“Any risk that history might repeat itself–but with Linux
becoming a victim of the same kind of intra-community competition?”
“With the o source model, you really can’t screw it up. Because its
GPL, Linux is not going to fragment. Now we don’t see this as a
competition with Windows. In ten years, we know there’s going to be
at least three operating systems. There may be more, but there are
going to be at least three: OS 390, NT and Linux.”
” What about time to market concerns as far as developing for
corporations? The Linux kernal approval process has to go through
Linus Torvalds. Does that vetting procedure add extra time into the
process?”
“It actually makes for a faster process. It becomes a slightly
unpredictable one, but still it’s a faster process. Linux is very
modular as one of the design principles that you add things and you
don’t need to change theentire operating system. So, if an IBM
wants a new feature in Linux, a file system or a new volume
management system, you would do it according to the rules of how
the community works. You show that it works, put it up on the Web
site, and get people to use it and feel comfortable, etc. At some
point,when it’s good enough, it’ll go into the kernal.”