Jim Zemlin, 'head janitor of open source,' marks 20 years at Linux Foundation

NAPA, Calif. — Some people love The Linux Foundation. Others hate it. Some folks see the organization as leading open-source projects into the future, while others resent it because of its corporate connections. What everyone agrees on, though, is that by overseeing more than 1,000 open-source projects, the Foundation can’t be ignored. That presence is, in large part, because of executive director Jim Zemlin’s outstanding leadership.

When I first met Zemlin, he was the head of the Free Standards Group (FSG). The FSG’s main project was the Linux Standard Base (LSB) project. The LSB’s goal was to get everyone in the Linux desktop world to agree on standards to ensure compatibility among distributions and their applications. Oh well, some struggles are never-ending. 

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Another group, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), was simultaneously working on standardizing enterprise Linux. The two non-profits had the same goal of making Linux more useful and popular, so they agreed to merge. Zemlin was the natural pick to head this new group, which would be called The Linux Foundation.  

At the time, he told me: “The combination of the two groups really enables the Linux platform and all the members of the Linux Foundation to work really effectively. I clearly understand what the organization’s charter needs to be: We need to provide services that are useful to the community and industry, as well as protect, promote, and continue to standardize the platform.” 

Achievement unlocked. 

While initially focused on Linux, the Foundation’s scope expanded significantly around 2010. Until then, the organization had hosted about a dozen projects related to the Linux operating system. However, as Linux gained dominance in various sectors, including high-performance computing, automotive, embedded systems, mobile devices, and cloud computing, the Linux Foundation started to broaden its horizons.

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Twenty years after he started leading the FSB, at the Linux Foundation Members Summit, Zemlin recalled how the Foundation became a “foundation of foundations”, supporting developers and communities that wanted to leverage open source.

Long before Linux was a twinkle in Linus Torvalds’ eye, Zemlin’s grandfather had been a co-founder of one of the first supercomputer companies, Cray Research. He also recalled how his grandmother founded a non-profit in the 1950s that helped disabled adults get vocational training. His career seemed destined from the start to be in technology non-profits. Zemlin recalled: 

“The Linux Standard Base had goods and starts. I think it did really good work in promoting Linux and getting it to the next level. Red Hat also did its share of consolidating a lot of the enterprise Linux market and standardizing it in a market-driven way. But it was such an amazing start where I was working on this sort of quirky open-source problem, and I thought, ‘Ah, maybe I’ll do this for a couple of years,’ but then I just kind of fell in love with the people in the open-source community. You know, any of you who’ve been in open source long enough know how infectious and enthusiastic the open-source community can be, way beyond what you’re actually working on, and so it was just something I fell in love with.”

Zelim also said: “It’s funny to look back at 2004 when Ubuntu had their first release. Firefox had its first release. Ruby on Rails had their first release. MySpace was used quite a lot. You know, the MySpace reference just makes me feel old. As many of you know, I’m not super hip on social media. If anybody wants a Clubhouse invitation, just let me know.”

It was also the year that Zemlin became Linus Torvalds’s boss. Not, mind you — he said — that Linus pays him much attention.  

More seriously, Zemlin sees Linux and open-source software as having gone through three stages. First, “open-source development was very anti-establishment. It was really a way to emulate existing proprietary software. We’re going to be a free and open alternative to Windows via a free and open alternative to database technology. Open source was seen as this counter to incumbent proprietary software.”

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Then, in the 2010s, “Open source became where big shifts in technology, whether it’s software-defined networking, container technology, cloud computing, or mobile technology, started. Open source was the vehicle for innovation, particularly in AI. During this period, organizations, big tech companies, and little tech companies all realized that this is an amazing resource and that you not only go to market quickly by utilizing open source building blocks, but you can really do a lot of innovation.”

This was when open source became programming’s dominant paradigm. According to a recent Harvard Business School study, Zemlin remarked that it would cost almost $9 trillion — not billion, trillion dollars — to create the work of open source from scratch.

However, Zemlin said we’re now entering a new period. In the 2020s, “there is a lot more scrutiny being applied to open-source technology. It started with regulators worrying about cybersecurity threats. We also saw a huge increase in intellectual property (IP) legal claims, with patent trolls coming out of the woodwork. Now, the Linux Foundation and open-source software, in general, must deal with legal attacks and regulations.” Looking ahead, the Linux Foundation, he said, “needs to be the supporting cast to build the tools to help developers wade through these issues.”

Over the years, the Linux Foundation has also become an events organization. Indeed, Zemlin said, “One thing I remind people of all the time is just hosting a meeting like this, which is one of the largest drivers of the Linux Foundation’s budget.” 

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Conferences such as KubeCon enable developers to get together to get to know each other and create ever stronger and more useful programs. He concluded: “We bring together hundreds of thousands of developers every year. This has been a very important source of innovation and career enhancement for developers who see it as critically important.”

The Linux Foundation’s and Zemlin’s work isn’t done yet. He sees years, even decades, more work ahead to keep open source safe and to empower new generations of developers. 

I wish him all the luck in the world. I honestly don’t know how he does it. Zemlin claims he knows how the Foundation does it — and this effort can be summed up in three words: Helpful, hopeful, and humble. 

“You must be genuinely helpful to developers. We’re the janitors of open source. The Linux Foundation takes care of all the boring but important stuff necessary to support software development so developers can focus on code. This work includes events, project marketing, project infrastructure, finances for projects, training and education, legal assistance, standards, facilitation, open source evangelism, and much, much more.”

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He continued: “The hopeful part is really the optimistic part. When in 2007, people were saying that this would never work. When leaders of huge companies tell everyone that you know all that you’re doing is a cancer or terrible, you have to have a sense of optimism that there are better days ahead. You have to always be thinking, ‘No, we can do it and stick with it.'”

However, Zemlin concluded that the number one trait that’s “important in working in open source is this idea of humility. I work with hundreds of people every day, and none of them work at the Linux Foundation. We must lead through influence, and that really has been the secret for 20 years of working here without going totally insane. If you can check your ego and take criticism, open source actually turns out to be a really fun community to work with.”

In a world where humble leadership is seen as an oxymoron, I’m glad we have a Jim Zemlin who can check his ego. We need more leaders like him.