May 1, 2009
Penguicon
John “Maddog” Hall
Sustainable Computing
40th year in commercial computing. Using unix for 32 years. Using Linux since 1994.
Linux is inevitable. Manager said “what do you mean by that?”
Programmer, systems engineer, product manager, QA, technical marketing, educator, consultant
My C code looks a lot like Fortran I and talks with a Russian accent.
One Laptop Per Child – XO
$100 computer
Nicholas Negroponte showed me this.
I said ‘where’s the Internet’?
That was my problem with the project. Not the goal.
The goal was actually to bring the Internet to the kids. If you could have done that with tin cans and string, then for god’s sake do it.
$100 laptop — ooh, that’s great.
What do you think of when I say the word “Brazil”?
Maddog does a little dance.
Sao PAOLO BRAZIL — second largest city on planet. 19-29 million people.
The Internet is not 500 miles away in Brazil.
80 percent of people in Brazil/South America live in urban areas.
Internet is 50 feet away..but if you can’t reach it.
My African savanna…the Brazilian favela…
If we could bring Internet to poor slums, that would be great.
But you have to bring the Internet to that.
Goals:
sustainable business model — not proprietary software
Digital inclusion – easy to use, affordable
Environmentally friendly — low electric power; small effect on earth; long life
Sustainable business model — creates jobs
*sustainable business model* is most important thing
Maddog–I can’t use free software because there’s no big company behind it; no one I can sue if something goes wrong.
Ever tried to sue Microsoft? License/warranty gives meaningful away rights to sue
Software is no longer a luxury.
If software were to disappear, planes would fall from sky, elevators would stop working.
Mergers — products disappear and software you’ve been using disappears.
Cuba — cannot use any of our software legally due to embargo.
Even if we don’t’ have an embargo, those countries say ‘what if we do’
Brain drain–countries want to have software economy in their country. Right now, students in these countries go elsewhere.
Scale of support — very, very bad problem. When I started in computing and had a question, it was very easy to find someone who knew the answer. Person next door or downstairs would know the answer.
These days when you have a problem, where do you get the support. You call tech support. Phone menu systems.
If you’ve written a explanation for closed source software, how often do you get a detailed workaround in return. It’s not because they don’t want to help you but because they can’t help you.
How many have had a bug in proprietary software? How much did that cost?
* lost time
* lost effort
How many have had to change the way they did business? How much did that cost?
* retraining
* loss of sales
* customer dissatisfaction
software freedom allows business decisions
Use free software–they say, we already use free software, we just pirate it from Microsoft.
Used to be China pirated 96% of software. Now they only pirate 8x%.
U.S. pirates 34% of its software
Inverse relationship between GDP and how much software piracy
The Beginning of the End
Economies of scale made “shrink wrap” software possible.
Companies started up — 100 engineers / 1000 customers / 2000 reporters / 20 engineers
Maddog called up company to report bug and talked to the president…who was also QA/shipping/etc
Volume of bug reporting was acceptable.
Time goes on…
150 engineers, 4.5 million customers
If each one puts in 1 bug report and 1 request for new functionality, 9 million pieces of paper and 60,000/engineer
The person who absolutely needs that bug fix/enhancement cannot get it.
Only going to get worse.
40 years ago software was less complex — support was closer and training was greater.
Now: software and networking are re more complex; training is less; support is further away
Binary-only shrink wrap is child of the 1980s
Ease of use: the real problem of desktops — my mother and father
Why are they a problem?
* they do not want to spend hours installing their software
*they do not want to spend hours fixing viruses
* they do not want to have to upgrade their system every three years
* they don’t want to have to worry about any networking issues
*they just want to email and surf the web*
Loss of Productivity
5 USD lost per day/person — viruses/crashes/worms/spam/software not doing what we want it to do.
*Times 900,000,000 systems – $4.5 billion/day
BC: that’s almost certainly a vast underestimate.
Digital Inclusions — easy to use client/server
*LClient inexpensive — low power — fixed for most customers; no fan or movable disk; local storage through USB thumb-drive or disk
Very expensive system burns up due to failure of $5 fan.
Could stick in thumb drive and do local storage, or attach local devices.
Very, very low power device. These thin clients would be attached to a very powerful local server system.
Regional/Local Server
Why easy to use?
Software installation by systems administer / software updates by SA / viruses treated by SA / SPAM filtering by SA / Backups by SA / Reliability monitored by SA
Users just *use* system
What else does SA do?
Trains users to better use systems.
Creates web sites
does simply programing/consulting
sells computer supplies and peripherals
Attracts additional clients
SA is an Entrepreneur
Leases hardware/software/services
Rotates old equipment out over time
Keeps servers responsive
I keep running into people all the time who say they want to do a job with free software. Great, but lets do something sustainable with that job and make it something that’s your own business.
It took us 60 years to create e the first billion computers — that’s how many there are now…a few hundred million servers.
and we think it will only take 5-6 years for the next billion computers!
Cost of computers dropping like a rock, and utility of the Internet is driving sales of computers.
Not necessarily desktops — smart phones, etc.
Going to be something that’s fairly complex.
But we will still have another 4.3 billion more computers to deliver. People who do not have computers yet.
Without paying attention to power issues….if we try to deliver 200-300watt desktop systems to all those people, @200w each…for next 70million computers .. a hydroelectric plant at 14gw…just to run those…and another hydroelectric plant like that to cool them…and that’s only 70million.
We have to get the power requirements down.
What will drive this — 9 petabytes of data
Computers everyplace
*not just the office/kitchen/bedrooms/tv room
Doing everything — dsl modem/routers
Omnipresent computing
BC: ooh…I need that.
We want computing available all the time. Compute returned off is worse than a boat anchor.
If you do have electricity…it may be expensive.
Off vs. on grid…most of us are on the grid…get electricity from power system.
Off grid, electricity becomes much more expensive.
IRaqw…downtown Baghdad only had 3 hours of electric power for three hours a day…run computers a few hours a day, then power goes off.
If you had a computer that only used 10w, you’d be charging cart battery when electricity was on and then run computer rest of the day on charged batteries.
Inveno and Africa — asterisk in Africa…on very low power computer…solar power and bicycle power. Inveno would ask tribal leaders which they’d prefer, and they’d say bicycle…repairing solar cell expensive and takes a long time.
Small Footprints
Bad chemicals — RoHS compliance
Large boxes and landfills — pay to buy; pay to dispose
Computers that are easy to recycle so we don’t end up with mountains of computer hardware.
Client in detail — less than 10wats –12 volt
always on; multi-function with virtualization; wireless mesh router and backhaul capable – 802.11 wimax
No noise; no fan; no moving disk
long life
Science fiction stories where computer is actually helpful — i Ono for that day
Job is just to display data to you.
Average lifetime of a fan in a boat is about 1 and a half years.
You’re going to have several thin clients.
One or Many
May be only one or many thin clients per household — low wattage/cost makes multiple clients possible
Using the right power in the right place
Digital Inclusion — people want sex
Maddog — even though the people want to have digital inclusion, they want to have sex. THEY WAnt to have something that’s sexy — like rich people have.
smart phone-style smart client — GSM/802.11/bluetooth/USB 1.x/GPS/Accelerometer/8gb flash store
Servers in Detail
Industry standard — lower power
Three sizes — all has with redundant disks
Reutilize parts as serve needs grows
Free software
debian based / virtualization ;/ encrypted file systems / virtual private networks
Networking
“Free” WiFi throughout Brazil
“Fon” or “Beijing” model
Limited “free” bandwidth per user client
Internet everywhere, all the time
Internal network protected by virtualization
I want to make every computer system in effect a wireless router.
Backhauls provided through wired Internet to servers
*reduced latency / increases throughput to fixed clients
Inexpensive
Pay for equipment on a lease basis.
*allows investment in long-service equipment
*start small and expand server as needed
Sustainability: People become dependent
I’ve seen lots of these projects, and they try to do it by using government money
Government money is a way to fail
I do believe that software people should be paid for the software they write.
Way for sustainability is to create a system where people can make money and people value the job that they have.
Show people how they can offer these service to other people, and then facilitating them doing that. That is how it is going to be sustainable.
Not just for emerging nations.
New JErsey — nation’s most populous state / highest density of living
Appalachia / American Indian Reservations / Inner City Chicago
A lot of our SA make so much money right now, it’s difficult to make this model work very well.
Co-operatives
Single person — what can you do
BBest way is to form a cooperative — one of the problems that companies have is dealing with a single person. They want to deal with a company that has longevity. A lot can happen to a single person, but a company tends to go on.
Cooperative — like minded people all working with free software all with different skills who then go out and engage with different customers. These people share legal resources and sales resources. This is the type of thing that gives longevity to a company.
Summary
The Internet should be omnipresent
Computers should be on all the time (but using such a small amount of energy we don’t care)
Information accessibility should be a right , not a privilege.
Emerging economies may be center city — Chicago or wall street or Detroit
Who knows where the next Albert [Einstein] will be?
Why did I present this talk at Penguicon?
With free software, you get to see the people who write the software…they are visible.
Why did I present this talk at Penguicon?
You folks deal with science fiction. Science fiction has an odd way of becoming science fact. You’ve been working toward moving ideas forward.
We should be working to get good software out there so people can lower the cost of computing.
Koolu — www.koolu.com
Linux New Media