Two topics you couldn’t avoid last week relate to open source.  One is Google’s launch of Chrome, its own Web browser. The other is the news that CERN started up the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

Last week, Google unveiled its new browser with a cartoon book campaign. In the days following the announcement comments focused on Google’s intentions - both stated and unstated and - and the first harsh critiques hit.

To me, the most interesting point is Google’s recognition of open source, not only as the best way of distributing and improving software, but also as a security guarantee for users - it integrates a privacy mode and a blacklist-based blocking feature of phishing and malware sites).  Based on open source Chromium, Google Chrome - available free - includes a new engine for loading interactive JavaScript code, called V8.

“We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path,” Sundar Pichai, VP of Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director commented on Google’s blog. “We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others — and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.”

This new competition, or - co-opetition - can only benefit end users.  According to John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, “Competition often results in innovation of one sort or another - in the browser you can see that this is true in spades this year, with huge JavaScript performance increases, security process advances, and user interface breakthroughs. I’d expect that to continue now that Google has thrown their hat in the ring.”

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At 10:30 a.m. last Wednesday (September 10th, CERN time) a small white ball appeared on the screen, unleashing thunderous applause in CERN’s control center.  The world’s largest particle accelerator - the LHC, fruit of a world-wide scientific collaboration and 25 years of research - delivered its first data.

Wednesday marked the beginning of an enthralling new scientific adventure, aimed at answering crucial questions in the field of particle physics.  Each year, it will produce 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data - the equivalent of a stack of CDs 20 km high!

To help scientists around the world (approximately 7000 physicists) consult and analyze the data, CERN developed the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, called LCG whose size is without precedent.  Comprising more than 10,000 computers all over the world and approximately 70,000 processors, the grid’s purpose is to share the computing power and the storage capacity of hundreds of computer centers in the world to handle the data produced by the LHC.  It functions under a version of Linux called “Scientific Linux” which is compatible with Red Hat at the binary level and whose core was modified by CERN.

This is further proof that open source technologies compete primarily with proprietary solutions, not only in terms of performance, but above all in reliability and security.
These two events should convince the most skeptical that yes, open source has a future.  I’ll go even further - open source IS the future.

Bertrand