Thirteen companies have jointly announced the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), which is termed “the industry's first independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterprise capabilities to Linux”. The four core founders of OSDL — Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, IBM, and NEC — have pledged to contribute significant equipment and funding to the lab over the next several years. Additional contributors and sponsors include Caldera, Dell, Linuxcare, LynuxWorks, Red Hat, SGI, SuSE, TurboLinux, and VA Linux. OSDL will be based near Portland, OR.

Goal is to support existing open source projects

The stated goal of OSDL is to support existing industry projects that use open source licenses and are established according to today's open source development model. The lab is not expected to create new projects, but instead will apply its resources to accelerating existing or new projects being developed or newly proposed by the open source community.

The lab's initial projects will be announced later this year following an open, neutral process of choosing projects in coordination with the open source community. Initial projects are expected to range from tools development to kernel projects that advance the enterprise capabilities of Linux.

Benefits extend to embedded, not just enterprise

“The main focus of this well-funded lab will be on enhancing the state of-the-art of open source Linux software for high-end enterprise applications,” said Inder Singh, chairman of Embedded Linux vendor LynuxWorks. “So why are we participating, and what does it mean for embedded Linux?” continued Singh. “I believe that the lines between embedded and non-embedded systems are blurring, especially at the high end of the embedded Linux space.”

“We hope to see the OSDL address areas such as high availability, kernel hardening and RAS in the context of the enterprise space,” continued Singh. “[LynuxWorks has] been addressing the same issues already, in the embedded space. Through the ODSL, we expect to both contribute as well as take advantage of work done by others in the spirit of the open source model,” added Singh.

Independent Board to Govern Lab

The lab will be governed by an independent board and management structure, and will consist of members from the open source community as well as representatives of sponsor companies. An independent executive director employed by the lab will implement policy, make funding decisions and work with the open source community to select projects.

For further information, visit he OSDL website.

 
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