The Transparency Mantra

The Enterprise Linux Forum (ELF) held during June 4-6, 2003 in Santa Clara was not large when sized up against the extravagance of dot-com era conferences or even some of the recent, splashier vendor affairs. However, the conference certainly had the right attitude. All the great modern motivators for Linux had been carefully packaged and presented by the show sponsors, its main exhibitors, and the many presenters in the conference. All the push buttons triggering adoption of open source technologies were on display in a grand panoply of products, services, and advice.

The Driving Forces behind Linux

Exciting new technologies were discussed and demonstrated at the ELF the “Grid”, blade servers, processor farms, disk farms (you would think that Linux has become a form of agri-business), on-demand computing, and more. Large-scale distributed computing technologies, exemplified by the Grid, can only be implemented as open source solutions because they are inherently heterogeneous. The message from the vendors was clear: “Big solutions portend big profits. Large enterprise class solutions require huge investments in services and integration.”

Old tried and true warhorses such as Web services, clustering, platform breadth, depth of control, and ever increasing performance were clearly not being forgotten. Oracle reiterated its claim that Linux can now be made “unbreakable.” And Dell claimed that Linux is “unstoppable.” So we have “Unbreakable and Unstoppable Linux” - the enthusiasm washes in great Pacific waves over this conference of self-selected enthusiasts.

SCO vs Linux: SCO’s Version of Legal Unix Group - This Month’s SVLUG

Even bad news is absorbed with a sense of humor. Silicon Valley Linux User’s Group’s (SVLUG) monthly gathering opened up with the conceit that they were happy to welcome everyone to this month’s meeting of “SCO’s Version of Legal Unix Group.” The SCO folly has galvanized the Linux community here.

But as Silicon Valley looks around, there are plenty of other thorns, some of which were hurriedly addressed by ELF panelists and presenters. For example, pundits quickly challenged the somewhat questionable report from mi2g that Linux was falling behind in security.

Transparency is the Trump Card of Linux

But the one word that truly resonates across the depth and breadth of the Linux community from commercial conferences such as ELF to user groups such as SVLUG is “transparency”. In the same way that transparency is thought of as the antidote to corruption and neglect in political, legal, and administrative arenas, transparency is the trump card of Linux. It is what makes all the bad news seem like fleeting storm clouds.

No proprietary technology or product could ever hold up to the scrutiny that the major open source packages face. Would SCO or Microsoft tolerate an honest review of their software secrets, which might reveal the bugs and compromises inherent in their code bases? What unclaimed patent, copyright or security liabilities might lurk in a proprietary product such as Windows?

For the Linux crowd, transparency is the foundation for trusted collaboration, which leads to progress with stability and accountability. No matter what SCO code is found in Linux (that SCO did not put there itself!), transparency will guarantee that any offending code is replaced in an Internet heartbeat. It is this purposeful lack of transparency that enables SCO’s outrageous folly. In a similar way, no matter what security vulnerabilities Windows can patch behind closed doors, the Linux community is convinced that, in the long run, transparency will lead to the conviction and the fact that open source software products embody the best possible implementations.