 Jim Zemlin | Welcome Xen as a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project
Today we'd like to welcome Xen as the newest Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.
The Xen Project is 10 years-old this week, and its contributors have doubled in the last few years. Xen usage continues to grow and today the project is being deployed in public IaaS environments by some of the world's largest companies.
Additionally, the Xen Project has adopted mainline kernel development practices and is progressing ever closer to the mainline kernel community. As of Linux kernel version 3.0, Linux can run unmodified as a Xen host or guest
Also about a year ago, the Xen Project's former host, Citrix, started focusing on formalizing Xen's governance practices and simultaneously looking for a vendor-neutral home where it could continue to flourish. The Linux Foundation is happy to provide that home.
Some of you may be wondering: what about KVM or other virtualization solutions in Linux? Does this affect anything?
Virtualization is important to Linux and the open source community and both Xen and KVM are widely accepted by users and developers. The advancement of both benefits developers, users and vendors. The open source model is predicated upon freedom of choice, so supporting a range of open source virtualization platforms and facilitating collaboration across open source communities is a priority for The Linux Foundation.
We work closely with the KVM developer community and great ecosystem represented by our friends at the Open Virtualization Alliance. For instance, The Linux Foundation manages the logistics each year for the KVM Forum, and this year we'll be hosting the KVM Technical End User Summit at the Enterprise End User Summit in New York in May in partnership with IBM. It always has been and will continue to be a priority for us to highlight the KVM community's content at our events and on Linux.com.
The market has proven there is opportunity for more than one way to enable virtualization in Linux, and both KVM and Xen have their own merits for different use cases. Historically in open source we've seen that two independent approaches to a question can yield amazing results, particularly when they are given an opportunity to cross-pollinate. We believe that by supporting both the Xen Project and KVM communities, The Linux Foundation can help advance the state of Linux virtualization for all and most important support and advance Linux for users.
We invite everyone to join us this evening at the Julia Morgan Ballroom from 6 p.m. - 9 p.m. to wish the Xen Project a happy 10th birthday and toast to the future of Linux virtualization.
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 Amanda McPherson | Join Us For the KVM End User Technical Summit at the New York Stock Exchange
KVM and open virtualization are being rapidly adopted as end users look for lower-cost, enterprise hypervisors. One the major use cases for KVM is to virtualize and consolidate Linux workloads, and the pre-integration of KVM in major Linux distributions makes it easy for Linux enterprise endusers to adopt KVM. A special KVM End User Technical Summit is running during this year's Linux Foundation Enterprise End User Summit, with the aim of introducing Linux users to the benefits of KVM, describing the KVM technical roadmap, and discussing the deployment and management of KVM both on its own and in multi-hypervisor environments. Sponsored by IBM, and with support from members of the Open Virtualization Alliance, this track aims to bring together customers, vendors and developers for interactive discussions about the use of KVM in practice, barriers to adoption, and the development of the KVM ecosystem. We want to thank IBM for their support in making this track possible. Starting with three sessions on the first afternoon, the KVM track consists of a mixture of presentations and panel discussions. This is then followed on the second afternoon by a smaller roundtable session to identify key end users requirements for KVM, discuss possible solutions, and help to create a KVM End User Council.
Our Enterprise End User Summit is a great place to meet technical developers and technical end users from the largest enterprises in the world. We have great content planned this year, including the KVM track, with Terry Roche, the COO of NYSE Technologies, Frank Frankovsky of Facebook talking about OpenCompute, and an Linux and RDMA Infiband panel with leaders from that industry.
If you are an advanced enterprise user of KVMKVM and open virtualization please attend and participate. Plus you can hang out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for the reception. Trust me. It's very cool! You can apply for an invite here.
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 Jennifer Cloer | Jim Zemlin at TEDx: What We've Learned from Linus Torvalds
Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin is likely one of a handful of people in the world who has had a front row seat to the largest collaborative development effort in the history of computing, Linux. He understands that speed of innovation and quality of software development is dictated by forward thinkers who are working in collaboration.
That is why he was recently invited to speak at TEDx about what the technology industry has learned from Linux, and specifically its creator Linus Torvalds, and how some of those lessons can be applied to a variety of efforts and projects across geographies and disciplines. ??
Linux has been pretty successful and the TEDx audience was eager to learn how it has achieved such success and how they could apply some of the Linux community's best practices to their own work. In true Zemlin style, the lessons seemed a little surprising at first but as he elaborated, the audience soon understood how Linux has become the largest shared technology resource known to man. It runs the Internet, our smartphones, televisions, the world's high performance computing systems and eight out of 10 of the world's stock exchanges. It's literally the foundation for our global economy, he explained.
He attributes the success of Linux during his talk to four primary principles:?
Don't Dream Big
?Zemlin quotes poet David Frost in his first point about not dreaming big: "Don't aim for success if that's what you want. Do what you love and believe in and it will follow." This is exactly what Linus Torvalds did when he put his Linux operating system on the Internet in 1991 and said he didn't think it would be much, just something he was doing for fun. ??
Give It All Away
Zemlin also makes an important point about how companies make money from software that is given away. By giving Linux away, Linus Torvalds and the entire Linux community have created more value than anyone could have imagined. Linux today is estimated to be worth more than $10B. IBM and Red Hat continue to see increasing shareholder value, while companies using largely closed development models have seen little return to their shareholders.
Zemlin says that even Apple gets the value of Linux and open source software. Inside every iPhone and iPad, there is free software. He says," Apple knows something that many people don't. When you stand on the shoulders of giants you can innovate at higher levels."
??Don't Have a Plan
He goes on to explain that the plan for Linux is there is no plan and shares with the TEDx audience how self-forming communities result in faster, better collaboration. Seven changes are made to Linux every hour, 24 hours a day, because people are self-motivated and care about what they're working on. ??
Don't Be Nice
His last point is perhaps the most entertaining and provocative. Zemlin talks here about the value of flame wars, defending ideas and ridiculing code. The result? Better software. He cites a UC Berkeley study that found groups that are encouraged to debate rigorously and defend their ideas, opposed to traditional brainstorming where every idea is a good idea, come up with better ideas.
??I don't want to spoil the ending so I'll just say that he makes the argument that the future is one where you can enrich yourself while at the same time enriching others. Check out the 18-minute talk here and share. If this TEDx Talk inspires you, let the TED team know and help us spread the word about Linux.
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 Angela Brown | What to Expect at LinuxCon 2010 this August in Boston!
The call for participation and registration opened for LinuxCon today signaling the beginning of planning for the 2nd Annual LinuxCon.
To recap on some of the highlights of LinuxCon 2009, which took place in Portland last September, we brought you:
A fantastic line-up of speakers including Linus Torvalds, Mark Shuttleworth, Bob Sutor, and many more industry luminaries
A packed program delivering content to a diverse audience of business, operations and developers
A Technology Showcase & Lounge providing attendees and exhibitors the opportunity to network and learn from each other
Exciting evening events including the Intel-sponsored LinuxCon/LPC reception and the Bowling for Penguins Fundraiser
The added value of co-located events include the Novell SUSE workshop, LDAPCon and the Linux Plumbers Conference
Check out our video highlights of LinuxCon 2009 here!
How is LinuxCon different than other events? In a number of ways. This is an event specific to the Linux community, but within that, it encompasses all matters Linux. Other events specifically target certain groups in the ecosystem, but LinuxCon is the only event that really brings together a diverse group of all types of industry leaders and contributors - from business executives and end users, to developers (both in the kernel and out), to the systems administrators and senior technology operations leaders. This is the one event the community can attend each year to meet face-to-face and collaborate with all the community players. In addition to innovative technical content and a great mix of attendees, LinuxCon also offers an unmatched fun, vibrant and intimate atmosphere that is extremely conducive to attendee networking and collaboration.
If you pick one Linux event to attend this year, LinuxCon should be it - you will not be disappointed!
While we could not have been happier with the overwhelming positive response from last year's inaugural event, we are amped to step up our game and make this year's LinuxCon a bigger and bolder experience for attendees.
In addition to fantastic, streamlined content geared again towards a variety of attendees (this is the conference for all matters Linux after all!), prepare yourselves for some exciting new speakers, a host of new attendees to network and collaborate with, and some fun additions to add to your conference experience!
Plus, we are happy to announce the co-location of a number of mini-summits/conferences this year, including KVM Forum, Linux Storage & Filesystems Workshop, Virtual Memory Mini-Summit, the Wireless Summit, Power Management Summit and the Linux Security Summit, plus more to be announced.
The registration fee is only $300 through April 15th, so REGISTER NOW.
Stay tuned for more information on all things LinuxCon - and get ready to have a great week in Boston this August!
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 Ibrahim Haddad | MeeGo Summer Seminar: Trip Report
The MeeGo Seminar Summer 2010 edition took place on July 26th, 2010 in Tokyo, Japan. The event was packed. More than 530 registrants, 21 sponsors, 16 speakers, 3 tracks (Business, Technology, Qt+Atom), multiple demos and the announcement that the GENIVI Alliance has selected MeeGo as its future in-vehicle infotainment center.
Below are some pictures from the MeeGo demos.
One of the questions I received as part of the discussion panel was about what makes MeeGo a great platform and diffrentiates it from other efforts. The questions actually came from one of audience members through the panel moderator. I think the answer to this question was the longest answer any panel participant gave to any given question:
MeeGo is an open source project hosted under the auspices of The Linux Foundation with an open governance model, open discussion forums, open mailing lists, open technical steering committee meetings, open roadmap process, and governed by the best practices of open source development. By the way, there are no contributor agreements to sign, either.
MeeGo is aligned closely with upstream projects and combines mobile development resources towards a unified platform that supports multiple device types (handsets, tablets, netbooks, connected-TVs, in-vehicle infotainment systems). It requires that submitted patches also be submitted to the appropriate upstream project and be on a path for acceptance. As a result, a large number of upstream projects will benefit from the MeeGo contribution. MeeGo offers a complete and optimized software stack, from the kernel to the libraries and middleware components up to reference UX implementations, along with a rich cross-platform development environment and tools.
MeeGo offers equal opportunities for all industry players to participate in the evolution of the software platform and to build their own assets on MeeGo and offers differentiation abilities through
the customization and branding of the user experience. Furthermore, it offers the ability to participate in the evolution of the software platform, and other Linux mobile and desktop efforts will benefit from
MeeGo’s work.
MeeGo has an active community that consists of more than 8,000 participants registered at MeeGo.com contributing source code, QA, documentation, translation, etc.
For application developers, MeeGo has a very attractive offering:
- Support for a single set of APIs across client devices --> easily and rapidly create and deploy apps
- Support for five different device types --> create an app and run it on multiple device types
- Support for multiple app stores --> host your app in several stores, or even create your own store
MeeGo also offers a compliance program to certify software stacks and application portability from the get go. Overall, MeeGo has too many unique characteristics and advantages that makes it really easy for me to support it.
Did I answer your question?
It goes without saying that I did not get any questions from the panel moderator for 20 minutes after my long answer on this question. The MeeGo Seminar was quite a success on all fronts. We are planning our next Seminar in Tokyo in December and before that we'd love to see you at the MeeGo Conference in Dublin, Nov 15-17.
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 Linux Weather Forecast | The 3.10 merge window closes
Linus Torvalds made a Mother's Day gift to the world in the form of the 3.10-rc1 kernel prepatch. With this release, the merge window for the 3.10 development cycle has closed, so we know which features to expect this time around.
The feature that has arguably drawn the most attention is one that will probably not have a huge effect for most users: the addition of (nearly) full dynamic tick support. The periodic "timer tick" is an interrupt that is delivered every 1-10ms while the CPU is busy; it is the kernel's cue to perform various important housekeeping tasks. It is also a distraction from the work the user really wants done and it can slow down the system's response time slightly. That slowdown is especially irksome to some high-performance computing and realtime users.
In 3.10, the kernel can turn off the timer tick in some situations, but most users will notice no performance difference. The suppression of the timer tick should happen more widely in future kernel releases; meanwhile it is an interesting bit of work and a significant step forward for the core kernel. Congratulations are due to Frederic Weisbecker, who did the bulk of the heavy lifting in this effort.
Other significant changes include a number of tracing improvements, a mechanism by which user space can be notified when the system is under memory pressure, and the bcache storage caching layer. See the Linux Weather Forecast page for a more complete list.
In the end, nearly 12,000 independent changes were pulled into the mainline during the twelve-day merge window. That makes this merge window the busiest in kernel development history and suggests that the final 3.10 release (due in early July) will be the largest kernel development cycle ever. The kernel and the community that develops it continue to grow.
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