Those were the best times. It was the worst time. It was a time of enlightened development. It was a stupid time for open source business. It was the spring of AI hope. It was a winter of security despair.
2024 has seen significant advances in Linux and open source software development. However, we have also witnessed some disturbing developments regarding the open source business, raising concerns about its future.
Let’s start with the bad news.
1. Companies release open source for profit
Many companies abandoned their open source roots and sought money in licenses and trademarks to flourish.
For all practical purposes, all software is built using open source. According to Synopsys’ tally, 96% of all codebases contain open source software. However, in recent years, as companies establish themselves in open source, they can abandon the open source license for their code in favor of semi-proprietary licenses such as the Server Side Public License (SSPL) or Business Source License (BSL) 1.1. It’s done very often. .
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This trend includes companies such as Cockroach Labs, Confluent, MongoDB, Elastic, MariaDB, Redis Labs, and HashiCorp. The list goes on and on and keeps getting bigger.
Still, other companies violate open source licenses by locking down code through delayed open source publishing (DOSP). These companies include GitButler, Sentry, and Snowplow. The name of the game here is the promise that the code will be released under an open source license at some point in the future.
A new anti-open source movement has been launched by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who founded and is CEO of Automattic. In this case, the code is still open source, but they require one of the WordPress hosting companies, WP-Engine, to pay them 8% of their net profits for the use of the WordPress trademark. Rumor has it that he will make similar demands for other WordPress companies. Just last week, it appeared that WordPress was threatening to disable all new and updated third-party WordPress themes and plugins. This is not how open source is supposed to work.
And if ChatGPT generates AI-generated code for your app, who does that code actually belong to?
What I find most frustrating about all these efforts to squeeze profits out of open source is that there is no evidence of changing or restricting the license. In fact, a study by Redmonk analyst Rachel Stevens of several companies that had made such licensing changes found that their growth rates were no different than before the change. Additionally, market capitalization results were mixed, with only MongoDB showing significant growth, while other companies such as HashiCorp saw their valuations decline.
Now, open source has never been a business model, but it is essential for software development. Companies that do not recognize its importance to future endeavors will find themselves unable to advance in tomorrow’s markets.
2. Avoiding critical security vulnerabilities in Linux
On a more positive note, Microsoft developer Andres Freund narrowly avoided a potentially catastrophic security breach after discovering a backdoor in XZ Utils, a widely used Linux data compression utility. Ta. This backdoor has the potential to compromise millions of computers and was inserted by malicious actors who have spent years gaining trust within the open source community. This incident highlighted the advanced threats facing open source projects and the importance of careful code reviews.
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However, this catch highlights the need to spend more time ensuring open source software development is secure. OpenSSF’s open source consumption manifest could serve as a foundation for establishing this approach. Something has to be done. Open source is now essential for all software.
3. Linux continues to dominate as CentOS alternatives gain traction
With Red Hat ending support for CentOS, a number of CentOS alternatives have emerged. In 2024, they will reach adulthood. AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux have emerged as viable alternatives for many businesses that relied on CentOS. These companies have filled the void left by CentOS by providing stable, community-driven enterprise Linux distributions.
SUSE is also doing well thanks to Liberty Linux, a friendly alternative to CentOS. SUSE’s unique Linux family, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), is growing. Liberty, Rocky, and Oracle Linux are also now built on the new Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA) codebase. The goal of this project is to create a true open source enterprise Linux that is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
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This is not to say that Red Hat is at a loss. it’s not. The largest commercial Linux distribution is on a roll. IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat proved to be arguably the most successful acquisition in IBM’s history.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna claimed that Red Hat has doubled in size since the acquisition and posted 14% growth in the last quarter. OpenShift, Red Hat’s Kubernetes distribution, and Ansible DevOps program all grew more than 20% year-over-year, and the core Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution’s business is growing, according to IBM CFO James Kavanaugh. It has grown by double digits.
In fact, when you put it all together, it’s clear that without Red Hat, IBM would have a hard time making a profit.
4. AI and open source go together like bread and butter
Without open source, there would be no AI. It’s that simple. However, the pursuit of profit has led AI companies, with the exception of IBM, which developed the Granite model, to pay lip service to open source rather than release code and models under open source licenses. I like it. Yes, Meta, I’m looking at you with the llama.
That said, open source doesn’t easily fit with AI. If you don’t believe me, just look at the Open Source Initiative (OSI)’s never-ending battle over Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) 1.0. While there may be an “official” open source definition, there is far from consensus on how effective OSAID is.
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Although the details are still being worked out, there is no doubt that AI and open source will continue to work together. The foundation of the AI is built from open source programs such as Hugging Face Transformers, PyTorch, and Tensorflow. Without these programs and others, the AI programs you use every day (like ChatGPT) wouldn’t exist.
5. Real-time Linux has become the mainstream of Linux
It took 20 years, really! — But Real-Time Linux (PREEMPT_RT) is finally in the mainline kernel.
What is a real-time operating system (RTOS)? It is a specialized operating system designed to handle time-critical tasks accurately and reliably. Unlike general-purpose operating systems like Windows or MacOS, RTOSes are designed to respond to events and process data within tight time constraints measured in milliseconds and microseconds.
Also: 20 years later, real-time Linux is built into the kernel – really
Many people think that RTOS is for fast processes. it’s not. An RTOS is not about speed, it’s about reliability. This feature is critical in applications where timing is everything, such as industrial control systems, medical equipment, and aerospace equipment.
This opens up a new field of devices for Linux. There will be many new real-time hardware gadgets running Linux in the future.
Looking to the future, I think these trends will continue, for better or worse. I sincerely hope that everything works out for the best in the end.
