Making the world 'safe for Linux' 6 November, 2008 By Liam Lahey

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Keith Bergelt is the CEO of a consortium of industry heavyweights that include IBM, Sony, Phillips, Novell, NEC and Red Hat which comprise the OIN. The NYC-based intellectual property company was founded in 2005 to promote the Linux system by using patents to create a collaborative ecosystem and to make the world "safe for Linux".

"So Linux could go forth and prosper and migrate from where it started in transaction processing to increasingly moving to mission-critical applications in the enterprise," Bergelt said of the OIN. "Ultimately to the desktop where the expectation is Linux will be the de facto standard operating system on which applications reside."

While attending the Free Software and Open Source Symposium at York University in Toronto recently, Bergelt told eChannelLine open source software development is one of the greatest drivers of innovation.

Almost every home or business uses open source-based products -- from mobile phones to telecommunications systems to your neighborhood ATM. The open source community provides a steady flow of improvements in the customer experience that are made possible by the ability to take software code that has already been written and build on it.

"I consider the community as an elegant, self-regulating community and that's what open source programs are," he said. "The key is to allow it to meander so that it's not affected by patents . . . we're guardians of the borderland around the Linux ecosystem so as to ensure patents are not the downfall of any key application area that Linux is targeting."

Linux has enjoyed a rapid adoption rate due to its reliability, scalability, performance and affordability. It has enabled businesses of all shapes and sizes to deploy software with functionality that was previously the exclusive domain of multi-national enterprises. The quality of Linux-based software being produced has also led to global mass adoption by larger businesses.

The Linux community spurs innovation because individual software developers and companies continue to work from, and build, a shared library of code that is available to all. This model means developers can focus their energies on creating improvements to existing Linux code -- significantly increasing the pace of innovation.

The Tower Group reported that Linux-based systems provide a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO), delivering savings both in terms of lower hardware and software procurement expenses and in ongoing maintenance and support. And in a recent FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) survey of European organizations, 83 per cent of the respondents reported that "higher stability" was a very important or an important reason for adopting Linux and other open source software.

Open collaboration between developers is critical for driving the Linux system's successes in software and hardware innovation. Impediments to collaboration and the sharing of ideas threaten to slow innovation, be it patent litigation or what Bergelt called the sociology of persons north of the age of 40.

"That is being dealt with more successfully so there is a breaking down of old, traditional models, silos, the development of technology and everything being proprietary as many large companies understand the value of open source and the power of it as a modality of invention," he said. "What's under a lot of discussion right now is (companies) partnering to leverage the aggregate capital more effectively. The Linux kernel is not at risk . . . but applications that reside on Linux have become a potential target for patent trolls or strategics [sic] that have a negative view of Linux.

"You have situations where litigation is not necessarily Linux-related but it looks like it . . . every time there's a lawsuit where Linux is mentioned that Linux has patent issues, when the reality is in 99.9 per cent of the cases there are no issues related to Linux."

The OIN is refining the traditional IP model by acquiring strategic software patents and making them available royalty-free, for any use, to any organization that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux system. This frees organizations to make significant corporate and capital expenditure investments in Linux -- helping to fuel economic growth and technological innovation.

The proliferation of open source hardware and software platforms is an irreversible trend, Bergelt added. As open source continues to accelerate beyond the enterprise to mobile devices and the desktop, the OIN would continue to work for the common good, creating a Linux IP "No-Fly Zone" that ensures the Linux ecosystem will not be impaired by intellectual property rights issues.

"We're essentially looking to have this No-Fly Zone around Linux so the ecosystem can do what it's going to do," he remarked. "A lot of small to midsized enterprises have to understand living with litigation is very common for large technology companies and it should not affect Linux's ability to grow . . .