“Despite OSDL’s laudable principles and its aim to ensure fair
and serious consideration to all projects, a neutral, collaborative
Lab run by powerful vendors, such as Intel, IBM, HP, and NEC, could
succumb to rivalries among members and contributors that are not
all equal sponsors. … In addition, providing massive hardware
resources does not itself guarantee more efficient breakthroughs on
technically complex issues of scaling and advanced architectures,
such as those in the high-end UNIX and mainframe class.”
“With OSDL’s declared mission that all developments must remain
open source, with no allocation of intellectual property rights,
Linux may still face the virtual glass ceiling. Many vendors with
the know-how and accomplishments to design enterprise-class systems
may have a vested interest in keeping selected accomplishments
proprietary and safeguarded as valuable in order to differentiate
themselves from competitors. It remains unclear to what degree they
will contribute their own in time, effort, and intellectual
property to make Linux a universally open operating system.”
“Gartner believes that building and creating a smoothly
functioning OSDL, including the software to manage the site, will
require nine to 12 months. Project assignments, monitoring, review,
and integration will then take another 12 months. Thus, significant
advancements from OSDL in available products will likely not appear
before the second half of 2002 (0.7 probability).”
Complete Story [ Free registration required ]