At last week's LinuxWorld Expo, a very different crowd, compared to previous years, gathered at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Sure, the usual gang of pierced and ponytailed geeks and hackers were in attendance, albeit in thinner numbers than at past events. But it was the list of commercial attendees that was perhaps the most telling.
A year or so ago, Linux-based start-ups like Red Hat and VA Linux Systems would have been the darlings of the show. But with the stock of each now trading at a paltry fraction of last year's highs, the luster of Linux IPOs has faded.
Today's corporate suitors come in more traditional flavors, with companies like HP, Sun, Compaq and IBM each proudly professing a "Linux strategy." The Linux community surely appreciates the cash infusion from these large corporations. Still, it's a far cry from the free OS's freewheeling, grass-roots beginnings.
Fortunately, there was still some spirit of fun left at this year's LinuxWorld. One look at Ximian's booth on the expo floor would tell you that. Festooned with bamboo, reeds and stuffed monkeys, the booth more resembled a Disneyland ride than an exhibit at a computer conference.
The visual contrast between a Ximian and an IBM or HP was ironic. Besides appearing to have the most lighthearted bunch at LinuxWorld, this small open-source software vendor might actually represent Linux's best hope for the future.
The Interface Age
Ten years after Linus Torvalds posted his first message to the newsgroup comp.os.minix announcing his new operating system, Linux remains the topic du jour in the computer industry. And yet, in many ways, the free OS is still haunted by its humble beginnings.
In that first posting, Torvalds sheepishly dismissed his creation as "just a hobby." Linux, he explained, "won't be big and professional like GNU."
By "GNU," Torvalds meant Richard Stallman's still-unfinished GNU HURD kernel. Since then, of course, Linux has taken the computing world by storm. And yet, as if cursed by his early apologies, truly mainstream adoption has always eluded Torvalds's OS.
Technical hurdles for the OS kernel aren't the issue. As Torvalds himself frankly stated in his LinuxWorld address, "I don't think the kernel matters anymore. For most applications, the kernel is good enough." Instead, he explained, improving usability should be Job #1.
Torvalds isn't the only one thinking about OS usability. If you look around, you'll find most of today's operating-systems vendors following the same path.
Windows XP, for example, is really only an evolution of the product line that began with Windows NT in 1995. Much of Microsoft's recent efforts have instead focused on integrating applications like instant messaging and Web browsing into the OS, with the stated aim of improving user experience. In fact, the "XP" in Windows XP is said to stand for "experience."
Similarly, while Apple's Mac OS X operating system represents a new beginning for the Macintosh platform, the internals are derived from Unix and from OS technologies Apple purchased from the now-defunct NeXT. More significant is the user interface Apple has built on top of the Unix layer. Indeed, one could argue that it was Apple's expertise at UI design that has allowed the Mac OS to survive thus far.
Of the current leading operating systems, only the "pure" Unix flavors have lagged behind in the usability arena, and Linux is no exception. Ximian wants to change all that.
Desktop Publishing
Ximian is very much the brainchild of Miguel de Icaza, founder and a lead developer of the GNOME project. GNOME is an effort to bring a desktop to Unix operating systems, and to Linux in particular. While operating systems like Windows and the Mac OS have enjoyed a graphical-desktop metaphor for years, the capability has long been missing from Unix.
As GNOME grew into a thriving open source-software project, de Icaza, with fellow developer Nat Friedman, went on to form a software company called Helix Code. The company would later be renamed Ximian, but its mandate remained the same: to bring the usability of Linux and Unix up to par with the top consumer operating systems.
Ximian hasn't rested on its laurels. It's been instrumental in forming the GNOME Foundation, whose aim is to further GNOME development, and foundation members include Sun, HP, Red Hat, IBM and other industry notables. GNOME itself now ships with nearly every Linux distribution and has even become the default graphical interface for both HP's HP-UX and Sun's Solaris.
Today, Ximian still has other fish to fry.
The Office Space
At LinuxWorld, Jon Perr, Ximian's vice president of marketing, was beaming. The company had two new product announcements for the conference, and each was big news. Together, they heralded Ximian's official entry into the desktop applications-software market.
The first revelation was Ximian's Red Carpet Services, a networked system whereby Linux and GNOME users can easily download and install software updates. Red Carpet helps solve what is perhaps the chief problem today's Linux managers face: how to keep up with the constant pace of open source-software development. The most obvious comparison is to Microsoft's Windows Auto-Update feature.
Ximian's other trumpeting was the release of Ximian Desktop, a packaged suite of office-productivity applications. At the heart of the product is GNOME itself. Building on that, the suite includes a number of third-party open-source applications for functions like Web browsing, word processing and spreadsheets.
The flagship component of the suite, however, is a Ximian brainchild: Evolution. Though still beta software, Evolution will eventually become a full-featured personal information-management application. With it, Linux users will be able to manage their contacts, schedules and e-mail. It is, plainly put, a Microsoft Outlook killer.
The similarity between Ximian's strategy and Microsoft's products is probably no coincidence. Before joining the company, cofounder Nat Friedman worked for the Redmond-based software giant, and if the rest of Ximian's strategy can be considered a guide, the competition between the two companies won't stop at desktop applications.
A Singular Vision
In July, Ximian announced its most surprising move yet: the Mono Project, whose purpose is to produce an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .Net development platform.
Translated, that means the Mono developers will be writing free software tools to allow programmers on Linux and other platforms to write and execute code written in C# (pronounced "C sharp"), an advanced programming language, very similar to Java, that Microsoft invented to be an important part of the company's current and future software initiatives.
As usual, the progenitor of the Mono project is Ximian's de Icaza, a charismatic figure who seems to have an ego to match his charm. "It should be pretty great," he quipped at the recent O'Reilly Open Source Convention in San Diego, while discussing some of the Mono project's code. "After all, I'm writing it."
Kidding aside, de Icaza's tone is much more grave when discussing his company's motivation for launching the project. Bluntly stated, ".Net is far too important to be controlled by Microsoft." Mono's aim is nothing short of usurping that control; once complete, C# and its related technologies will be of benefit to Linux as well as Windows.
Shots Over the Bow?
Tough talk for a small, privately held software company out of Boston. But is it just talk, or could Ximian actually deliver on its promise to produce open-source software that competes on the level of commercial applications from vendors like Microsoft? Surprisingly perhaps, the answer is that it just might.
An important point to remember is that, as an open source-software vendor, Ximian can rely on the open-source community at large to help it achieve its goals. And the opposite is also true; what's good for Ximian is ultimately good for open source. "Ximian Desktop will drive the adoption of the Linux desktop," explains Friedman.
Ximian GNOME has no need to compete with offerings from the major Linux vendors like Red Hat, SuSE, and Mandrake, nor even a need to choose a single vendor to partner with. It can work with all of them at once if it wants, or with none of them.
Likewise, Ximian need not crush the free version of GNOME to make its commercially packaged version successful, either. Under the open source-development model, both versions can coexist peacefully, and each can benefit from the efforts of the other. It's this spirit of community that is Ximian's real strength, as is true of any open-source project.
Whether that will be strength enough to go up against Microsoft and the other closed source-software vendors of the world remains to be seen. But, if nothing else, Ximian is succeeding with a business model that caters to the computing community, rather than merely feeds off it. And that, in and of itself, should give Microsoft some food for thought.
