When he was at Novell in the 80s, Craig Burton changed the concept of networking by making Netware hardware-independent. Later, at The Burton Group, he drove a new understanding of networks — as services (file, print, directory, security, management) rather than "pipes & protocols."
Lately he has been turning his attentions to open source. As always, his thinking is highly unique, independent and not part of anybody's orthodoxy. We caught up with him for a brief interview before he moderated a panel in April at Linux Journal's "Linux For Suits" event at Internet World.
— Doc Searls
Linux Journal: What do you think of Steve Ballmer? You tangled with him a lot in the past.
Craig Burton: He's a very straight shooter. You may not agree with him, but at least you know where you stand.
Linux Journal: He had a funny line about Linux a couple weeks ago. He said "it's the first time I've seen Unix on the right platform." But then he followed that up with some challenging statments, saying that open source is good for some things and not for other things, and we think we can innovate faster the way we work —
Craig Burton: — He's so stupid for taking that approach. He could say "Look. We've always done open source. This is nothing new.
Linux Journal: What have they done? Run that down for me.
Craig Burton: What is MAPI? What is NetBios? What is ODSI? All these things that they've done that they basically give away are open source. See, open source is a licensing agreement. This is something you're going to have to get your head around. It comes down to: what is the agreement between us when I use your code?
Linux Journal: And it's not just about source.
Craig Burton: There's a question of source, binaries, licensing and derivative works. This is the matrix that you need to understand, given any technology. Microsoft has reluctantly participated in the open source corner of that matrix, and over the time has moved a lot of technology into the open source quadrant and binary quadrant. And a lot of stuff they haven't. But the only difference between the open source commuity's products and Microsoft's is the amount of core technology that is made available inthe open source half of that matrix. Red Hat has a bunch of stuff that they don't open source. TurboLinux too. So does everybody else. So what?
Linux Journal: Give me some examples.
Craig Burton: Security components that use PKI — Public Key Infrastructure. We're talking about copyrighted, patented stuff.
Linux Journal: You mean RSA.
Craig Burton: Right. The distributions can't open source that stuff.
Linux Journal: Let's go to the big picture here. I watched you change the whole networking conversation back in the 80s. The subject itself changed, from one about wires and protocols to one about services. Are we at a similar cusp at this point in time?
Craig Burton: I think we are. For some reason there's this idea that the Net is a finished thing. In fact it's only beginning. One of its virtues is that it's still wide open.
Linux Journal: So what's the main question we face, then?
Craig Burton: Look at the Net as a bubble. A sphere. It's growing larger and larger, and yet inside ever y point in that sphere is visible to every other one. Nothing is in the way. That's its virtue: it's empty in the middle. The distance between any two points is also zero. Not just because they can see each other, but because nothing interferes with that. There's this great word I found in the Oxford English Dictionary — terraform. It's the creation of a world. That's what we have here: a new world. Now the question is: what are you going to do to cause planetary existence? Because this thing is in outer space. It's not connected to anything else. If you want to live here, you have to bring your own sustaining structures, foods and the rest of it.
Linux Journal:
Craig Burton:
Linux Journal:
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Linux Journal:
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