ELC2009: Ubiquitous Linux

The theme of this year's Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) is "Ubiquity" and Dirk Hohndel opened the conference with a keynote on just that topic. Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open source technologist, looked at how widespread Linux is in consumer electronics, but also how many other, far less obvious devices it has been embedded into. In addition, he discussed some of the problems caused by vendors and manufacturers not engaging with the community and how that can lead to suboptimal devices; he also reviewed the value proposition of Linux, pointing out that the "zero-cost" is not zero and even if it were, that's not where Linux's strengths lie.

Tim Bird, who organized the conference for the CE Linux Forum (CELF), introduced Hohndel by calling him "something of a legend in the open source community" for his work in the community over the last 15 years or more. Bird recalled some advice Hohndel had given him some years ago that the secret to having an organization that works well with open source is to keep everything open. It seems tautological, but that is exactly what Bird and CELF have done with great success. CELF keeps all of its information available to everyone, not just members, and welcomes the participation of the community. In large part, that came straight out of Hohndel's advice.

Hohndel opened his presentation by contrasting the ELC participants with those that had attended his talk at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) earlier this year. Based on the traditional show of hands, he noted that there were far fewer lawyers and far more people who had used Linux at ELC than at OSBC. But part of the point he was making is that even though the folks at OSBC didn't think they were using Linux, they almost certainly are—and on a daily basis.

He noted that based on his title, "Ubiquitous Linux", and the dictionary definition, he could give the shortest keynote on record: "Linux is everywhere, thank you very much". He pointed out that servers were the first commercial success for Linux, but were not really the purpose for which Linux was created. Linus Torvalds's lack of a desktop Unix was what really spawned Linux. Now, though, you can hardly do anything on the Internet without bumping into Linux.

If you want to search (Google), buy a book (Amazon), book a flight, trade NASDAQ stocks, or participate in an auction (eBay), you are dealing with Linux. In fact, Hohndel says, "if you can spend five minutes on the Internet and do not run Linux, you're a genius". He asked for a show of hands to see how many Eee PC owners there were in the audience; he was disappointed to only see about seven. He claimed that even the lawyers at OSBC had more of these systems. But computers are boring, Hohndel says, everyone knows Linux runs on computers.

With about three minutes invested in a Google search, Hohndel was able to come up with 22 phone vendors with a Linux phone before he stopped looking. Most of those vendors are in Asia and he was not sure why the US was "behind the curve". Part of it is that vendors don't talk about Linux on their phones, he said. Half of the Motorola Razr phones run Linux, but you wouldn't know that based on the marketing.

He went on to list some of the more common, even well-known, Linux devices including VoIP phones, digital video recorders, camcorders, digital cameras, set top boxes, network attached storage (NAS) controllers, and so on. GPS devices run Linux as well: "Microsoft was kind enough to point that out to us". He did lament the poor support of standards in phone browsers, though, pointing out that there is a full Linux system underneath, so it should be relatively easy to produce a browser that runs Javascript and so forth—but many vendors do not. That complaint was a bit of a preview of a theme he would come to later: if the companies would engage with the community, they would get that browser for "free".

Hohndel then started listing things that run Linux but are far less known, starting with MRI and CAT scan medical devices. Vehicles of all types use Linux in their avionics (airplanes), in-vehicle entertainment systems (planes, trains, and cars), repair centers (cars). He noted that for redundancy purposes, the avionics vendor's system had a matching implementation in Windows, which wasn't necessarily very comforting to Hohndel. He noted that he had written kernel code along the way and wasn't completely comfortable with that code running planes he flies on either.

Hohndel challenged the audience to see how long they could go without interacting with a Linux system, listing the kinds of things one would have to do without. He also related a conversation he had with an executive from a large, unnamed, software company (perhaps located in the Pacific Northwest) who claimed he never used Linux. By the end of the conversation, they had come up with a dozen different Linux systems he used on a daily basis. "I don't think the general public realizes how much of this scary stuff they have around them", he said.

He then turned to the question of why Linux is everywhere. He noted that "because it's free" is the "worst possible answer" but this supposed zero cost is an answer that is frequently given by other audiences of his talks. "If you are using Linux because it's free, you are in for a very rude awakening".

Intel has hundreds of Linux developers, he said, but "we didn't get the memo, we actually pay these guys". He started listing some of the costs associated with using Linux: hardware likely doesn't come with Linux drivers, or the drivers only work with a different version of the kernel than the one needed to get other kernel features necessary to the product, etc. And "then you talk to your lawyers" about licenses and such. None of that is free.

The strength of Linux is that if you run into a problem, you can solve it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. He contrasted that with a proprietary solution where you pay $20,000 up front and some small per-unit royalty, which might actually be cheaper, at least on paper, but if there is a problem, you have no leverage with the vendor. How can you meet your market window when you have no way to fix problems that you encounter, he asked.

Choosing Linux is about customizability as well as security, Hohndel says. You can control the footprint of the system because you have the source code and can customize it as needed. Anyone who says they are going with Linux because of zero cost have proven to Hohndel that they don't understand what you can do with Linux.

This leads to a problem with the current crop of consumer devices that run Linux: they don't take advantage of the strengths of the OS. Hohndel thinks that most vendors using Linux in embedded devices are doing it wrong. They are focused on the price to the exclusion of building a community around the device. They don't make any money on a device they have already sold, so they focus on the next device and ignore the idea that just by opening things up, they could build a community that would help them sell that next device.

Hohndel said that being open to the community will reap many benefits. New features and functionality will be added by others to "do things you never thought possible". He mentioned Linksys wireless routers and the DD-WRT and OpenWRT communities that have sprung up around them. Linksys got many things wrong in the early going, but eventually turned that around. Companies need to recognize that there many more smart people outside of their company.

Intel is trying to lead by example, to some extent, with its Moblin efforts. Intel has turned the "stewardship" over to the Linux Foundation, but it is in no way abandoning it. According to Hohndel, engineers have been added to Moblin and the company would like to see what else the community can do with it. There are lots of things Intel hasn't thought of, "but the community will, and we hope they do".

Hohndel's talk didn't cover too much in the way of new ground—much of what he said has been bandied about before—but he tied the ubiquity of Linux and the foot-dragging of vendors with respect to the community in an interesting way. For a number of years, folks have been talking about ways to get Linux into more devices of various sorts; that battle has been won to a large extent. The next step is to bring the device manufacturers into the community; that battle has only recently started. One senses that Linux and the community will win that one as well.