
the public domain but which are tied to a proprietary infrastructure. In
one such case, the U.S. Weather Service has built a large, public domain
source system for weather forecasting based upon Hewlett Packard's (HP)
proprietary Unix operating system and compilers. The costs of implementing
a national-scale forecasting system on high-priced HP equipment would be
prohibitive to all but the wealthiest countries. However, with some effort,
the entire code base could be converted to Linux and built using standard
open compilers such as g++. Several template facilities might need to be
reworked against the template limitations of g++, and data byte order
assumptions embedded in some parts of the code must be resolved, but in
theory such a conversion could be completed successfully. Then a top-rate
automated weather tracking and early-warning system could be implemented
wherever raw data could be obtained to feed the forecasting software.
Although obtaining raw weather data is not trivial, literally hundreds of
programmer-years worth of work on a world-class front-end weather system
already has been provided. Once available under Linux, modern weather
forecasting services could begin to become available to developing nations
worldwide.
<P>
Product development also benefits from the same factors. Any number of
commercial products can be built without the traditional dependencies on
external licensing and support. The control of Linux-based software
products can be fully vested in the project itself. Projects can be jump
started with fewer legal and financial dependencies. New products can be
built by virtually any source in the global development community and can
compete on technical merit with few licensing constraints and no royalty
encumbrances. Some examples might be a Linux version of the popular modem
multiplexers such as Webramp, or Linux-based PDAs, office Intranet and file
servers, etc. Linux is highly suited for building any software or firmware
product that is service oriented and capable of being remotely, especially
Web managed.
<P>
Products can be built:
<ul>
<li>Without traditional dependencies on external licensing and support
<li>Fewer legal dependencies
<li>Fewer financial dependencies
<li>No royalty encumbrances
<li>Fewer licensing constraints
<li>Re-investment, rather than hoarding, of new technologies
</ul>
But can product developers basing their work on GNU Public License (GPL)
open source software such as Linux still protect their valuable intellectual
property, their inventions? If they have incorporated GPL source software,
then they typically must provide their own product's source code also. In
some cases this will not be a problem. Where it is, then the developer
should build their product using dynamic libraries if possible. If dynamic
libraries are not sufficient, then alternative open source software, such as
FreeBSD, could be used as a basis for their product. However, hoarding
inventions contradicts the spirit as well as the many advantages of Linux
and open source software. While fully adhering to open source practice,
vendors such as Red Hat have implemented a business model that emphasizes
other product differentiators including packaging, ease of use,
configuration utilities, and service, etc. Large projects can greatly
benefit from open source practice since they are normally sold based on
expertise and long-term maintainability. When the complete project source
code is available, the lifecycle stability of the entire project is
enhanced.
<P>
The world's software industry has great intellectual talent. This wealth of
talent is certainly in aggregate greater than any single company commands
including Microsoft, IBM, Sun, HP, etc. But many software developers
outside of the U. S. have been hampered by the steep cost of project startup
and by the licensing restrictions that give ownership and control to others.
Limited local opportunities further promote the "brain-drain" from
developing countries to the U.S.
<P>
Linux helps solve these problems because ownership (copyright) of software
is shared and typically does not require complex or onerous licensing
arrangements. Equally importantly, project costs can be controlled so that
they better reflect the actual costs without arbitrary expenses due to
inflated infrastructure requirements or foreign license and royalty fees.
<P>
Linux is continually being adapted and revitalized and represents an ever
more capable foundation to empower the world software development community.
Linux is truly a renewable Gold rush.
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1999, AuthorName <BR>
Published in Issue 37 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 1999</H5></center>
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