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Red Hat chief lauds Linux progress - Company Business and Marketing

TORONTO -- Linux may seem complicated but if you break it down into simple parts and keep the source code open, it's not that difficult to work with.

That's one of the points Bob Young, chairman of Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based Red Hat Software, raised in his keynote speech at the Linux Expo recently held here.

"The reason we can send rockets to the moon is not because of their complexity, but because so many people are working on several things," said Young in response to an audience member's concerns that Linux is getting increasingly complicated.

"This is the importance of transparency. We can trust the smart kid down the block to fix things we don't know how to fix."

Young said maintaining transparency is important for the second largest server operating system and the only one with a growing market share.

Linux enthusiasts sometimes get discouraged when they see how much of a share Microsoft's Windows has in the market, said Young. But Red Hat should focus on simplifying technology in order to attract potential users who may be intimidated with the idea of a wired world, he added.

"Our role is not (primarily) to sell technology. We believe that technology should be a shared resource. It should be like our highway systems ... (Our) job is to build technology for the other 5.6 billion people," said Young.

Timothy Ney, managing officer of the Free Software Foundation in Boston, said Red Hat is on the right track.

"We're happy with Red Hat," he said. "They're remaining true -- they're not changing their philosophical notions of free software."

The FSF offers the GNU General Public License (GPL), which aims to give programmers the freedom to distribute copies of free software and to charge for this service if they desire.

The GPL also gives programmers access to source code and lets them change the software or use parts of it in newly-developed free programs, according to the FSF.

Young said open source enfranchises users by making the source code available, therefore, delivering more control over technology, he explained. "Suddenly, we're able to deliver the benefit to the user that Microsoft . . . can't deliver. And that makes us able to improve ... the software industry."

Other keynote speeches included that of Steve Illingworth, senior director at Oracle, who talked about "The power to develop." Mandrake president Jacques Les Marois' keynote dealt with how to move "From open source to open development." The Expo also included a three-day conference and tutorial program.