Ask The Linux Foundation's Executive Director Jim Zemlin What You Will 58
In addition to sponsoring the work of Linus Torvalds, The Linux Foundation supports and promotes a wide variety of resources and services for Linux. Their recently released 2014 Linux Jobs Report surveyed more than 1,000 managers and corporations, finding in part, that the demand for "Linux Professionals" was up 70% from last year. Jim Zemlin is the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation and he has agreed to answer any questions that you have about the report and the state of Linux in general. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
Fragmentation (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding Linux kernel...
Is there a fear of some kind of fragmentation after Linus leadership ends ?
I'm not saying Linus will stop leading anytime soon, but this will happen one day for sure.
Maybe not a fear, but concerns, ..., call it.
Re:I want to know (Score:1, Interesting)
I want to know what he thinks of the new SlashDot beta
He thinks it sucks. Everyone thinks it sucks.
Fight against patent trolls & FUD spreaders? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a number of companies that have been attacking Linux with patent claims and FUD to make the OS less attractive to manufacturers and even companies acting as end users. Some even demanded fees or a tax for the usage of Linux to avoid litigation, reaching secret agreements instead of invalidating the patents or working around them. This doesn't benefit Linux at all, leaves it under a bad light and leaves a uncertainty that a company can get sued anytime for using the OS in their products. Why does the Linux Foundation not react to this, or if it does what has been done so far and what will be done in future? Have you considered leading such fight, or rising funds (crowd-funding) to invalidate patents? Can the secret agreements between companies be stopped in any way to not cause more harm to Linux? Like if a company claims that Linux violates their patents push them to know exactly which ones and work around them.
political barriers to functionality (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many things Linux can't do thanks to political barriers, not technical ones. An example is backing up or just playing a copy protected DVD. CSS and region encoding are easily overcome. It's schemes like ARccOS that cause difficulties. Another example is the mess NVidia and AMD/ATI have made of graphics drivers. Theyve pledged to improve, but they've dragged their feet so much one wonders how serious they are. Maybe no legitimate business will ever again dare to pull stunts like Sony's music CDs with the root kit, and Turbo Tax's fooling around with the zero sector of their customers' hard drives, but they aren't yet scared or enlightened enough to stop trying other crap.
Many software and hardware companies feel they can safely ignore libre OSes. Worse, some still view libre as antithetical to standard business practices, and a death sentence for their business if they so much as use it. To them, libre is hippie pinko Communist. The walled gardens of the likes of Microsoft and Apple are philosophically more comfortable. They don't just accidentally create software that cannot be easily ported, they purposely do that.
How do you get businesses and people to play ball with libre software? I want the attitudes that go with intellectual property and copy protection to die, and the very concepts to be so abhorrent that no self-respecting business will ever again think it an ethical and righteous thing to do. Freedom of speech and religion are accepted and enforced. Freedom of knowledge deserves the same.
Consolidation vs. Freedom of Choice (Score:4, Interesting)
The current situation: Distributions galore, a profusion of system initialization versions from simple to incomprehensible, a plethora of desktop metaphors (probably stopping this year and next year from being The Year of the Linux Desktop),