The spread of Open Source

BANGALORE, INDIA: Technologies based on the open source platform are increasing in adoption today. Acceptance of open source has spread in varied areas such as web server, collaboration, messaging and virtualization to name a few. In India too, open source is growing rapidly and there are many enthusiasts who are coming out and embracing the technology. In an interview with CIOL, Santhosh D'Souza, Chief Technologist, Sun Microsystems, India, gives an insight on the growing trends of open source, Sun’s involvement to promote open source and the latest offerings it has to offer based on the open source platform.

Excerpts of the interview.

CIOL: Is the attitude towards open source maturing rapidly? If yes, how is it taking place?

Santhosh D'Souza: The attitude towards open source is changing, maturing if you will in two ways. There is in India a rapidly growing enthusiasm to participate in open source communities and contribute to open source projects. There is a recognition that work done in communities is not entirely without compensation: one's professional and technical credentials can be honed and established through participation in open source projects.

Besides, there is increasing adoption of technologies based on open source development. Enterprises began with the desktop where proprietary products used for browsing, reading e-mail, sharing file and print services, etc., are replace by open source equivalents. We now have widespread acceptance of open source derived applications in areas like web server, collaboration, messaging, virtualization, etc.

There is also a gradual change in the notion of how software is paid for. Compensation for the value inherent in an application need not happen at the point of distribution - this is why Sun Microsystems makes available almost our entire software portfolio, free to download and to experiment. The policy allows developers and enterprises to try out the software or build solutions on top of it. When the software is actually deployed in an environment that makes/saves money for the deployer, he/she will want the software to be supported, enhanced, fixed when problems crop up and so on. That is when Sun Microsystems will derive revenue from the use of the software.

CIOL: “Sun has made a huge commitment to open source software, contributing billions of dollars in developer time, sponsorships and donations, as well as releasing more code under open source licenses than any other organization in the public or private sector.” Can you justify this statement?



D'Souza: In addition to participating in and leveraging many industry-wide open source projects, Sun has, uniquely if I might say so, opened fundamental software, hardware and storage technologies to free and open source communities. We believe this era to be that of the Participation Age, with unprecedented global communities contributing to developments around network computing. Our philosophy is therefore to build products through the preferred means of co-production. We believe that volume drives value, and therefore, growing developer communities around our core technologies as well as encouraging our customers to participate in shaping their directions. We continue to deliver products and services derived from these open source projects.

CIOL: Are we seeing acceleration in the application stage due to open source licensing security and maturity?

D'Souza: The momentum around an application, measured in terms of development enthusiasm and quantum of deployment, is not only determined by it's functionality but also how secure an enterprise and individuals view it to be. Indemnification and Intellectual Property protection are important criteria for enterprises that evaluate open source-based products. The maturity of an OSI approved license can largely be judged by how effectively it protects the rights of the user of products based on that license.

CIOL: What is the trend of the Industry today?



D'Souza: Industries in general have been far more receptive to Open Source than expected. We have technologies like Java, MySQL, VirtualBox, Grid Engine, Open Office and NetBeans showing up in the most unlikely of IT environments as well as in established enterprises. While academia, government and scientific establishments are natural stomping grounds, several financial services, telecommunication, energy and pharmaceutical giants are showing enormous interest in deploying open source derived infrastructure.

CIOL: Is Linux becoming a dominant super side platform out there along with other platforms such as MS Windows?

D'Souza: While the Linux kernel is one of the most successful open source projects on the planet and a great example of how a community can nurture long term participative development, it is commercial distributions based on the project that are actually installed on systems : most enterprises will never install the Linux kernel on their production systems. The distinction is important because it underlines the continued need for commercial suppliers. A few Linux distributions are certainly viable Operating Systems on x86 platforms for several horizontally scaled and some vertically scaled workloads. These distros compete with Solaris, an OS so feature-rich and cost effective that Marc Andressen (of Netscape and Ning fame) famously described Solaris as a better Linux than Linux itself.

A little known fact is that Sun Microsystems is the largest contributor of source code to common GNU/Linux distributions, and is very active in several communities around GNU/Linux. Most of our software portfolio is also available on popular Linux distros, and we certify our x86 platforms for them too. Even our enormously popular UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 plus systems, are certified and work with Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distro.

CIOL: Can you give a little detail on the Sun xVM virtualization portfolio?

D'Souza: Sun xVM folds in various virtualization technologies and virtual/physical instance management into an open source based, integrated family of technologies.

The Sun xVM portfolio, a compelling set of internet scale virtualization solutions, provides a new level of choice for companies looking to simplify their IT infrastructure. Sun has combined a unique set of products and technologies to effectively manage both the physical and virtual infrastructure and enable virtualization of everything from the desktop to large-scale datacenters.

The complete xVM products and technologies include:

xVM Server 1.0: a pre-configured hypervisor for heterogeneous workload consolidation.

xVM Ops Center 2.0: a single console management for both physical and virtual environments.

Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI): the only desktop solution that offers a choice of Windows, Linux and Solaris.

xVM VirtualBox 2.0: VirtualBox is the open and free hypervisor that supports all major operating systems, allowing users a way to run multiple operating systems on the same screen at the same time.

CIOL: What is Sun's role on the Software Freedom Day event?

D'Souza: Sun is one of the sponsors of Software Freedom Day, a celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). We are hosting around 150 events worldwide, including over 35 in India to raise awareness of FOSS. Sun employees from over 60 countries are expected to participate in events marking the day.

Sun constituted the Open Source Community Innovation Awards. We will be announcing the winners as part of the celebrations. We also announced a student contest promoting the Open Source MySQL and GlassFish projects.