Are Penguins Ready to Fly?

This year, Vancouver, British Columbia was the site for LinuxCon North America 2011, where Linux celebrated its 20^th anniversary.  Vancouver is normally known for its rainy and gray weather, but the Linux gods must have been shining on the Linux celebrations because the weather was spectacular!  In the same year that Wind River celebrates its 30 anniversary, it got me thinking about if this was a forecast of things to come.

Turning 20 is a coming of age milestone and that can truly be said of Linux.   I see a well-established ecosystem of upstream open source projects, successful commercial companies based on open source and an increasing number of industries that are adopting Linux.   Business models are maturing and there is a good understanding of the value that commercial vendors bring to creating adoption and making it safe to use Linux.  There seems to increasingly be a process for working across and within groups.  Look at what the Linux Foundation does. It provides an umbrella organization for collaboration projects like the kernel, Meego and Yocto to organize and move things forward and advocate for the Linux community very effectively.  It also provides a physical venue for people to gather and meet face to face and create vision and directions.

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