Interview with Apache Web server pioneer Brian Behlendorf, who now leads open-source development of blockchains at the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Project
but not because they want to use digital currency. http://www.technologyreview.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Brian Behlendorf built his reputation co-founding the Apache Web server, and the interview lands as he applies that playbook to a second infrastructure layer: blockchains for business, run out of the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Project. The project traces directly to the [[a:838047|Open Ledger Project that IBM, JP Morgan, and others launched under Linux Foundation oversight in late 2015]], which Hyperledger absorbed and renamed.
The significance is who is doing the convening: a neutral software foundation rather than any one bank or vendor, in deliberate contrast to the currency-first world represented by Bitcoin Foundation figures like Gavin Andresen and Block.one's Brock Pierce. Two years on, that structure held — the Foundation extended it with Hyperledger Grid, aimed at supply chain apps on distributed ledgers.
First-order effects
- Enterprises evaluating blockchain now have a vendor-neutral, open-source option governed by the Linux Foundation, instead of having to adopt a single bank's or vendor's proprietary ledger.
Second-order effects
- IBM and JP Morgan's early bet gets de-risked: shared governance spreads development cost across members while pulling rivals into a common codebase, pressuring competing consortiums to open up or lose contributors.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, enterprise blockchain splits from the cryptocurrency world entirely — permissioned, foundation-governed ledgers for business processes, with interoperability between rival frameworks (as later pursued between Hyperledger and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance) becoming the next battleground.
The trend: Enterprise blockchain is consolidating around Linux Foundation-style neutral consortia, separating business ledgers from the cryptocurrency ecosystem they grew out of.