Intel Open Source Technology Director: Open Source to promote innovation

Intel Open Source Technology director Dirk Hohndel (Dirk), who served as chief technology officer of SuSE Company and vice president of XFREE86 Project company, has been an active open source technology developer and contributor since the advent of Linux. He is particularly fond of China, therefore, both in work and life, has established deep feelings with China: 2006, on behalf of Intel to participate in the first "open source China, open source World" Summit Forum, has been encouraging the Intel Open Source Technology center of the Chinese team to vigorously support China's open source community building; China Open source software Promotion Alliance "think-tank experts, and enthusiastic about the Chinese open source industry, Dirk also adopted a pair called auspicious and Ruyi China's small twin sisters.

This time, while Dirk to Beijing to attend the seventh session of the "Open source China, open source World" Summit Forum, the "programmer" gave him an interview, asked him to share the insights of open source.

Opportunities and challenges for open source

Programmer: In your opinion, what are the differences between open source and closed sources? What is the most prominent?

Dirk: We firmly believe that both open source and closed sources, can create valuable, practical software.

The biggest difference between open source and closed sources is that the methodology used in software development is different, so that the user's worldview of software use varies: a user completely trusts the software running on their system, believing that it has no backdoor, no Trojans, no spyware. Another user is willing to deal with the problems they encounter and want to participate in the development of relevant software.

"Programmer": Some people think that once the open source is commercial, but also need to buy a license, so it said "open source waves of fame." How do you see the problem?

Dirk: Indeed, when using the commercial version of open source software in a business environment (such as red Hat Enterprise Linux), businesses need to pay to buy technical support and maintenance. But Open-source software itself is open and free for anyone and any company, for example, even in a business environment, Debian Linux or CentOS are free to use. Therefore, I think open source is a veritable.

Programmer: What opportunities and challenges are open source facing at present?

Dirk: In this era of cloud computing we are in, the open issue itself has changed dramatically: the openness of the software that runs on our computers to the openness of the data we entrust to our cloud service providers. Thus, openness is now not just a matter of software, but of trust and domination in the ecosystem as well as in ecosystems. These problems are beyond the scope of software licenses and are not addressed by the Open-source software itself.

Dirk Hohndel is a veteran in the Open source field.

Intel fully supports Open source

"Programmer": What is Intel's Open source philosophy? What can open source bring to Intel?

Dirk: For a long time, Intel has been a major supporter and contributor to open source software. Intel's Open source team is active in a number of important projects, such as the Linux kernel, Tizen and yocto (embedded Linux System custom Environment Open source project). We believe that open source is a way to accelerate innovation and is very helpful to Intel's innovation in cutting-edge technology.

All of Intel's new technologies and hardware provide support for open source software and shut-up software, and sometimes we give priority to open source software support. For example, when Intel introduces VT (virtualization Marvell) hardware-assisted virtualization technology, it first provides software support in the Open source software project Xen.

Programmer: What are the main areas of open source projects that Intel initiates and participates in? What results have been achieved?

Dirk: As I mentioned earlier, Intel has been extensively involved in the development of open source projects over the past more than 10 years: from the system kernel to tools, libraries, frameworks, and user interface components, covering a fairly comprehensive range. At the same time, Intel has also advocated a number of important projects, such as Tizen, Yocto and so on. We will continue to evaluate new ideas and new projects covering the infrastructure, mobile computing and client application development related to data center and High-performance computing.

A major milestone in the open source for Intel is that Intel became the first contributor in the newly released Linux kernel version 3.4 (based on the number of patches contributed during the two release release, and Intel has been ranked second for some time, and this is the second time Intel has returned to the first place).

"Programmer": Next, what is Intel going to do with open source?

Dirk: I'm sorry, I can't announce our future projects in advance, but we can be sure that we will continue to be actively involved in all aspects of open source.

Hope more Chinese enterprises and individuals devote themselves to open source

"Programmer": in China, the open source community is not as prosperous as in other countries. In your opinion, what is the cause of this? What experience in other countries is worth studying in China's open source world?

Dirk: I think China is one of the biggest users of open source software. Compared with other countries, although there are not many open source projects originating from China, it should not be overlooked that China is very motivated to use open source, and more and more Chinese enterprises and individuals are involved in the development of open source projects.

Looking to the future, I hope that more Chinese companies will be actively engaged in the "existing" open source projects, and can play a leading role in the open source community. One of the biggest attractions of open source is that we can say "This is our source code" or "This is our new project", but in fact, actively contribute to the "existing" open source projects, but often contains greater value.

"Programmer": How do you see the trend of open source?

Dirk: Predictably, the use of open source software will grow rapidly and will be one of the pillars of growth in IT industry, consumer electronics and related areas.