Samsung invests $500K in Linux Foundation to battle iOS | Hacker News Reader

Samsung invests $500K in Linux Foundation to battle iOS

appleinsider.com

149 pointsdcesiel48 comments

Is this a trend? First Valve is investing in Linux (by developing their platform for it) and now Samsung.

Whilst there has obviously been commercial investment in the past , I'm assuming the majority of it was for enterprise server stuff or embedded things. This is to build user facing stuff.

Perhaps companies are realizing that the only way to escape the nets of MS/Apple and their walled gardens is to invest in open technology.

Adding to this, I've heard Electronic Arts released two games on Ubuntu Market as well. Anyway, this growing interest targeting general user is overall good for Linux.

They are HTML 5 games that were already in the Chrome store [1]. It ended up being a big story of nothing.

[1] http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/05/new-ea-games-released-in-...

Companies are realizing that Microsoft doesnt have what it takes to maintain a good desktop user experience. They have introduced Metro and UEFI, both aim to reduce the power of the user on their devices. Perhaps Samsung and Valve realized they as suppliers of programs/hardware need more to say in a future computer market.

From Samsung, supporting linux is not exactly a new trend as they are among the funding members of the Linux Mobile foundation and were silver members of the Linux foundation before the discussed story.

This is not so much an investment, but a PR move to remind the world that Samsung continues to be involved in mobile Linux.

Samsung is investing much more substantial amounts of R&D money into Tizen, a Linux-based mobile OS with a HTML5 UI layer (co-developed with Intel). That's their real hedge against Apple and Google.

$500k? When are they going to get serious?

LOL

^this

Where I work, that's almost enough to pay for two person years of work (inclusive of all overheads). In other words, it's pocket lint.

fire those two lawyers and hire a gang of engineers.

If you want a gang for $500K, please step over to the postdoc aisle. You might be able to get 4 or 5.

If you take into account the overheads ;)

Yeah, it doesn't sound like a lot, but in terms of what the Linux Foundation actually does I think it's fairly significant. It is the price that the Linux Foundation has set for a platinum membership. If they needed more money, they could have priced it higher.

Other than Linus, the linux foundation doesn't really pay developers. They are just an advisory and steering board, doing a bit of marketing. Samsung contributes much more directly by actually paying for Tizen OS development.

$500k is almost the entire budget of the FreeBSD Foundation. I don't know what the Linux Foundation spends money on, but the FreeBSD Foundation does great stuff with its money.

And if you happen to have a "paltry" $500k sitting around, feel free to send it in FreeBSD's direction. :-)

That may be enough to fund the FreeBSD or even Linux Foundation's budget, but is it enough to make a difference in competing with iOS?

The kernel is just a small part of the software on a phone, of corse, and likely not the crucial differentiator either. Don't forget that Samsung probably uses Linux in a lot of other products too, e.g. TVs.

> I don't know what the Linux Foundation spends money on

At a minimum, Linus. What would you pay him?

Edit: Interestingly he doesn't appear in the Linux Foundation's 990.

And organizing worldwide/regional conferences and meetings maybe?

From reading http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/bylaws, it seems that the $500k is the annual membership fee, not a single donation.

Edit: As is also mentioned in the update to the article.

Indeed, FTA:

"Platinum membership is $500,000 per year."

"including fellow Platinum members IBM, Oracle, Intel, Fujitsu and Qualcomm Innovation Center"

So Linux Foundation is getting at least 3MM USD per year now.

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

7 platinums * $500k = $3,5MM

15 golds * $100k = $1,5MM

110 silvers * between $5k and $20k = between $550k and $2,2MM

Total = between 5,5MM and 7,2MM

Well, they're more serious than Red Hat (Silver member), SUSE (Gold member) and Google (Gold member though currently doubled via Motorola). How much more serious do you want?

To be fair, that's "serious support of the Linux Foundation", not "serious support of Linux". As I'm sure you're aware, all three of those companies contribute vastly more to the open source community than their mere support of LF.

LF pays for Linus and GregKH, and I'm sure a lot of other good work. It's hardly all of "Linux".

This is my thinking too. $500k would cover about 2-2.5 developers at Apple/MSFT, and they have many many thousands working on their OSs.

This is all about Tizen. Samsung, and its associates and partners in various markets around the world, knows that iOS can be competed with, rapidly, by a Linux-based alternative. It has been proven already with Android, and as we all well know .. there will be next generations.

Tizen could be a next-gen mobile/integrated platform, and it could well be that Samsung are the only ones who have anything to do with it, because there is one thing about a Linux-based approach: it is multi-variate. Tizen will be Samsungs Linux, but HTC might do something similar, and Creative Labs could even dust off Plaszma/ZiiOS and produce a shudder effect through the lower-end markets, too.

The Distro Wars won't be over for a while, I think, once this starts happening.

Edit: I want to add that I think that things like the Sharp/Samsung engineers' experience with AngstromOS and so on are sort of behind this.

They tried and failed before Android too.

These companies don't have what it takes to produce something as polished as Android. And even if they throw money at it and manage to do it somehow, they still do not have what it takes to build a developer community around it or a popular app store, like Google or Apple did.

Is anybody anywhere using the Samsung/Kies App Store for instance? It comes bundled on Galaxy S phones, I guess there are some people using it by mistake.

This effort can be easily underestimated, but even Microsoft is having problems doing it.

They have to get the hardware out there, first and foremost. Zii Labs (Creative Labs Plaszma OS partners) could have easily competed with iOS in its earlier days, if only they'd gotten the hardware out there. They lost because they didn't get things deployed; but factually the technology is there for a real ass-whooping, in the Mobile Linux-vs.-iOS department. They have to manage a good deployment, and with an investment like this it seems that they are gearing up to do so ..

I think this article was more newsworthy when they accidentally quoted it as 500M instead of 500K (thats how I saw it on my Twitter feeds). The update to reflect the correct amount makes the title feel out of place.

The headline and article is troll/hit-bait.

Agreed. And it is interesting that they did not even do simple fact-checking before posting such a headline.

Samsung emerged as one the top vendors and gets revenue in order of billions due to Android. Hence it would be surprising if they don't invest in Linux.

But they still won't refund my unused Windows License even though French law says they have to.

If Samsung worded it "We're donating $500k to support the great work the Linux Foundation does with FOSS" then I might give them a nod. But to say they are investing $500k (a paltry sum) to battle iOS is kind of sad. Why even say that, it sounds so petty.

So your only motivation is to attack Apple? It's not to simply support the legion of open source developers that have been giving you free software for years?

I don't see Samsung coming out and phrasing it like that in the linked article or in its linked Linux Foundation release.

Samsung hasn't said anything, or at least there isn't a press release that I've been able to find. You're taking words from Apple Insider and putting them into Samsung's mouth.

I really doubt Samsung would have worded it this way.

Instead, you're reading commentary from Apple Insider, which is obviously a completely unbiased source, that clearly doesn't believe everything revolves around Apple.

my mistake

What does this investment actually buy them? And what does it go toward?

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs

Corporate membership: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/corporate

I do not know if it is Firefox, NoScript, RequestPolicy or just me but the AppleInsider page looks like the default mobile formatted version of most websites.

Samsung spends $500K in one hour on legal fees. Seems like a low amount to such a great foundation.

Isn't this more like a donation?

For a company the size of Samsung this is not a large amount, but it's certainly not a small amount either.

Articles like this make me feel like I'm back on slashdot sometimes. Am I alone?

500K is embarrassing. probably the samsung corporation is spending more money per year on toilet paper.

It's a membership fee for the top tier of the Linux Foundation, not an investment.

Oh, wow $500K... Most people I know have houses worth more than that. Are Sumsung taking the piss out of Linux here? I get $500k if the entire FreeBSD Foundation budget but you'd think more money means they can pay to hire even more great developers. You don't battle iOS with $500K.

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