“Dirk is a vice president, Strategic Development at SuSE, a
German Linux distributor, and also a vice president at The XFree86
Project, Inc….“
“Where do you position yourself, among these three: Free
Software movement (like RMS), Open Source movement (like ESR), or
“Free Beer” movement(?) (like Linus :-)?”
“Dirk: Well, “Free Beer” is just a joke… I definitely position
myself in the Open Source movement. Open source codes are, like
other scientific researches, reviewed by developers around the
globe by being released on the Internet, and this can make higher
quality software. Doing open source means that you have the
positive effect of peer review. You have other people looking at
your code, pointing at problems and improving the code. I strongly
believe that open source is the best way to do operating system
development and infrastructure development. Anything that is used
to drive computers, or anything that is used to make computers
inter-operate, can only benefit from being open source, because in
that way, it can be open to public review. Having open source
allows people to fix problems as they occur, and also allows you to
fix them yourself. Additionally open source is the only way to be
able to review security relevant code for its correctness. And most
of the code in the OS and infrastructure environment is security
relevant in some form or other.”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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