Linus Torvalds: A Little Fragmentation is Good
Linux creator Linus Torvalds defended the open source movement against critics who say that the so-called "community of communities" should band together or risk ending up like Unix.
"One of the big strengths of open source is that you have little coupling between these projects," Torvalds said during an Open Source Development Labs-sponsored Enterprise Linux Summit here this week.
"If you try to keep everything at the same level -- especially with communicating the changes -- that takes energy. What I see as a strength of open source is that you have competing projects."
The debate stems from recent comments by Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy for Microsoft in the United Kingdom, who said that Linux will become fragmented in the same way that Unix did a decade ago. Proof enough for McGrath was a move this week by the Free Standards Group, which said it will transition from its current single Linux Standard Base design to a module model.
"[LSB] will be a big challenge for the Linux community -- commercial advantage is what most organizations are looking for," McGrath told ZDNet UK earlier this month. "Think about what happened in the Unix world and the number of derivatives of Unix that now exist."
But Torvalds remained firm on his commitment to the open source community, saying that Linux in particular is now covering more of the ecosystem with smaller projects filling in the landscape.
"It is more fun to compete," Torvalds said. "From a project perspective, if you try to unify too much, you get lazy and you don't worry about who is behind you. So let's not cooperate too much."
