How can a bunch of "hackers" create an operating system that can run mission-critical applications?" This is a question that Jim Zemlin is proud and relieved to say is no longer asked of Linux, the open source software that is increasingly becoming a force in corporate computing.
It is now used by, among others, the banks Credit Suisse First Boston and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC). The internet retailers Amazon and Ebay both use Linux as does Tivo, the innovative personal video recorder group. Motorola (NYSE:MOT) has used a version in the Razr mobile phone; and IBM is a prominent supporter of Linux, as are Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL).
All of which persuades 37-year-old Mr Zemlin that the first, acceptance, stage of the Linux development model is now over. "This is a pervasive operating system," he says. "You no longer hear questions about whether a 'hacker' OS can run mission-critical systems."
Mr Zemlin is the first executive director of the Linux Foundation, formed at the beginning of this year through a merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group (of which he was executive director), both of which were promoting the adoption of Linux.
Derived from Unix, Linux was and continues to be developed by the Finnish software engineeer, Linus Torvalds, and a worldwide army of independent developers. Mr Torvalds, whose independence is guaranteed by the Foundation, retains his power of veto over the technological developments that define the Linux kernel, the functional heart of the software. Mr Zemlin's job is to act as a combination of standard bearer, evangelist and defender for the operating system.
His taste for the last role was tested within a few months of taking office, when Microsoft claimed open source software, including Linux, violated a large number of its patents and could expose users to inherent risks. "It's all hogwash," Mr Zemlin says.
"The fact is that Linux does provide better price performance than Windows. There is no greater risk in using open source software than proprietary software from a legal perspective. If you want choice as a consumer of technology, open source and Linux is a far better path than, over time, being locked into a proprietary platform."
At the time of Microsoft's complaints, Mr Zemlin suggested the software giant was indulging in old fashioned FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Just looking at the numbers" he told the magazine Computerworld, it is easy to see that if the scare campaign merely delays an average large business's migration from Windows to Linux by a single day, Microsoft is $34m better off.
You would expect no less from the man leading the Linux charge, but Mr Zemlin has no illusions about the resilience of the opposition or the need to strengthen Linux's hand in the fight for market share. Windows controls the desktop and has a 40 per cent share of the server market. Linux is in second place on about 25 per cent, with the rest made up of Unix variants.
"Linux needs to up its game to compete with its primary competition, which is Windows. To do this, it needs to look at the reasons it was successful in the first place and analyse its weaknesses," he reasons.
Its principal strength is the speed and power of its innovation model, the consequence of simultaneous progress by thousands of software developers across the globe. "People use Linux because it provides a rapid innovation model. It provides an incredible time-to-market advantage.
"The Linux kernel releases every three months with new functionality. There are 2,000 lines of code added to the kernel every day; 2,900 lines of code are changed every day. There are more than 2,900 core contributors to the Linux kernel. The world has never seen such a sophisticated, broadly spread, rapid development model."
He points out that "distributions" of Linux - the Linux kernel together with complementary software to create complete operating systems and which are packaged by commercial companies - are released every six months compared with the seven years it took Microsoft to release Vista, the latest version of Windows.
Linux's principal weakness is the fact that, unlike Microsoft Windows, where the symbol on the box is a guarantee that the bits will work together, Linux is not an easy platform for application developers. "This does not really exist in Linux outside some specific distributions such as Red Hat and Novell. To get the whole platform to compete effectively," Mr Zemlin says, "we ne ed to take a federated approach to that kind of interoperability."
The approach being taken by the Linux Foundation is to create a standard, the Linux Standard Base, that will allow the companies who create Linux distributions to have a specific set of components that make up what is thought of as Linux. If that is consistent from one version of the operating system to the next, it will provide that reliable development platform.
Individual developers would compete on the quality of innovation they add to the standard. "Where files are stored is not a differentiator; a new security module is. Competing on these higher levels of technology is what is going to thrust Linux ahead."
Mr Zemlin points out that what motivates open source developers is not just the freedom to do more or less what they want but the desire to win. "These guys have devoted their lives to writing this software. For them, it's a 24-hour-a day job. I get e-mails at 3am from guys who have some new thing they want to talk about for Linux."
Before joining the Free Standards Group and the Linux Foundation, Mr Zemlin was a member of the founding management team of Corio, an enterprise application service provider, and vice-president of marketing for Covalent Technologies, which developed products and services for the Apache web server.
Educated at the University of Minnesota, Mr Zemlin read political science and Japanese: a long way from information technology, some might think, but his grandfather was a co-founder of the Cray supercomputer company and his father worked for Control Data Corporation, so supercomputing is in his veins. And significantly enough, three quarters of the world's top 500 supercomputers use Linux.
So what should the IT director be thinking about Linux? "What you are going to see from the Linux platform is better hardware utilisation, better price performance, better security. These are all things any IT organisation should be considering.
"You will also get choice, because Linux is not locked in to any single vendor like Microsoft. This is a great advantage to an IT organisation that wants to drive down cost and purchase competitive components.
"New technologies from Linux will include power management. Power is becoming a dominant cost in the data centre. One development is the 'tickless kernel' which cycles down the processor when it is not in use. This was an idea that was accepted and now is being rolled out to everyone," Mr Zemlin says.
And has the Foundation a secure future? Mr Zemlin smiles: "We are extremely well funded. We have a diversity of stakeholders. The platform itself represents a multibillion dollar marketplace in hardware and services related to Linux. It would be hard to imagine Linux disappearing any time in the near future - or the Foundation for that matter."
