What will 2006 hold for open source?

As December draws to a close, it’s customary for all of us columnists to regale our readers with our predictions for the New Year. And who am I to break with tradition? I could take the easy route and tell you that open source and standards-based technologies are here to stay. But if you’re reading this I reckon you already know that. Continued commingling of free software and commercial enterprise throughout 2006 is pretty much a given.

Unfortunately, that means open source as marketing will be on the rise as well. As more commercial software vendors open their code in a bid to gain attention, it’s going to get harder and harder to spot a true open source project among the pretenders.

Those who want open source to remain foremost a social movement, rather than a business strategy, will rally Version 3.0 of the GNU GPL (General Public License), development of which will continue throughout 2006. Overall, however, I predict that GPL 3.0, with its emphasis on patent issues and international licensing, will have less dire an impact on the enterprise than some pundits have suggested. Debate over some of the more contentious clauses in the new license could lead to schisms between certain factions of the open source community; but then, that’s nothing new.

Speaking of opening rifts, however, I predict that 2006 will see the beginnings of a concerted effort to widen the Linux marketplace. Top IT vendors like HP and IBM have so far tended to form partnerships with just the two largest Linux vendors — Novell and Red Hat — leaving alternative players like Linspire, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and Xandros in the cold. Don’t expect the second tier to take the situation sitting down for much longer. Next year you’ll start to hear the first serious rumblings (some of which will come from customers) about breaking the Novell/Red Hat duopoly.

What else do Linspire, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and Xandros have in common? They’re all Linux distributions that put heavy emphasis on the desktop user experience, with the goal of transitioning end-users away from Windows. So does that mean 2006 will be the long-fabled “year of desktop Linux”?

Unfortunately, I doubt it. What will happen, however, is that a growing number of organizations will begin using open source productivity applications in place of their commercial equivalents, particularly in the public sector. OpenOffice.org will lead the charge.

This in turn will lead Microsoft to invest heavily in promoting its own, alternative XML document formats, muddying the waters but otherwise failing to impress anybody. I’m betting that OpenDocument support for Microsoft Office will quietly appear from a small ISV sometime next year, with Microsoft’s tacit approval but not its official support.

Of course, none of this is to say that Linux won’t have a huge impact on the client side next year. The PC desktop is just the wrong place to look.

My biggest prediction for 2006 is that it will be the year that Linux explodes into embedded systems for the consumer market, including mobile phones, PDAs, cameras, media players, and other gadgets. We’re already beginning to see some of this from companies including Nokia, Palm, Panasonic, and Sharp. Next year, even more companies will realize how Linux under the hood can both lower costs and accelerate times to market in this competitive industry, although most customers will be none the wiser.

And if you think Bill Gates loses sleep over the thought of Linux replacing the Windows desktop, just wait until you see how much energy Microsoft will put into recapturing the device market.

You heard it here first.