Jim Zemlin on Taking a 'Portfolio Approach' to Linux Foundation Projects
upstart writes:
Jim Zemlin on taking a 'portfolio approach' to Linux Foundation projects:
The Linux Foundation has become something of a misnomer through the years. It has extended far beyond its roots as the steward of the Linux kernel, emerging as a sprawling umbrella outfit for a thousand open source projects spanning cloud infrastructure, security, digital wallets, enterprise search, fintech, maps, and more.
Last month, the OpenInfra Foundation - best known for OpenStack - became the latest addition to its stable, further cementing the Linux Foundation's status as a "foundation of foundations."
The Linux Foundation emerged in 2007 from the amalgamation of two Linux-focused not-for-profits: the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG). With founding members such as IBM, Intel, and Oracle, the Foundation'sraison d'etrewas challenging the "closed" platforms of that time - which basically meant doubling down on Linux in response to Windows' domination.
[...] Zemlin has led the charge at the Linux Foundation for some two decades, overseeing its transition through technological waves such as mobile, cloud, and - more recently - artificial intelligence. Its evolution from Linux-centricity to covering just about every technological nook is reflective of how technology itself doesn't stand still - it evolves and, more importantly, it intersects.
"Technology goes up and down - we're not using iPods or floppy disks anymore," Zemlin explained to TechCrunch in an interview during KubeCon in London last week. "What I realized early on was that if the Linux Foundation were to become an enduring body for collective software development, we needed to be able to bet on many different forms of technology."
This is what Zemlin refers to as a "portfolio approach," similar to how a company diversifies so it's not dependent on the success of a single product. Combining multiple critical projects under a single organization enables the Foundation to benefit from vertical-specific expertise in networking or automotive-grade Linux, for example, while tapping broader expertise in copyright, patents, data privacy, cybersecurity, marketing, and event organization.
Being able to pool such resources across projects is more important than ever, as businesses contend with a growing array of regulations such as theEU AI ActandCyber Resilience Act. Rather than each individual project having to fight the good fight alone, they have the support of a corporate-like foundation backed by some of the world's biggest companies.
"At the Linux Foundation, we have specialists who work in vertical industry efforts, but they're not lawyers or copyright experts or patent experts. They're also not experts in running large-scale events, or in developer training," Zemlin said. "And so that's why the collective investment is important. We can create technology in an agile way through technical leadership at the project level, but then across all the projects have a set of tools that create long-term sustainability for all of them collectively."
[...] While AI is inarguably a major step-change both for the technology realm and society, it has also pushed the concept of "open source" into the mainstream arena in ways that traditional software hasn't - with controversy in hot pursuit.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.