The announcement might not generate the excitement that false rumors regarding OSDL’s supposed plan to rewrite the Linux kernel to avoid potential patent problems, but it is a significant development for the open source promotion group.
The Open Technology Business Center, OTBC, will open on February 1 in Beaverton, Oregon, where the OSDL is based, and has been funded by the OSDL itself, the City of Beaverton, and the State of Oregon.
The center is dedicated to help the growth of new open source companies and will offer facilities and services to emerging open source firms. The scheme will see the OSDL offering consulting and advice to OTBC participants, covering areas such as open source business models, and identifying business opportunities.
That could potentially mean access to some of the leading lights in the open source industry. The OSDL is home to Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton, and Samba creator Andrew Tridgell. There will also be the offer of residencies to early-stage companies and innovators.
The creation of the OTBC marks a new step for the OSDL, which was formed in 2000 to focus software and hardware vendors on the development of Linux and other open source projects for enterprise computing.
The non-profit organization’s main interests to date have been the Data Center Linux, Carrier Grade Linux, and Desktop Linux Working Groups that have helped to define technology standards and best practices for these growing areas of Linux adoption. The group also offers testing and other technical support for the Linux development community via its laboratories in the US and Japan.
The announcement of the OTBC puts pay to rumors and erroneous reports that the OSDL was planning to launch an operation to rewrite substantial portions of the Linux stack to circumvent theoretical patent violations, a suggestion that the group previously dismissed as total hogwash.
