SANTA CLARA, CA—August 30, 2000—Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, IBM and NEC Corporation today announced the Open Source Development Lab, the industry's first independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterprise capabilities to Linux*. The four companies plan to provide significant equipment and funding to the lab over the next several years. Additional contributors and sponsors of the lab include Caldera, Dell, Linuxcare, LynuxWorks, Red Hat, SGI, SuSE, TurboLinux and VA Linux.
The lab, currently under formation, will provide open source developers with a centralized enterprise development environment for sharing development ideas and innovations. The lab will be based near Portland, Ore. It is expected to open at the end of the year.
"The Open Source Development Lab will help fulfill a need that individual Linux and open source developers often have—access to high-end enterprise hardware," said Brian Behlendorf, chief technical officer of CollabNet and co-founder of Apache. "It's great that these companies are coming together to help accelerate development for this environment."
"The Open Source Development Lab will demonstrate the power of collaborative development and cooperation with the open source community, solving critical business problems in the internetworked economy," said Eric Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative.
The lab will support existing industry projects that use open source licenses and are established according to today's open source development model. The lab will not create new projects; instead, it will help accelerate existing or new projects developed by the open source community. The initial lab projects will be announced later in the year after an open, neutral process for choosing projects is coordinated with the open source community. Initial projects are expected to range from tools development to kernel projects that advance the enterprise capabilities of Linux. More information about the lab and its initial projects can be found at www.osdlab.org.
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.
Hewlett-Packard Company—a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services—is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to individuals and businesses through simple appliances, useful e-services and an Internet infrastructure that's always on.
HP has 86,000 employees worldwide and had total revenue from continuing operations of $42.4 billion in its 1999 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.
More information on HP and Linux is available at http://www.hp.com/go/linux.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom.
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM creates, develops and manufactures the industry's most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics. The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM home page at http://www.ibm.com.
NEC Corporation (NASDAQ: NIPNY) (FTSE: 6701q.l) is a leading provider of Internet solutions, dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of its customers in the key computer, network and electron device fields through its three market-focused in-house companies: NEC Solutions, NEC Networks and NEC Electron Devices. NEC Corporation, with its in-house companies, employs more than 150,000 people worldwide and saw net sales of 4,991 billion Yen (approx. US$48 billion) in fiscal year 1999-2000. For further information, please visit the NEC home page at http://www.nec-global.com.
*Third party marks and brands are property of their respective holders.
*IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.
*Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
*UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
LynuxWorks™, Inc., formerly Lynx Real-Time Systems, is a developer and supplier of Linux and real-time operating system software for reliable and high-performance embedded computing applications. LynuxWorks supports industry standards in communications, avionics, automotive, office automation and process control systems worldwide, enabling customers to leverage their investments in software and education. LynuxWorks products include the open-source BlueCat™ Linux and the scalable, Linux- compatible LynxOS® real-time operating system; software frameworks for high-availability systems; development tools and technical support worldwide.
Caldera: "The effort of these companies—especially Intel—validates the Open Source development model," said Darren Davis, vice president of development for Caldera Systems, Inc. "We're behind any efforts like these that advance Open Source."
Dell: "As the number two provider of Linux-based servers in the world, Dell is further demonstrating support for the open source community through its sponsorship of the Open Source Development Lab," said Michael Lambert, senior vice president, Dell Enterprise Systems Group. "We believe the lab will accelerate the commercial adoption of Linux. The real winners here will be customers that are building out their Internet infrastructures based on open, standard solutions."
HP: "We see the Open Source Development Lab as expanding industry cooperation to advance Linux and open source software. Developers now have a testbed for solutions that power the 'always-on' Internet infrastructure," said Jim Bell, general manager, Hewlett Packard's Open Source and Linux Operation.
INTEL: "The Open Source Development Lab will provide a superb structure for developing and deploying enterprise-targeted Linux capabilities," said Will Swope, vice president, Intel Architecture Group, and general manager, Intel Architecture Solutions Enabling Group. "It's a new paradigm for supporting organizations as we create and evolve a world class enterprise lab available to many."
IBM: "With the creation of the Open Source Development Lab, we will offer developers a physical location to test and support projects that help advance collaboration for the virtual open source community," said Ross Mauri, vice president, UNIX* Software for IBM. "Linux development activity is steadily growing. The lab will put resources into developers' hands to help them transform their projects into solutions suitable for high-end enterprise deployment."
Linuxcare: "Linuxcare brings its unique experience to the OSDL," said David L. Sifry, CTO and co-founder of Linuxcare. "Linuxcare is a natural fit as the OSDL's goal of validating open source in the enterprise is completely aligned with Linuxcare's own business model."
LynuxWorks: "LynuxWorks, Inc., a leader in embedded Linux with a track record and focus on mission critical embedded and real-time systems for the telecommunications and aerospace industries, is an enthusiastic participant in the OSDL project," said Dr. Inder Singh, CEO and chairman, LynuxWorks. "We are very interested in seeing open source Linux technology advance in areas such as high availability, kernel hardening and RAS, which we have been addressing in the embedded space."
RedHat: "The Open Source Development Lab is yet another example of Intel's commitment to work with industry leaders to promote the growth of open source software. As the leader in Linux and GNU tools development projects, Red Hat values the opportunity to use this virtual resource as a way to better collaborate with other open source developers when we all need to work on a common hardware system," said Michael Tiemann, Red Hat chief technical officer. "Today, Red Hat developers do much of their work behind corporate firewalls. The Open Source Development Lab will enable us to participate on projects that require access to shared hardware resources."
SGI: "We are extremely pleased to demonstrate our support of this laboratory for the Open Source community to further develop, test and benchmark Linux and other high-end Open Source software," said Jan Silverman, vice president, Advanced Systems Marketing at SGI. "SGI recognizes the growing importance of Linux and continues to show its commitment by providing value-added software ranging from the core operating system to tools and applications."
SuSE: "The OSDL brings high end hardware and the best of the Open Source developers together. This will be a major step towards getting Linux data center ready for enterprise customers," says Dirk Hohndel, CTO of SuSE Linux AG. "I am convinced that not only the option to develop and test on the best hardware out there is crucial to Linux' success, but that also the ability to do benchmarking and sizing in reproducible environments will be an important piece to get Linux into more and more enterprises."
VA Linux: "VA Linux Systems recently launched the Open Source Development Network (OSDN)—featuring popular web sites such as SourceForge—to help developers create better software, faster," said Brian Biles, vice president of business development, VA Linux Systems. "Through the Open Source Development Lab, additional resources will be made available to qualified open source projects, increasing their level of testing and scalability. This is good for the Open Source community and users everywhere."
LynuxWorks and BlueCat are trademarks and LynxOS and Lynx Real-Time Systems are registered trademarks of LynuxWorks, Inc. Other brand or product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective holders.
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