There’s more to open source than Linux

To many people, it seems that open source software movement begins and ends with Linux. Take, for example, the popular news Web site, NewsForge, which has done a good job of covering the entire open source universe. Last week, its owners, SourceForge Inc. (formerly known as VA Software), announced that it was folding NewsForge into its Linux.com site.

Does that imply that everyone who is interested in news about open source software is focused on Linux? You’d think that SourceForge would know better.

As a fan of open source software, but as someone who doesn’t use Linux on my desktop (I use Mac OS X 90% of the time, Solaris 5% and Windows XP 5%), I guess I find the lofty position of Linux atop the entire open source software movement troubling.

There are many, many open source projects other than Linux, folks. And not all open source projects see themselves as locked in a religious life-and-death struggle against Microsoft Windows.

For example, how about the myriad Eclipse projects? Most people that I’ve seen coding with Eclipse are running it on Windows workstations, and many are targeting Windows servers as a runtime for Java apps built on Eclipse. How about OpenOffice? Sure, it’s a way to bring a first-class Office suite to Linux – but it’s also a way to bring a cross-platform Office suite to Windows and the Mac as well.

Mozilla? Lots of people run Firefox on Windows and Mac. Apache? Many of Apache’s projects are centered around Linux, but many of them aren’t. NetBeans? It’s cross-platform. OpenMake runs on Linux, Windows and Solaris. Speaking of which, you can’t tell me that OpenSolaris is part of the Linux agenda.

Many people like using the gcc/gdb tools from the Free Software Foundation precisely because they’re excellent and cross-platform, not just because they’re available for Linux.

Yet, in many open source projects, there is nothing but contempt for anyone who would use an operating system other than Linux, even if the project itself supports other platforms. I remember, not very fondly, posting a message on a project newsgroup about a problem we had running an open-source package on a Windows server. The sole response advised me to run the package on a Linux server instead. Thanks for nothing.

Yes, Linux is arguably the highest profile open source software project. I won’t dispute that. However, the common belief that it’s at the center of the open source universe (as in NewForge’s mission to be “the Online Newspaper for Linux and Open Source”) does credit to nobody.

The open source community should realize that not every supporter of open source software uses Linux, or even cares about Linux. The open source community, also, needs to be less contemptuous of open source projects that don’t focus on Linux, or which may not even run on Linux.

Equally, of course, enterprise IT managers need to realize that Linux is merely one of many open source projects. You can choose to run Linux, or choose not to run Linux. You can also choose to use other open-source platforms and tools, or choose not to. But your support of open source in general, should be distinct from your interest in Linux. Sadly, this is difficult, since so many open source zealots focus on promoting Linux to the exclusion of the movement’s other success stories.

By pretending that Linux is the epitome of the open source movement, the open source community is acting against its own best interest.