A revolution in the operating system Linux system storms 15 years

The secret of Linux success is not in the source code itself, because Linux is just a Unix-like system, but in the way it is developed, allowing all programmers to participate in development. Open source philosophy. Following this philosophical thinking, the programmers who are involved are also willing to share their own development results with others, so the open source community will continue to expand, and the wave of innovation will be higher than the waves. Obviously, no commercial enterprise can compare with this extraordinary talent of tens of thousands of volunteers. One of the most obvious examples is that almost none of the Microsoft operating systems developed by Bill · a large number of software elites led by Gates are not "scarred"; while Linux is flawed, but compared to Microsoft. The product is obviously much more robust.

In the past 15 years, Linux has evolved from a college student's homework to the most powerful competitor of Windows. It has gradually occupied an important position in the network, enterprise, government and consumer electronics markets, and even in some areas. The most important role. It has also received warm welcome and support from the government, large enterprises and many public organizations, and its development prospects are limitless.

Fanatics of open source databases

Finland seems to be the ideal country to spawn open source geniuses. Although Linus Torvalds's fellow Marten Mickos was not an open source loyal follower from the beginning, in 1995, when his two college students Michael Widenius and David Axmark founded the open source database company MySQL, he also laughed at their "crazy" Moves & rdquo;. However, two years later, Mickos joined MySQL and served as CEO.

Mickos is clearly more business-minded than his two technical genius friends. He changed the practice of selling software to technicians only on the Internet, set up a professional sales force, and moved the company to California.

Today, MySQL's annual revenue has reached more than $40 million, surpassing its competitors Ingres and PostgreSQL. According to Forrester's research, the global open source database market is about $350 million, including license sales, services and technical support; while MySQL has accounted for 60% (about $210 million) in the market, including 4,500 of MySQL's own revenue in 2006. Tens of thousands of dollars, and a $165 million profit generated by many consulting and service companies recommending the installation of MySQL products.

And MySQL is currently supported by large companies like HP, Unisys, Novell and IBM. It is estimated that MySQL has more than 10 million installation bases, including many industry giants such as Yahoo, Alcatel, Suzuki and NASA.

Although the open source database market is still very small compared to the commercial database software market (about $25 billion), Mickos and others believe that the commercial market is being threatened by open source databases.

The dream of free Europe

In 2004, Linux won a war with Microsoft in Munich. In spite of the personal lobbying of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the Munich city government still insisted on replacing the operating system of 14,000 desktop computers.

In 2004, the European Commission spent money on a survey that covered 13 countries in the EU. It turned out that about 80% of municipalities are using some open source software. The official in charge of the investigation said: "Our survey shows that open source software is being widely used, and the more open source products that institutions use, the more open source software will be introduced by that organization. "The main driving force behind open source products in Europe is the government, not the enterprise. The main driving force for the government to adopt open source software is the cost, security, and the subtleties of not being willing to have a close relationship with an American software vendor." mood. These moves forced Microsoft to take a big discount to win over local governments. For example, Microsoft’s discount to the Paris city government was almost 50% off.

Some open source companies in Europe have also taken advantage of this opportunity. Nuxeo, an open source company in Paris, sells content management software to six major departments in France, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Telecommunications.

Spain is the most common country in Europe using open source software, and about 98% of local government agencies use open source software. For example, there are more than 80,000 PCs and 400 servers in the schools in Extremadura, Spain, and 70,000 PCs in the regional government are using Linux and other free software.

The European Commission has now established an open source observation group to promote coordinated action by governments across shared open source products. An important project currently being implemented by the organization is IDabc (providing interoperable European e-government services to public administration, business and citizens). Barbara Held, who is in charge of the project, said: “Two years ago, when we talked to local governments, they all said they didn’t want to deal directly with the open source community. Now, they have begun to have this will. ”

Mobile Linux Starts

The open source movement has now found a new continent, the mobile communications market. Unlike its previous tough start in the PC market, Linux was strongly supported in the mobile market from the start. For example, Motorola has sold 4 million Linux phones in Asia. Motorola also joined forces with NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung and Vodafone to promote open source applications in the mobile space. Such a strong alliance not only threatens Nokia using the Symbian operating system, but also directly threatens Symbian and Microsoft.

Mark Vanden Brink, Chief Platform Architect at Motorola's Mobile Devices Division, said the joint action plan for developing mobile Linux will be in two phases. In the first phase, the pre-platform phase, the mobile operating system itself is mainly developed, and this phase is not open to the public. In the second phase, the post-platform phase, all application development running on this operating system will be involved, and this process will be open to everyone.

VandenBrink explains that openness will help develop services and experiences that meet different markets, networks, timeframes and needs across the globe. He said: “Our sales opportunities may come from different markets at different times. For example, in the US, sales peaks are in the new semester and Christmas, while in China it is around the Spring Festival. & rdquo;

With such a strong alliance of two of the world's top three mobile phone manufacturers (Motorola, Samsung) and the two largest operators (Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo), we have reason Looking forward to the bright future of mobile Linux.

The rise of Asian Linux

Many studies have found that Asia is an ideal soil for the growth of open source software. First, because of cost awareness, and second, there is not much burden of legacy systems, and Asian companies, institutions, and public sector customers are likely to form a huge market. Gartner estimates that by 2010, open source software will account for 20% of the global software market, taking away about $100 billion in revenue from traditional software vendors, and demand from India and China will be the way to achieve this vision. The main driving force. ”

Unlike the grassroots forces that promote open source growth in the West, pushing Linux in China is a top-down government force. Because of concerns about the monopoly of Microsoft's operating system and the possible security threats, the Chinese government has issued a "Government Procurement Regulations" requiring governments at all levels to prioritize open source operating systems and software. The Chinese government also strongly supports the “Asian Linux” jointly developed by China, Japan and South Korea, but this system is almost identical to Red Hat's enterprise server system.

India's Linux market is dominated by international vendors such as Novell SuSE and Red Hat. The Chinese market is mainly dominated by China's native Red Flag Linux. According to CCW Research, Red Flag's share in 2005 was 32.1%; Novell followed closely with 29.5%; third was Red Hat, 19.7%; The fourth is Turbolinux, 9.8%.

In addition to open source software, the growth of open source hardware in Asia is also very impressive. According to IDC, the Linux server market in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) reached $22.3 million in 2005, an increase of 57.1% from $14.2 million in 2004; and the client Linux market grew even faster, from 10.4 million in 2004. The dollar grew to $17.4 million in 2005. IDC expects the Linux server market to grow at an average annual rate of more than 20% over the next five years, from $22.3 million in 2005 to $55.3 million in 2010; desktop Linux will grow at an average annual rate of 26.6% by 2010. Achieve $50.4 million in revenue. This has not been counted in the sales of various embedded Linux systems, such as MP3, mobile phones and other devices.

IDC estimates that the overall size of the Chinese Linux market will be $11.8 million in 2005 and $51 million in 2010, with an average annual growth rate of 34%. China's Linux server market generated $9 million in revenue in 2005 and will achieve $19.9 million in revenue by 2010, which will account for 40% of the overall size.

Blue Giant's Meal

In 1999, IBM opened a Linux R&D center in India, which was a bold move at the time, and it was a surprise for IBM to support open source software. Endorsement. IBM's move also attracted questions from all parties, and more questions from the open source community. They don't think that IBM will share their developments in the community. It's important to know that IBM itself is synonymous with mainframes and minicomputers running proprietary systems and software.

But after that, IBM has become one of the most important roles in the open source community, investing in new open source companies, selling their own open source products or sharing their products with the open source community. This transformation must have nothing to do with altruism.

According to Gartner's report, Linux's market share increased by 35% in 2005, sales revenue reached 7 billion US dollars, and IBM took a large share. IBM said its open source business generated billions of dollars in revenue in 2005, covering its $15 billion in software, $47.4 billion in services, and $24.3 billion in server sales.

IBM itself admits that open source is very helpful for the sale of its hardware and other products, and therefore has a large number of talented programmers to develop and improve software products, the efficiency of which IBM has never had before. Over.

IBM and Sun are half-pushing a little differently, and IBM is completely turning to Linux. After opening a Linux R&D center in India, it invested $4 million to launch the Eclipse open source community to help users, vendors and developers participate in software development projects.

In recent years, IBM has focused its open source efforts on the so-called BIRC countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China, which is clearly For the sake of great economic interests. According to IDC research, the IT market in BRIC countries is expected to increase from $63.8 billion in 2005 to $107.9 billion in 2009.

Of course, IBM is not the only large company that uses open source to make money. At Linux World last year, HP's Linux general manager Martin Fink showed off a series of open source projects from HP. This year, HP won 17 server contracts in the BRIC countries using open source projects, which contributed significantly to the rapid growth of its Integrity server product line.