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Technology news and Jobs 
The Linux distillery Open source software and the future of the world
The Linux distillery Open source software and the future of the world | Open source software and the future of the world |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Wednesday, 06 February 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 If a manufacturer wants to innovate then they must therefore also make a commitment to providing a software stack with their hardware, Torvalds argument runs.In this case, ASUS have been churning out hardware for many years but decided to take control and implement software to run on top of their hardware. It’s at this point, Torvalds argues, that open source software is really useful. Software, he says, is really expensive to produce and it takes years. A hardware company can’t really afford to make such an investment which leaves fundamentally two options. Either the company must continue to be controlled from the outside influences, specifications and market – or they can take a pre-existing software stack that they may legally and technically change to suit their own purposes. Such a software stack is open source. By building on top of open source software manufacturers can provide usable code in a much tighter time frame. And, so long as certain criteria are met (usually to make their own source code available in some form) the vendors have no legal burden which prevents them doing this under most open source licenses. The Eee is but one example; another example is the various satellite navigation systems provided by Tom Tom, Navman, Garmin and others. Although Pocket PC, PDA and mobile phone variants exist, many of these SatNav devices are self-contained units which do not require any other device or facility in order to run; they just work out of the box. The thanks must go to Linux which commonly is used as the underlying operating system for these devices, along with some tweaks to use the unit’s specialised hardware, such as its global position unit. These hardware vendors are therefore saved a huge burden; they can concentrate on their area of expertise – namely global positioning and satellite navigation – without needing to be occupied with the work involved in producing an embedded OS. Even should they have the desire, part of Torvalds argument is that software takes a long time to write: it would be grossly unpalatable to a vendor to delay the release of their gadgetry in order to develop their own built-in OS, not to mention the potential loss of getting the jump on their competition. By exploiting Linux, these companies dramatically shorten the time to market because a tried and tested OS is already available. Additionally, the cost to the end user is reduced because there is neither extensive development time nor the cost of a proprietary OS like Windows Mobile being passed on. Torvalds argument stands to reason, and it offers exciting possibilities about the future of computing. ASUS have had a runaway success with the Eee PC and this is evidenced by the demand exceeding supply and stores running out of stock. What does this mean for the future? CONTINUED
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