HP's open letter to the open source community

hp's open letter to the open source community

From Jim Bell, General Manager of HP's Open Source and Linux Operation (OSLO)
on behalf of Carly Fiorina, Chairman, President and CEO, Hewlett-Packard

Re: Eric Raymond's open letter to HP and Carly Fiorina in LinuxToday (10/18/2000):

HP welcomes the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to open source for today and for the future. For years we've been a key player in important open source and Linux projects. We are supporting Linux and open source software through our actions as well as our words.

Eric asked us about our Linux strategy for printers. Early this year HP teamed with VA Linux to create a web site for open source printing projects, hp.sourceforge.net. Available on that site is open source code that supports HP LaserJet printers. HP's contributions include half toning algorithms, PostScript printer description files (PPDs) to access printer features and job formatting, etc. The site also includes HP sponsored open source development projects for Linux printing in general (i.e. LPR, LPRNG, Samba) and an open source project around our all-in-one printer/scanner products at http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/suplist.shtml.

We will continue working with VA Linux and the rest of the community to lead the development of a major step forward: a scaleable printing infrastructure for Linux. This open source infrastructure will cover printing from desktops, servers, web, and Internet appliances and include configuring, deploying, enabling, disabling, and updating printers.

Certainly, there is much more to do. HP is preparing more specifications and more open source code for printers to make available as soon as possible. For future HP printers, both LaserJets and DeskJets, we plan to provide the open source community with full and timely access to the printer specifications, subject to exceptions for certain HP or third party confidential information. Additionally, in the near future HP will release open source code for a Linux driver for HP DeskJet printers, complementing the open source code already available for LaserJet printers.

In Eric's letter, there were also questions about HP-UX. HP believes, and our customers insist, that Linux and HP-UX should continue to coexist. Both are strategic operating systems, each providing distinct benefits. HP-UX scales to 64-way SMP today and will achieve 128-way SMP next year. Customers depend on thousands of enterprise software products on HP-UX; many are not yet fully supported on Linux. Overall, HP-UX provides industry-leading capabilities in high availability, manageability, scalability, partitioning, and backward binary compatibility. HP will continue to invest in HP-UX as well as in Linux to meet the breadth of our customer's needs.

Linux has its own long list of compelling benefits. HP is committed to expanding the applicability and the capabilities of Linux. In 1998, we initiated the open source kernel work for Linux on IA-64; the code is available at http://www.ia64linux.org/. We are working with Linuxcare and the open source community to port Linux to PA-RISC; the code is available at http://www.parisc-linux.org/. In addition, HP is a sponsor of the Open Source Development Lab, which helps the open source community expand the role of Linux in the enterprise.

HP is already porting many of its own enterprise software products to Linux (for example, our MC ServiceGuard and our OpenView agents). We believe this will improve the availability and manageability of Linux in enterprise environments.

Going forward, some of our efforts will be open source, but not all. For example, portions of HP-UX are licensed from third parties, which makes it impossible to open source HP-UX completely. We will continue to identify and make available HP technologies that add to Linux's capabilities. We will continue to be open to suggestions from the open source community. You can provide input by contacting us at oslo@hp.com or get more information at http://www.hp.com/go/linux.

Eric complimented HP on our efforts around Samba. We are very enthusiastic about our work with the Samba community. Through contributed engineering and financial resources HP has enabled significant enhancements to Samba file and print capabilities. We are also creating new open source communities, and opening our own innovations to seed them. For example, HP has released e-speak as a major piece of open source software (licensed under GPL and LGPL) at e-speak.net. E-speak is a key element of HP's strategy for delivering digital services, e-services, over the web. This type of functionality should be open source because it will become a core interoperability element in delivering services over the web. There are other proposed alternatives that are not open source, but HP strongly believes that an open source solution - whether based on work from HP or work from others - should be the preferred solution.

HP is working with numerous open source groups. We are a founding member of the Open Source Development Network and of the GNOME Foundation. We have worked with Collab.net on several projects including co-developing SourceXchange last year. We work with the Free Software Foundation regarding licensing and have chosen not to create our own open source licenses, but instead have used the GPL and LGPL for our significant code releases. We are working with several universities around the world on open source projects, such as our open source tools project with University of Liverpool (hpux.connect.org.uk) and the Linux peripherals/ease-of-use site with University of Aalborg at hp-linux.org.

As stated by our CEO, arly Fiorina, "the open source movement is natural, inevitable and creates huge benefits." These benefits are not yet broadly enough understood or sufficiently appreciated. So HP will continue to talk the talk. And HP will also be walking the walk.

TThe power and the success of the open source movement are based on the shared ideas and efforts of the community, and we welcome your comments and suggestions.

Jim Bell, General Manager
Open Source and Linux Operation (OSLO)
HHewlett-Packard Company
jim_bell@hp.com

http://www.hp.com/go/linux

11/2/2000