LinuxWorld: U.S. may be left behind, warns Szulik

SAN FRANCISCO – Portraying his company as part of a global effort to create a larger worldwide software industry, Red Hat Inc. Chief Executive Officer Matthew Szulik opened the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo here in San Francisco on Tuesday with a warning that the U.S. runs the risk of missing out on the move toward open source.

Szulik implied that the U.S.’ attitude toward open source, as witnessed by recent developments in U.S. law, and copyright, education and patent policy could threaten his country’s pre-eminence as a technology supplier. “The United States is increasingly becoming a fast follower,” he said.

“Why is it that I can meet with the president of India, who spent an hour with me talking about he was going to use open source software … to move his educational system to the 21st century, yet I struggle in my town just to get an appointment with the local school committee to introduce them to this thing called … Linux?” Szulik asked.

Szulik, who is also the company’s president and chairman, called for changes to U.S. patent and copyright policy, saying that current policy was “potentially” unconstitutional. “We believe that the current process of not requiring full disclosure of software and source code allows copyright registration to create an unnecessary threat,” he said.

Questions about intellectual property liability and open source have been widely discussed in the industry over the last year, following the launch of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against IBM Corp. by Unix vendor The SCO Group Inc. The tiny Lindon, Utah, company claims that Linux violates its intellectual property and that IBM hurt its Unix business by illegally contributing source code to Linux.

Red Hat sued SCO in connection with its intellectual property claims, and at last year’s conference, Szulik had harsh words for the company. “We’ve been patient. We’ve listened. But when our customers, the whole open-source community (and) our investors are now threatened with these unfounded claims and innuendo and rumor, it’s time to act,” he said last year. Red Hat is seeking a declaratory judgment from the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware that would rule SCO’s claims regarding copyright infringement untrue.

During his keynote Tuesday, Szulik did not comment on the Red Hat lawsuit, but he offered a few words of criticism in obvious reference to SCO.

“One year ago I stood in front of you … and we faced a unique challenge: The industry’s version of the Sopranos were willing to challenge and create unsubstantiated threats of claims against intellectual property as a way to throw broken glass on the highway of progress,” he said.

Since the SCO threat, the Linux community “rallied,” and momentum behind the free operating system increased, he said. “We now start to see the availability of a Linux operating system being able to run on over 1,000 commercial applications, the Linux operating system being certified on over 500 pieces of hardware,” he said.

The night before Szulik’s keynote, Red Hat unveiled a new application server, built with open source contributions from a variety of suppliers including IBM Corp., BEA Systems Inc., Oracle Corp. and the Object Web Consortium.

But Szulik seemed more interested in discussing the broader issues affecting open source software than Red Hat’s products, and his presentation, which did not include a demo, made little reference to Red Hat’s offerings.

The keynote also retained at least a remnant of Linux’s counter-cultural feel. Szulik’s invited customer partner, Orbitz LLC Chief Technology Officer Chris Hjelm, initially failed to make an onstage appearance when announced, which prompted several rounds of applause from the bemused audience. When he did appear on stage, Hjelm jokingly blamed the mix-up on a late bathroom break.