When you study the progress of humanity wending its way through pre-civilization and later civilization, you begin to notice that it’s the little changes over time that are the most important.

Throughout prehistory, before farming and cities were invented, hunter-gatherers quite cleverly adapted to the local environments they found themselves in. With a little luck, they managed to exploit the resources they needed to survive. But, unlike modern man, they lived in and from their world and did not seek to change it. Then, starting with farming, and later with the more advanced tools of civilization, humanity has tried to change, perhaps irreparably, the world around it. It has become increasingly clear that the critical challenges facing modern peoples across the world, like controlling global warming and pursuing peaceful international relations, now require everyone’s effort working together.

In the early days of free software, at the dawn of reciprocity and collaborative coding methods, FOSS was a software hunter-gatherer’s paradise. Over several generations of developers, new forms of discipline and organization gradually emerged. Large-scale software farming had arrived in the form of successful distributions like Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu, as well as in the form of agribusiness giants like HP and IBM. Today, the business of FOSS is dominated by farming. Most good developers have found jobs on the best farms — Google, Yahoo, IBM, HP, Intel, Fujitsu, as well as influential non-profits like the Linux Foundation, and countless others. The signature influence of a few garage developers scrounging for resources has long since vanished. Yet the spirit of hunter-gatherers continues to provide inspiration for innovation, rather like a venture capitalist’s dream of instant wealth, where the hard work of farming and civilization takes place only after IPO. Consequently, while the big players in today’s FOSS civilization are busy farming and changing their world, they are at the same time being careful to sustain a strong and vibrant ad-hoc developer community and are always on the lookout for new ideas and areas to invest in.

“It’s the slow changes in the software and technology environment that will rewrite the technology business for everyone.”

Similarly, without dwelling too much on the details, it can easily be seen that the proprietary software community has its own wide-ranging mix of hunter-gatherers and large scale agribusinesses. But it’s a little less friendly — dog eats dog, big fish eats little fish and survival is a dicey business at best.

Nonetheless it’s the slow changes in the software and technology environment that will rewrite the technology business for everyone. The foremost change is the bit-by-bit, but ultimately unstoppable, digitization of the developing world’s economies. In terms of its vast human intellectual resources, the developing world will finally eclipse the smaller populations of the developed economies. It is this climate change of global knowledge warming that will raise the level of the software and technology oceans that are fundamentally shared by everyone. Any low lying fields of vested interests stuck on the shores of the developed world are likely to be the first submerged.

The correct answer is not to slow the progress of global intellectual warming, but to create fields of expertise, talent and knowledge that are buoyant. Fields that have genuine links through the up and coming tide to the new hunter-gatherers as well as new large-scale farming communities and centers of civilization. Existing fields can then rise together with those of the new participants. A rigid strategy of lock-in or lock-out will only sink today’s developed economies. Open source and open standards (and open technology, in general) can provide a better way to build the strong links of collaboration and mutual respect that will be needed to float in an exponentially expanded, multi-cultural technology world. Then everyone together can face and meet the challenges that changing the world inevitably brings along with it.

Keynote by Matthew Szulik, CEO, Red Hat

Red Hat’s annual summit started off with great optimism from its CEO Matthew Szulik. In his opening keynote (Download), Szulik highlighted the vastness of the impact of open source on the world we live in from the state of Kerala in India to the giant telecom industry. Kerala is using open source to drive down illiteracy. The global telecom industry is deploying open source service delivery platforms. Now is an exciting time to witness these advancements. Szulik talked about open source as a driver to help maintain transparency which is key to the democratic process whether for voting or for legal systems. He exclaimed the urgent need for low-cost tools for education to change dynamics across the world and thereby reduce the threat of terror. His passion and commitment around all things open source resonated across the three days of sessions, meetings and networking.

Keynote by Brian Stevens, CTO, Red Hat

Other keynoters included Henri Richard of AMD, David Pakman of eMusic and Derek Chan of Dreamworks. Richard committed to open sourcing ATI graphics drivers. Pakman claimed no-DRM was the only way for entertainment content to be accepted widely in the new digital markets. Chan highlighted the pervasive use of Linux in producing animated movies and the impact that virtualization is having on the next generation of digital productions. Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens keynoted (Download) about how Red Hat has been inspired by customer-driven innovation. Customers have pushed Red Hat’s open source developers to invent new ways to meet their needs. He discussed how online desktops are the wave of the future and how collaborative sharing among peers is changing the desktop model. He highlighted OLPC’s impact through its new desktop paradigm Sugar and surveyed other ideas that are revolutionizing the way data and services will be provided to the user. Eben Moglen’s legal oratory had crowds spilling over as he summarized the status of GPLv3 and the impact of patents on innovation and the open source ecosystem.

Team India at the Summit

India was well represented with LIOs (”Luminaries of Indian OSS”) — Dr. Deepak Phatak, chair professor at IIT Bombay, Nandu Pradhan, the new leader of Red Hat India, and Shankar Iyer, Chairman’s Award winner, of Red Hat India. Other Indian technologists demonstrated strong representation from the subcontinent. Dr. Phatak, in surveying the state of open source in India, passionately argued for the need for open source and explained its potential to change the lives of many. Nandu Pradhan, highlighted contributions made to RHEL5’s roll-out by the Indian team. He also talked about the high expectations for a Red Hat global support center just announced in April by Charlie Peters, CFO of Red Hat and the success of the Red Hat Challenge in drawing more than 180 entries from India.

Market driven innovation

Interesting announcements in Red Hat’s strategy and development of the open source marketplace included Red Hat Exchange, support for para-virtualization support in Linux for Windows and release of the Liberation Fonts.

On the desktop front, the company’s direction seems to be long-term and multi-pronged with different projects supporting requirements for different markets.

Red Hat’s Global Desktop packages productivity applications such as OpenOffice, Evolution and Firefox to provide a fully supported desktop platform. This product is being distributed primarily by Intel’s global channel in the BRIC nations.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, started at MIT, showcased Red Hat as the prime software developer. OLPC is an initiative for kids in developing countries. It is aimed at providing a new framework and tools for the education of children in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In an one-on-one conversation Chris Blizzard, OLPC project lead for Red Hat, he talked about OLPC’s progress and technology breakthroughs being achieved on OLPC which would influence the desktop profoundly. He also emphasized that OLPC is a true open source project. Everything from the BIOS upwards is open with the exception of a mesh network driver for the Marvell networking chipset. Any community can use the OLPC software, add content for it, and educate with it without barriers to entry. Some grass-root organizations in Nepal have done exactly that and are currently adapting the system to local language requirements as well as to their own national curriculum.

Red Hat also revealed their plans for an Online Desktop with Mugshot. The Online Desktop provides a network-aware approach to address the needs of individual users whether they are college students, home users or small businesses. These users are increasingly taking advantage of the power of online applications such as Google Docs, GMail, Flickr, YouTube and Meebo in their day to day lives. Havoc Pennington described how a desktop that is not connected to the Internet is unthinkable to a whole generation today. Many people practically live “online” — using their desktop as an Internet front-end, with very few offline applications.

Advanced technologies such as virtualization, now fully integrated in RHEL5, and “Trusted Linux” with EAL4+ security were detailed across many sessions by key developers from Red Hat and other organizations such as IBM, AMD as well as customers.

Fedora 7

The upcoming release of Fedora 7, scheduled for May 31st, is generating great expectations. Key features in Fedora include the Live CD, DVD, USB and custom distro spins. The Live CD was demonstrated in the technical sessions by David Zeuthen. A rich toolchain for distro creation including Pungi and Revisor will be part of Fedora 7. Jeremy Katz presented the latest in Yum, Jesse Keating talked about Pungi - a release tool, Jonathan Stefan talked about Revisor - a tool to install customized versions of Fedora. Virtualization technologies such as KVM, Xen and Qemu will also be in this release. In an one-on-one conversation with Max Spevack, Fedora Project Board Chair, Spevack talked about the improvements in Fedora’s project management as well as roadmaps for Fedora 7 and future releases.

Party at San Diego Aerospace Museum

Sun, Sand and Open Source

The Summit drew about 1400 developers, system administrators, customers, partners and press - a full house. Most sessions were standing room only. With Wi-Fi all over, tasty munchies during breaks and great talks, the gathering was a sure hit. Global faces from Asia, Latin America, Europe networked, interacted and enjoyed food for the mind and body with the backdrop of the gorgeous San Diego harbor and fantastic weather. Among the many parties in the evenings, AMD’s party at the San Diego Aerospace Museum topped the charts with a super location, live band, great food and merry revelers.

When one thinks of Silicon Valley, what comes to mind are smart engineers, savvy entrepreneurs and wealthy VCs scouting for start-ups. Moreover, Silicon Valley has great geography and fabulous weather, and you can find some of the best Indian food in the US. One always thinks of the Valley as Ground Zero for new ideas and technology innovation.

Googling the Linux kernel

At the beginning of May, Andrew Morton, the Linux kernel’s second in command, delivered a “State of the Kernel” talk at Google’s breathtaking campus in Mountain View. This open source developers talk exemplified what I regard as some of the Valley’s best qualities. The audience listened with rapt attention to every word Andrew uttered as he walked through the current status of server, desktop and embedded Linux. He described what’s being done to fix some of the problems and reviewed upcoming features and bug fixes targeted for the 2.6.22 kernel. From virtualization, multi-core enhancements to power management, direct-rendering buffers, and dynamic ticks for OLPC — it was a solid overview.

But what struck me the most was the opportunity that Google provides Andrew to work on a project he has a great liking for and which does not directly benefit Google. Andrew does not build a product that Google sells. Google certainly uses Linux widely, but they would hardly go out of business if they didn’t employ Andrew. Andrew could work at many other places and corporate Google would derive practically the same benefits. But the leadership that Google demonstrates by industry sponsorship of great developers and great open source projects, is inspirational.

The sense of community at Andrew’s talk was palpable. Andrew generates a quiet excitement about the engineering phenomenon that Linux has become and the potential that many smart minds working collaboratively can realize. There are only a handful of places on this planet where hundreds of top developers talk tech in real time, sharing ideas for improvements and new features, as well as promoting new visions of technology. The energy of these creators, supported by sponsors like Google, permeates such gatherings. Google policy encourages its developers to spend 20 per cent of their work time on cool projects they select to grow personally and professionally.

“Providing the environment to nourish good ideas is key for making Bangalore or Beijing another Silicon Valley.”

Mixing and re-mixing

The chorus of creators and investors networking, discussing and innovating, mixed with a liberal culture and a competitive university and business environment makes the Valley a super winner.

Any project, business or invention is only successful when the creators can combine forces to take an idea from inception to production. Silicon Valley shines with that combination. Whether engineers are employed at HP, eBay or Google, if they are working on an open source project like Linux or OLPC, they constantly communicate, collaborate and work on common goals. Gone are the days when software engineers worked within isolated cages serving only their own employer. Today, if you’re not visible on the Web in your area of expertise, you’re not serious.

Next stop: Bangalore or Beijing?

With the right people in the right proportions, the culture of Silicon Valley can be recreated in any part of the world — Bangalore or Beijing. But creative people, wealthy people and entrepreneurs all have to be in the same place at the same time and with an underlying stable infrastructure — a bold, liberal and free environment crafted to nourish good ideas, grow smart communities and create cutting-edge technologies.

Just as physical infrastructure is key for a Silicon Valley even to exist, so is the requirement for creative individuals to be encouraged in the pursuit of what they like to do and to be supported generously in becoming the best they can become.

Keynote by Eben Moglen

MySQL’s annual user conference in Santa Clara, California was held in the last week of April. A strong spirit of community sharpened the razor-edge focus on database solutions by MySQL and its partners. Advanced MySQL features and applications were spotlighted across the technical and business sessions and exhibits. The tone of the conference was upbeat and aggressive as Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL highlighted the disruption MySQL is causing against database industry leaders like Oracle and Microsoft. Mickos noted that his company was preparing to go IPO with revenues of almost $50 million in 2006. Mickos announced that MySQL aims to be the “online database” of the Web and the company’s growth was due in part to a newly-created telecom business unit as well as to channel sales growth and a 100% increase in enterprise business subscriptions.

Keynotes at the conference included both visionary talks and partner pitches from Red Hat, Zmanda and HP. GPL luminary Eben Moglen delivered an exceptional keynote on the impending threat to individual privacy by a digital world that aggregates, at breakneck speed, personal data about preferences and habits. He discussed how thousands of users voluntarily provide personal information and reveal individual usage patterns that allow profiling by online services like Google, Yahoo, and EBay. At the end of the day, these large organizations acquire so much information and predictive power that they could misuse their knowledge to infringe upon individual freedoms.

Clash of the Database Egos

Another highlight of the conference was the “Clash of the Database Egos” emceed by Kai Arno of MySQL. The “Clash” featured Q&A with Monty Widenius, CTO and co-founder of MySQL, Mikael Ronstrom known for MySQL clustering, Jim Starkey of Falcon fame, Heikki Tuuri of Innobase, Ari Valtanen of SolidDB, Paul Whittington of NitroEDB and Mike Smith of IBM DB2. A funny yet informative discussion, choreographed in a town hall format with Kai Arno throwing questions to the assembled egos, fueled debates on database technologies and featured everyone taking pot shots at each other in good humor. At the end of this session, Monty Widenius was awarded the honor of becoming the first MySQL fellow.

Technical sessions by experts highlighted the diversity of MySQL’s usage and reach.  Topics included the latest in PHP security and debugging, MySQL high availability, clustering, and tuning, InnoDB performance, JBoss with MySQL enterprise, Ruby on Rails and REST, MySQL data warehousing and integration. There were also customer talks by Flickr, Digg, Yahoo, YouTube, Google and Amazon.

The moderately sized exhibits hall showcased a cross section of MySQL partners as well as related open source projects. Leading open source projects included OTRS from Germany, Joomla, Drupal, Bugzilla, Mozilla, and more.

The conference seemed to have a little less overall traffic than in previous years, perhaps because MySQL is considered a mature technology. But the conference provided strong value for those seeking high quality information about MySQL from its founders and leading technologists as well as seeking a review of the latest application solutions where open source database technology plays a key enabling role.