Michael Dolan Dot Com » LSB

Shameless Plug: IBM offers developers, customers access to its Chiphopper tools

md — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:02:20 +0000

The Chiphipper program is an interesting program where IBM gives its ISV partners access to a toolset that allowed them to validate their x86 Linux applications for Linux on POWER and z mainframe platforms. It may seem trivial, but ask any developer and the challenge of moving from one architecture to another without tools can be a pain.

With Chiphopper, the process becomes fairly automated in discovering what needs changed before starting a port and makes it fairly easy to offer an application on multiple platforms. Developers use these tools on their x86 code so you don’t even need access to Power or mainframe hardware to use them. You can even use the tools with open source applications.

Now IBM is offering these tools to any developer or customer that wants to port their x86/Linux application to Linux on Power or System z (mainframes). The IBM team has been collaborating with the Linux Foundation and I think some of the tools overlap with the LF’s LSB application testing tools. If fact, these tools can be used as a step toward LSB certification of your application.

The first set of tools used in the Chiphopper offering comes from the Linux Standard Base (LSB), a project of the Linux Foundation. When using standard interfaces, the developer can have confidence that these interfaces will be stable over time. Developers can focus on adding new functionality to enhance the application instead of having to rewrite over and over for changing interfaces. Developers can use the LSB Application Testkit Manager, located on the Linux Foundation Web site, to check whether the interfaces used by an application are part of an LSB standard.

Information Overload at LinuxWorld

md — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 06:38:35 +0000

So much news at LinuxWorld, so many discussions, and far too much to capture within a few minutes right now. I’ll dump more of my thoughts here later this week. It took a while for me to actually make my way to the show floor and once I did… shock took over. While I suspected LinuxWorld had “matured” meaning less interest in a Linux-specific event, there were a TON of people present. The show was packed. I haven’t seen official attendance numbers, but I’d say today was a healthy turnout. The IBM reception was absolutely packed. There were far too many parties going on to attend them all – I missed Vyatta’s unfortunately. There’s always tomorrow :)

Some things I have to write about soon: SystemTap (see LWN), OpenMoko (cool, but guys, the resolution is way to high), OLPC, IBM announcements, Desktop Linux, ODF, OIN and Google, Ubuntu (multiples here), POWER6 benchmarks, LSB thoughts, and more.

On another interesting note, I met Craig of Craigslist fame today.

Markus Rex Joins the Linux Foundation as “on loan” CTO

md — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 22:14:51 +0000

This was actually news on Tuesday, but still good to communicate. Markus Rex is joining the Linux Foundation to take over as CTO driving standards and technical initiatives. It’s good to see this role being filled as Markus comes on loan from Novell with an extensive Linux background at Suse.

http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/press/2007/07/24/linux-foundation-names-markus-rex-as-chief-technology-officer/

HP’s Martino Says Linux Foundation Will Push Linux Toward Common Ground

md — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:25:42 +0000

Great article with Christine Martino of HP.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=289158&pageNumber=1

When you look at the combination of OSDL and FSG, one asks, “Why did that happen?” Well, because Linux has matured and is in a different place today. It needs a different set of things to take it to the next level, which doesn’t mean that innovation is gone or that freshness is gone. It means you’re building on a foundation now where Linux has gone into the data center. So the ecosystem and the needs of the community have changed.

Linux Standards Base (LSB) Gets an Update and Testing Tools

md — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 21:48:16 +0000

Jim Zemlin seems to be moving things along quite well over at the new Linux Foundation. I like seeing progress and this announcement is clearly an indicator. The new Testkit includes both a Distribution Testkit and an Application Testkit for LSB compliance for LSB 3.0, 3.1, and 3.1U1 compliance. You can download the LSB SDK and the Distribution and Application testkits here.

There are testkit versions available for x86, x64, ppc, Itanium, and S/390 (IBM System z).

InfoWorld article covering the news: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/09/HNlinuxstandardbase_1.html

“All the moving parts are coming together to give the Linux ecosystem its first testing framework that will coordinate development of upstream code to standards and downstream implementations,” Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said in a prepared statement. For any standard to be really effective, it requires a very strong and easy-to-use testing infrastructure, he added.

Linux Foundation Board Members are Officially Announced

md — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:27:20 +0000

http://www.linux-foundation.org/wordpress/?p=336

The declared an aim to attract board members from every corner of the diverse Linux ecosystem, and looking at the list, I’d say the Linux Foundation is off to a great start. Somehow, Microsoft did not earn a board seat with the Novell deal – shocking, I know.

The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced its new board of directors, a diverse group that represents the key stakeholders from every corner of the Linux ecosystem: the Linux kernel community, Linux vendors, distributions and users, as well as individual open source leaders.

Board Members (the URL above has very brief bios if you don’t recognize a name) in alphabetical order by last name:

James Bottomley, SteelEye
Wim Coekaerts, Oracle
Masahiro Date, Fujitsu
Doug Fisher, Intel
Dan Frye, IBM
Tim Golden, Bank of America
Hisashi Hashimoto, Hitachi
Christine Martino, HP
Marc Miller, AMD
Brian Pawlowski, NetApp
Markus Rex, Novell
Tsugikazu Shibata, NEC
Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu
Andrew Updegrove, Gesmer Updegrove LLP
Christy Wyatt, Motorola

Ian Murdock is heading to Sun

md — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:49:43 +0000

I heard about this a couple weeks back, and now I see it’s official: Ian Murdock leaving the Linux Foundation and heading to Sun. What I had heard sounded like a great move for Ian and I wish him the best. It’s hard to tell from his announcement exactly what he’ll be doing, but I’m sure it will be an interesting experience.

Ian’s roots in the history of Linux are well grounded and I’m sure he will work to make both OSs in his field of view thrive on the Sun platforms. Ian can certainly offer insights into making both Sun+Solaris and Sun+Linux a more viable strategy than the one sided strategy I see today. Per my other posts, I think it’s no surprise I feel Sun could definitely use some help in that department. Anyway, congratulations to Ian and if there are areas to collaborate, you know where to find us.

BTW, Ian will remain as chair of the LSB under the Linux Foundation which is certainly good news.