Intel is a pretty major player in the open-source community, and it even has a dedicated page where it hosts dozens of projects that fall under this umbrella. It has a storied history of contributions in this space that benefit not only the firm itself but the developer community in general. However, an Intel executive has now voiced their displeasure at the current state of the company"s open-source investments.
At a recent press conference, Intel"s executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group (DCG), Kevork Kechichian, expressed his frustration at the nature of Intel"s open-source investments. The Register reports that Kechichian believes that Intel"s contributions in this domain should first benefit itself rather than the competition.
Kechichian is quoted as saying:
We have probably the largest footprint on open source out there from an infrastructure standpoint. We need to find a balance where we use that as an advantage to Intel and not let everyone else take it and run with it.
[...] Our intention is never to leave open source. There are lots of people benefiting from the huge investment that Intel put in there. [...] We"re just going to figure out how we can get more out of that [Intel"s open source contributions] versus everyone else using our investments.
Given the relatively charged status of these comments, an Intel spokesperson was quick to issue a clarification noting that Intel is "deeply committed" to the open-source space, but it will be "sharpening" its focus so that its contributions also highlight the unique strengths of Intel.
Regardless, both these statements indicate that Intel is scaling back its open-source ambitions. The writing was already on the wall when we reported back in July that the company is shutting down its Clear Linux OS project. While that distro was primarily optimized for Intel"s hardware, those improvements extended to AMD"s chips too. It"ll be interesting to see how this shift in strategy impacts the open-source community down the line, but it"s clear that Intel has once again found itself at yet another strategic crossroads.