Not long ago, the open source model was regarded with suspicion by mature industrial vendors as a toy for rebellious kids. Today, open source associations and foundations are flourishing with the support of a long list of suppliers, who see the open source model as the key to innovation.
Open development of technology drives innovation
Over the past 20 years, open source advancement of technology has been regarded as a key factor driving innovation. Even companies that previously saw open source as a threat have begun to accept this view — for example, Microsoft, which is now active in a series of open source associations. So far, most open source advancement has focused on software, but even this is changing as communities have begun to gather around open source hardware initiatives. Here are 7 organizations that have successfully promoted and developed open source technology in both hardware and software.
OpenPOWER Foundation
The OpenPOWER Foundation was co-founded by IBM, Google, Mellanox, Tyan, and NVIDIA in 2013. It aims to drive the development of open collaborative hardware in the same spirit as open source software development, which has found fertile ground over the past 20 years.
IBM planted the seeds for the foundation by opening up its Power architecture-based hardware and software technologies and providing licenses for independent hardware products using Power IP. Today, more than 70 members collaborate to provide custom open servers, components, and hardware for Linux-based data centers.
Last April, OpenPOWER unveiled a technology roadmap based on new POWER8 processor servers with data analysis capabilities 50 times faster than the latest x86-based systems. In July, IBM and Google released a firmware stack. Last October witnessed NVIDIA GPUs bringing the ability to accelerate POWER8 systems and the first OpenPOWER reference server from Tyan.
Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation now oversees the largest open source collaborative development effort in history, with more than 180 corporate members and many individual and student members. It sponsors the work of Linux core developers, promotes, protects, and advances the Linux operating system, and coordinates collaborative software development.
Its most successful collaborative projects include the Code Aurora Forum (a consortium serving the mobile wireless industry), MeeGo (a project to build a Linux kernel-based operating system for mobile devices and IVI [In-Vehicle Infotainment]), and the Open Virtualization Alliance (which promotes the adoption of free and open source software virtualization solutions).
Open Virtualization Alliance
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) exists to promote the adoption of free, open source software virtualization solutions such as KVM by providing use cases and supporting the development of interoperable common interfaces and APIs. KVM turns the Linux kernel into a hypervisor.
Today, KVM has become the most common hypervisor used with OpenStack.
OpenStack Foundation
Originally launched as an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) product by NASA and Rackspace in 2010, the OpenStack Foundation has become one of the largest open source project communities. It has more than 200 corporate members, including AT&T, AMD, Avaya, Canonical, Cisco, Dell, and HP.
With a release cycle of approximately 6 months, the foundation’s OpenStack project develops software for controlling or allocating processing, storage, and network resources flowing through a data center through a web-based dashboard, command-line tools, or a RESTful API. To date, the collaborative development supported by the foundation has spawned a series of OpenStack components, including OpenStack Compute (a cloud computing controller, which is a major part of an IaaS system), OpenStack Networking (a system for managing networks and IP addresses), and OpenStack Object Storage (a scalable redundant storage system).
OpenDaylight
As another collaborative project from the Linux Foundation, OpenDaylight is a joint initiative established in April 2013 by industry vendors such as Dell, HP, Oracle, and Avaya. Its mission is to build a community-led, open source, industry-supported framework of code and blueprints for Software-Defined Networking (SDN). The idea is to provide a fully functional SDN platform that can be deployed directly without other components, with vendors providing add-on components and enhancements.
Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is home to nearly 150 top-level projects covering the entire ecosystem from open source enterprise automation software to distributed computing related to Apache Hadoop. These projects distribute enterprise-grade, freely available software products, and the Apache license is designed to make it easier for both commercial and individual users to deploy Apache products.
ASF is a membership-based, non-profit corporation founded in 1999, with merit at its core — to become a member, you must first make active contributions to one or more of the foundation’s collaborative projects.
Open Compute Project
Born as a byproduct of Facebook’s redesign of its Oregon data center, the Open Compute Project aims to develop open source hardware solutions for data centers. OCP consists of low-cost, waste-free servers, modular I/O storage for Open Rack (a rack standard designed for data centers to integrate racks into data center infrastructure), and a relatively “green” data center design solution.
OCP board members include representatives from Facebook, Intel, Goldman Sachs, Rackspace, and Microsoft.
OCP recently announced two optional licenses: an Apache 2.0-like license that allows derivative work, and a more prescriptive license that encourages changes to be contributed back to the original software.
Reprinted with permission: Developer Relations »
