Interview with Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation: Open source has gone from being a niche genre to being known to everyone

The LC3 (LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen) conference, which has been eagerly awaited by the IT industry, will make its debut in China on June 19-20 this year in Beijing. Among them are open source superstar Linus Torvalds (founder of Linux and Git) and major open source technology leaders, including representatives of cloud computing (OpenStack, Kubernetes), blockchain projects (Hyperledger), network projects (Open Networking Foundation), etc. Foreign companies such as Google, IBM, Amazon, and Red Hat will join Chinese developers and Chinese corporate executives using Linux to discuss container, blockchain, network orchestration, and embedded/IoT open source technologies.

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Before the LC3 conference, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, accepted a video interview with a 51CTO reporter in San Francisco, carefully analyzing the impact of this open source technology in China and how to promote technological innovation through open source and Linux.

Why is open source so important?

"In fact, the Linux Foundation has begun to establish an open source organization in China last year. It mainly cooperates with some Chinese open source companies, such as Huawei, China Mobile, and some local communities such as the China Open Source Promotion Alliance. And it hopes to continue to expand in the fields of cloud computing and networking in China and jointly promote the development of open source," said Jim Zemlin.

In the Linux project, there are currently more than 100 companies and nearly 4,000 developers who have completed 53,000 kernel source files and 21 million lines of source code. Linux is not only widely used and large-scale, but also develops very quickly. Jim Zemlin said that Linux adds 10,000 lines of code, deletes 5,000 lines of code, and carefully modifies 1,800 lines of code every day. It can be imagined that Linux changes 8 times every hour. Among open source projects, no company or organization can catch up with the development speed of Linux.

Of course, enterprises do not need to catch up with Linux, because any organization or individual can obtain Linux technology and services from open source to define products. We always believe that the future is open and never stagnant.

In terms of security, Jim Zemlin believes that any complex system will inevitably have security vulnerabilities. However, in the development process of Linux, there are actually thousands of open source developers who review its security, which is also an issue that Linux pays great attention to. The code actually has a peer review process to ensure security as much as possible. Therefore, some security codes are established during the Linux development process. For example, the launch of projects such as CoreOS is mainly to help them develop safe and reliable software. The code has been audited to ensure that these codes are the safest.

Therefore, the entire Linux software development process will have a peer review and peer inspection process. Through this method and process, the security of the developed Linux software is guaranteed.

Open source has gone from being a niche product to a new ecosystem with the participation of a large number of enterprises, organizations and individuals. These include the big data-based Hadoop platform, open source containers and cloud technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker. For example, the Google open source project Kubernetes, which is familiar to everyone, has developed very fast and is also a project with a lot of developer investment. There are 380 enterprises and more than 2,500 developers committed to the development of Kubernetes, with a total of 50,000 submissions and 8,000 GitHub source codes. These open source projects have gradually been recognized by the industry.

Jim Zemlin has also been paying attention to the development of cloud computing and IoT open source in China. They have also been increasing the number of related open source technology events in China and expanding the layout of open source in China. They hope to promote the development of cloud applications like Kubernetes, as well as the development and innovation of open source projects such as EdgeX and IOT.

Maybe one day open source may change the world, but it is already happening.

As more and more companies join in code contribution, the value brought to Linux is increasing. Jim Zemlin gave an example: Last week, Toyota announced that its best-selling car Camry will use Linux. The automotive industry joining Linux means that they will put forward new requirements for the Linux kernel, which is very good news for those manufacturers who develop embedded system solutions.

In the discussion about China's open source environment, Jim Zemlin believes that some high-quality open source projects in China are constantly developing. Last year, an open source project was announced with Huawei and China Mobile. At the same time, China Telecom and China Unicom have also continued to join, as well as some international operators, including AT&T and Orange, hoping to build the world's largest open source telecommunications infrastructure. However, from GitHub, compared with the United States, there are indeed not many high-quality open source projects in China. Jim Zemlin said that historical reasons have a great impact. The history of software development in the United States is relatively longer, but it can be seen that China is also catching up.

Therefore, the LC3 conference being held in China this time will allow the world's top developers to discuss and share best practices with Chinese companies and high-level developers. We also hope that China will have more independent open source projects in the future.

At the 2018 China International Conference on Computer Science and Technology, Jim Zemlin emphasized that LC3 is a rare opportunity because it is an opportunity for the world's leading developers to gather together. It is also a chance for you to tell the difference between an elite developer and an ordinary developer. Jim Zemlin gave an example, like Picasso and an ordinary painter. In addition to the opportunity for the world's best developers and computing experts to discuss issues together, we also hope to better use open source to develop products and services, and work closely with Chinese developers and industries to develop more valuable open source codes in the future.