Math is Pretty

We just returned from OSBC and our launch of LINA, the software that we have been developing for the past four years. We’re pretty excited about it, but we knew we were going to be the last speakers at OSBC and that everyone would already be pretty burned out from technical talks.

So, instead of ending with one more technical talk, we explained the LINA business case using stick figures and demoed the product on the Mac. Here’s the Open Source world:

There are thousands of open source applications. Tens of thousands depending upon how one counts them. Among them are enterprise applications like JBoss, MySQL, Linux, Apache, SugarCRM, user applications like FireFox, OpenOffice, Inkscape, Scribus, and developer tools like GCC, Subversion, and Vim. Everyday these applications and their cousins grow in functionality, their numbers increase, and they enter more and larger business ecosystems.

Open source development is accelerating, but there’s a problem: With the exception of FireFox, over 95% of users are not using open source applications because they use Windows or Mac OS X.

LINA began several years ago with the realization that no one in our families used open source software. Personally, my mom didn’t use it. Nor my dad. Nor my brother. Nor anyone in my extended family. We know the twenty businesses next door to us well enough that we know if we walked around the entire block, we would be the only business using open source.

And we’re located in the Bay Area. We are at the epicenter of the open source revolution, but no one outside of IT is aware that the revolution has even occurred. Because, in many ways, it hasn’t for them. The hurdles that a user has to jump over to get Open Source working on these platforms are too high and even when one of them does work, it’s seldom natively integrated. The cost savings have been extraordinary for the users that have been able to move to Linux, but the overwhelming number of user are on the other side of the chasm. The world as we looked at it four years ago appeared like this:

Thousands of amazing open source applications, hundreds of millions of Windows and Mac OS X users, and a giant chasm between them. Only by switching to a free UNIX operating system could businesses and users experience the cost savings of open source software. But this is beyond the ability of most businesses and consumers. It is like attempting to jump across the chasm.

So we spent three years coding a bridge: LINA crosses the chasm.

LINA enables Open Source Linux applications to run with native look and feel and native integration on Windows and Mac OS X. LINA brings the massive and growing body of Open Source software to the majority of the world’s computer users now. No need to learn a new operating system. No need to know how to compile. Just download, install, and use.

Open source now. Open source everywhere. Open source for everyone.