Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Looking Back at Open Source in 2005

Posted by samzenpus on from the remember-when dept.

bhmit1 writes "BusinessWeek is reporting on the open source progress in 2005. Their conclusion: "in 2005, the software movement finally gained traction in Corporate America and saw a new influx of VC cash." Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?"

34 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. It's about time by jrmcferren · · Score: 5, Funny

    With open source software businesses will be able to save money. Needless to say these cost savings will be passed on to the consumer.

    --
    sudo mod me up
    1. Re:It's about time by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Training costs are a one-off, and exist because people are trained by repetition, and can't deal with something slightly different..
      Training costs will exist wether you convert to opensource or not, when you upgrade your proprietary software there will also be retraining costs associated.

      Support costs may increase temporarily whenever anything new is introduced, and will settle down once people get used to it. This goes for proprietary software and even hardware too.

      External support costs are likely to decrease, since companies will have to compete with each other to provide OSS support, whereas a proprietary vendor pretty much has a monopoly on support of their own products..

      Conversion costs will also occur in any case under oss or proprietary software, when the upgrade cycle occurs every few years..

      Future conversion/upgrade costs are likely to be much lower, since opensource software typically adheres to standards and is easy to replace with other standards compliant software.

      Open source doesn't force you to upgrade, if you have an external support-provider who is willing to continue supporting a 10 year old version of linux you've no reason to replace it unless you WANT to. On the other hand, support vendors for proprietary software can't provide you any fixes without the original vendor's help.

      To give some insight, i provided a few NAT/Email boxes to a few local businesses in 1997.. These boxes run redhat 4.x and typically sat on a pstn dialup when first installed.. These companies pay every month, and i patch the systems against any security flaws if necessary, and update them to handle new types of network connection (dsl etc).. I also add/remove users etc, if requested..
      These boxes just provide a nat gateway, and email services so users behind the gateway can read their mail.. Aside from a couple of hardware failures (no real issue since everything is backed up) nothing has gone wrong with these machines, and they're still patched up and secure.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  2. huh by dajobi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?

    Old way of business = profit. New way of business = ???

    Seriously that doesn't make sense. Surely Red Hat's profitability indicates that they have a handle on the new way of doing business.

    1. Re:huh by bhmit1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're thinking about the business model of Red Hat itself, which is a good one. I was referring to the business model of the large corporations who seem to be saying "open source is great, where do we buy it from?" Support is a great argument to pay someone else, but that choice frequently backfires. Support organizations make their money by hiring cheap labor and postpone resolving the problem until the customer frequently does it themselves, or blames someone else for the problem. I've seen it happen so often, that I don't understand why managers think support provides a valuable benefit for the cost.

      So the better business model for larger organizations would have a stronger IT organization that has enough capacity to understand the applications they are implementing and provide support internally.

      For smaller organizations, I think they are better served by getting a local resource that they can call for problems and that performs a checkup a few times a year just like that organization would do with legal and accounting services.

      And for the record, I don't think we've crossed the threshold yet, but it's interesting to see what the business types are watching.

    2. Re:huh by radarjd · · Score: 3, Interesting
      For smaller organizations, I think they are better served by getting a local resource that they can call for problems and that performs a checkup a few times a year just like that organization would do with legal and accounting services.

      We have not, as you said, reached that point yet. I work for a "smaller" organization, and we have a terrible time finding support for OSS applications, even when we pay for it. No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's terribly frustrating to call someone for support and find out that their knowledge ends about the same time yours does.

      The larger, national, support providers are our only option. Even were there local support providers, I do not necessary agree that would be a per se better solution. We use legal help from all over the country, depending on what we need and who's best for the job. Our accounting is done in house and locally, but many businesses of even small-medium size are using national accounting firms. It's a matter of efficiency and accountability -- those national firms can provide the services we need as cheaply / quickly / effectively as possible. They also are large enough that if there is a problem, they can bring extensive additional resources to bear.

      There's further a generalized business efficiency argument in favor of using a specialized outside source: we should do our business, and hire someone else whose expert at providing the support. There's an overhead associated with having an IT department who can support any and all applications. If the business uses a relatively small number of applications, the benefit of a knowledgeable IT department is overwhealmingly positive. If, however, the business uses a wide variety of applications, it seems better for the IT department and the business that IT support the core, and an outside support group handles the esoteric, but important, 95% of the applications that get used only 5% of the time.

  3. This year... by Mathiasdm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah, this definitely was the year of desktop Linux and the death of *BSD, the year in which I welcome Linus, our new KDE-loving overlord... Imagine a beowulf cluster of KDE-loving Linuses!

    --
    Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
  4. Be happy, not excited by SilverspurG · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Industry estimates show some $400 million was invested in open-source startups in 2005
    All $400 million? That's enough to buy Bill Gates' lunch, maybe, if he's eating light that day.

    The market is still dubious about open source and for good reason. The big players, the ones pushing around 400 billion dollars, still control the legal avenues and we've seen that the legal avenues are being used in many ways to hedge out the OSS players. If $400 million in VC was invested in OSS startups then it really was venture capital in the truest sense of the term.

    I'm happy to see OSS getting a foot in the door but I'm not going to break out the champagne and glasses until we see some real reform on both the business and political fronts.
    --
    fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
    1. Re:Be happy, not excited by rhsanborn · · Score: 4, Funny

      400 million is almost half a billion in non-US terms too...

    2. Re:Be happy, not excited by DrSkwid · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

      10^12

      The original meaning, established in the 15th century, was "a million of a million" (1,000,000^2, hence the name billion), or 10^12 = 1 000 000 000 000. This system, known in French as the échelle longue ("long scale"), was formerly used in the United Kingdom and is used in most countries where English is not the primary language. 10^12 is referred to as a trillion in the "short scale" system .

      10^9

      In the late 17th century a change was made in the way of writing large numbers. Numbers had been separated into groups of six digits, but at this time the modern grouping of three digits came into use. As a result, a minority of Italian and French scientists began using the word "billion" to mean 10^9 (one thousand million, or 1 000 000 000), and correspondingly redefined trillion and higher numbers to mean powers of one thousand rather than one million. This is known in French as the échelle courte ("short scale") and is now officially used by English-speaking countries, as well as Brazil, Puerto Rico, Turkey and Greece.

      --
      There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  5. Support is King by JumpingBull · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IBM learned long ago that ongoing support generates a constant revenue stream.

    That lesson was not lost on Novell, Redhat and I believe Ubuntu is following the same path

    I think that we will see the application services and support companies running up the revenue stream. However, it takes talented people to seed this activity; one with a proven track record. I have been told that a VC looks briefly at the business plan, just to see it is thorough, knowing full well that as soon as the business opens it's doors, that plan will change as the prime movers identify the hot market needs.

    So the quality of the people in the enterprise, and their successes is what gathers the most attention from the VC. It is the people that will make or break the business.

    --
    This is progress?
  6. Companies want someone to yell at! by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?

    The reason why open source vendors who act more like "real" companies do well is because corporate IT absolutely demands that they have someone to complain to when everything goes to hell. Imagine you're the CIO of a 25,000 person company who depends on its IT systems to make money. I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??

    Companies like Red Hat enforce standards in an open source world that really doesn't have very many. They sell RHEL with the promise that you'll get tech support as long as you use their packages and software. That's a compelling argument. One thing I've been impressed with is commercial vendors' ability to call in massive amounts of help when a real emergency occurs. Red Hat, Novell, etc. are capable of that. Even if you have a support agreement with the makers of fooPackage, which happens to be the crucial link in your business process, can they guarantee that they'll work with you as long as it takes to solve a problem. Worse yet, let's say it's a multi-level problem between fooPackage, barPackage and blahPackage. Now you've got "dualing vendors" on your hands all saying "it's not our problem." Not that that doesn't happen in the commercial world, but a commercial OS vendor (Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) is helpful in mediating those fights.

    The Red Hats and the Novells are going to be the ones who finally get a Linux desktop on the market. That's because they'll pick one office suite, tweak the hell out of it, and make it a standard akin to MS Office. Companies want to know that their training dollars aren't going to be wasted. Most users learn one software package to do their jobs, memorize the commands, and will not readily learn anything new. That's what the Linux desktop is up against.

    1. Re:Companies want someone to yell at! by dwandy · · Score: 2
      Worse yet, let's say it's a multi-level problem between fooPackage, barPackage and blahPackage. Now you've got "dualing vendors" on your hands all saying "it's not our problem." Not that that doesn't happen in the commercial world, but a commercial OS vendor (Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) is helpful in mediating those fights.

      I'm not going to say that people don't use this as an argument against F/OSS, but it doesn't hold water. The Big Boys will use it's-not-us-it's-them when two bits don't work together, and they'll use it w/o blinking. The real downside when you're not in OSS land is that while they are arguing over who's going to fix it and who's paying who's bill and what support is covered your system may be down and there's f*all you can do about it. Contrast w/ OSS where if you're unhappy with the support levels and the two competing interests arguing over who's fault it is, you can toss them both and bring in someone to look at the source code... I'm not going to say this is an ideal solution, merely that all things being equal this option exists in OSS and simply doesn't exist if you don't have the source code... If anything, the dualing vendors argument only works against closed-source providers.

      --
      If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
    2. Re:Companies want someone to yell at! by Ironsides · · Score: 4, Informative

      The reason why open source vendors who act more like "real" companies do well is because corporate IT absolutely demands that they have someone to complain to when everything goes to hell. Imagine you're the CIO of a 25,000 person company who depends on its IT systems to make money. I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??

      Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building.

      --
      Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
    3. Re:Companies want someone to yell at! by richlv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      we just recently had a "situation" with a big, well known commercial vendor and their "enterprise" system.

      the application supports only ancient operating system. and an unpatched version of it. nobody knows wether there will be a new version that would support something else.

      then, without a warning, a new beta version is released. nobody knows wether this version will support a newer version of chosen operating system. support is silent.

      public download is available. file, sized 1.5gb and containing "multiplatform" in the name. when finally downloaded, turns out, it contains only a version for a single platform. support does not respond to questions about versions/platforms supported (it is in beta already, remember).

      and this is for a bloody PAYING CUSTOMER.

      oh, installation of the software takes some 7 manual steps, each including a lot of obscure prompts and chances to screw something up. from 8 installations at the education lab _none_ is able to finish on the supported platform, there are no error messages. almost each install stalls at a unique point. the best was a finished installation that was unaccessible for unknown reason. of course, software is closed source, so good luck figuring out what is wrong.

      screw big vendors. we have had similar experience with most of them - and problems are either solved inhouse, or we find ways to avoid them.

      I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up.

      well, from my experience that is the only thing you can trust (of course, by designing systems both from technical and personnel viewpoint very carefuly). unless you can make or break their business, big vendors don't give a shit about your problems even if you are a paying customer.

      now, it is somewhat different with all these linux vendors, i assume - you get a support (and, at least at this state, they are interested in solving problems fast and nice) and if the support is unable/unwilling to help you in required time, you can tap into internal resources or look for help elsewhere. i believe that should be a requirement for any serious information system.

      --
      Rich
    4. Re:Companies want someone to yell at! by ErichTheRed · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I hope that wasn't with a top-tier support contract they could offer you. If it was, then I see why you can't stand big vendors. Some are really bad. HP is a good example...they don't seem to know what products they produce from day to day.

      Believe me, I've been in your shoes trying to get Oracle, BEA, RedHat and HP to play nicely together.

      As a counterpoint, think of this scenario...
      1. CEO reads airline magazine article about open source, tells CIO to get right on it. Also stipulates that only "free" versions of products (i.e. Fedora vs. RHEL) be used. When warned about the insanity factor for this decision, CEO rebuffs CIO and says to get trained staff.
      2. CIO realizes he doesn't have OSS expertise in house, and either trains his existing staff or brings in a crazk squad of experts.
      3. After many fits and starts, System X is running in production and documented.
      4. 20 of the 25 members of the crack squad quit for a better job offer.
      5. A year later, System X fails spectacularly. CEO calls CIO and says the downtime clock is ticking at $1M+ a minute.
      6. Turns out the documentation the crack squad wrote on all their code changes was incomplete or left out the "little hacks" that make the system work.
      7. Call up RedHat. No support for Fedora.
      8. Call up Apache. No support without a contract.
      9. Call up YetAnotherCoolSharedLibrary.h coder in some other country. Sorry, it's free software, can't help you.

      Your choices at that point are to hire consultants and write checks bigger than support contracts would cost, or to find the crack squad members again.

      Your argument's valid because big vendors really do suck, but the alternative could possibly be worse.

    5. Re:Companies want someone to yell at! by bit01 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building.

      For the companies I've worked for I've been the client side coordinator of hundreds of different software support contracts of one sort or another, plus a few hardware support contracts. I've been on the vendor side of a few software support contracts also.

      It's been my consistent real world experience that while hardware support contracts can be worthwhile in mission critical environments, annual software support contracts are an almost complete waste of time and money. Really. They provide no real world guarantees, nothing. I don't care how the contract is written, it's just too easy for the vendor to obey the letter but not the spirit of the contract.

      For software you're much better off getting third party support on an hourly basis. Much cheaper, faster, more efficient and objective, even if you have to fly them in and pay extortionate rates. They also think more laterally and can solve problems with third party solutions more readily.

      ---

      Keep your options open!

  7. Issues with Open Source by Exter-C · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Its a pain that I cannot recommend Linux as an operating system into many of our customers corporate environments simply because the vendor support is still not there. Here is a classic example of issues that I have faced with Linux over the last year. Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported. So we ended up recommending Solaris 10 with Veritas Cluster Server which we knew we could backup using the Legato or Veritas backup software and remain fully supported. The real issue is not that we cant support the product in house but its who does management call when things break which from my experience does not happen too often in a well designed and implemented solution. For linux to really be accepted on a broad scale enterprise offering it must have

    - Fully supported file systems with fully supported backup agents for each system.
    - Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.

    As an open source advocate and someone who believes in the principals of open source things have come a very long way over the last year, but the real linch pins still remain and will remain for some time.

    1. Re:Issues with Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported.

      Excuse me sir, but this is an issue with Legato and Symantec (Veritas), not with Red Hat, Linux or Open Source. Legato and Symantec both claim to support Linux, but obviusly this support leaves a lot to be desired.

      It amuses me that when this (broken third party apps) happens in Windows, user's don't call Redmond but the vendor of the broken app.

      In conclussion, talk with your preferred backup software vendor, and if they are not helpful, look for an open source solution. Maybe Red Hat can give you some hints.

    2. Re:Issues with Open Source by Exter-C · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is with open source from the management view of things. It may not be something that you agree with but when you take a very simplistic view of things.. "it works with Solaris, It works with HPUX, it works with windows.. Linux must be the problem".

      Unfortunatly its all about comparisons of products that people are familure with and know work. Once there are working products in those segments enterprise will have very little to moan about.

    3. Re:Issues with Open Source by spyowl · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.

      What? Likewise, many closed source proprietary software vendors will support their packages on Windows 2000 but not on Windows 2003. So, guess what - many businesses are running a mixture of Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers for this reason alone. When the next version of the Windows server OS comes out, many vendors will hold out their support for it until months and sometimes years later. Your argument makes no sense; and it suffers from the same fault as many other posts with the "ahh, I know what's wrong with open source - it's XYZ" while the case of that XYZ is the same, if not worse, with the proprietary OSes.
  8. Open Source Innovation by obender · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software? All these applications that are open source are in fact stuff we all know how to implement, it's just a matter of time and effort. We have an operating system, a database, an office suite nothing really new, they were bound to get open sourced. It's quite amazing that these type of applications are still making money in their closed source incarnation after all this years.

    But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?

    I do admit that open source projects have features that commercial projects never bothered to implement (image dumps from video files in VideoLan comes to mind) but I struggle to find something completely new.

    1. Re:Open Source Innovation by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 4, Informative
      Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning?




      So nothing very significant, no.



      --
      I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
    2. Re:Open Source Innovation by mysticgoat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software?...

      1. Apache: Open from the beginning; innovative at the core in its method of extensibility
      2. POV-ray: Open from the beginning; innovative from the beginning (one of the first ray tracers and consistently one of the best for single CPU work)
      3. Firefox: completely rebuilt as open source; innovative in its methods of extensibility (consider its XULishness)
      4. Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc: all without doubt innovative languages; all FOSS from day one
      5. Linux: taking a teaching model of Unix and using it as a guide to build a kernel that can actually do real world work? That was innovative. The way code contributions are managed? That is something that has never been done before.
      6. ...

      I grow tired of this exercise and I wonder if it is pointless.

      I suppose one can say that SpaceShip One was not innovative since the Chinese have documented prior art going back hundreds of years. It seems that discussions about innovation in FOSS are pointless right now, because too many of those who are pushing for these discussions are surreptitiously using "innovation" as a label for a particular way of looking at a product, and not as something that is intrinsic to that product.

      If "innovation" is in the eye of the beholder, then it is a useless measure of the quality of any software. It becomes no better than "total cost of ownership", which is also demonstrably a matter of perception rather than a useful objective measure.

    3. Re:Open Source Innovation by OpenServe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software?

      That's an awful broad statement. There is constant innovation in both open and closed source software. In some cases, yes, stagnation of closed software has been a breeding ground for open alternatives.

      All these applications that are open source are in fact stuff we all know how to implement, it's just a matter of time and effort. We have an operating system, a database, an office suite nothing really new, they were bound to get open sourced.

      It begs this question: Why are we trying to compete in the areas where innovation has already dried up? Today, few people are excited about new office suites, regardless of the source. Furthermore, MS already has an unshakable monopoly in yesterday's desktop-centric computing paradigm. But who cares?! The proper catalyst for change is radical innovation away from the status quo. (ie. data-centric, web-enabled, platform-neutral architecture)

      It's quite amazing that these type of applications are still making money in their closed source incarnation after all this years.

      It's not that amazing -- they're simply more polished than the Free alternatives. In the absence of a remarkably better alternative, most people just stick with what they are comfortable with. (and have already paid for) Also, there's an enormous amount of 3rd party business software that relies upon Windows and Office. Like I said, the desktop battle was lost years ago.. you might even say as far back as the death of OS/2. But again, why worry? The desktop is not the future anyhow.

      But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?

      It's already happening! Right now, the largest and most important battle of innovation is between Java and the .NET platform. (In case you somehow haven't noticed, .NET is a replacement for the entire "legacy" Windows platform, from the ground up..) Both Java and .NET are vying for position in the post-desktop era. (data-centric/service-oriented architecture) Open Source from the beginning? Yes, on the Java side. The most relevant, most innovative Java technologies are all Open Source today. Unfortunately, many people have become distracted by alternative technologies that won't matter when the dust settles. The OSS community needs to get behind Java en-masse to stay on the cutting edge and compete effectively with .NET / Vista. Don't get me wrong.. Ruby and Python have their place, but they are accessories to the larger, dominant platforms that will drive the majority of future computing.

  9. Re:Really occurred? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Office suites are a bad idea. MS Office is proof of that; it's the best product in its category, but it still really really sucks.

    I hate comparisons like this. They are so useless. It's like saying the Babylonians were the best mathematicians in their day, but they were really, really stupid. Or the Germans were the best physicists in their day, but they were really, really bad at physics.

    You can gain no insight whatsoever with such a statement.

  10. Re:Really occurred? by linuxphile · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Open-xchange and Hula are both promissing. I would say that the Open-xchange version supported by Novell/SuSE is everybit as good as MS Exchange. Have you tried it?

    --
    http://linuxphile.org A lust for linux.
  11. My Impression by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think open source did very well. We've seen some enhancements to KDE and Gnome, and even VI. I think UNIX as a whole has surpassed all obsticles that we couldn't have foreseen coming and I only hope things will get better. I have converted many over from the dark side to Linux/UNIX operating systems. I am also doing my part by contributing to a few open source programs in my free time. The movement is only growing stronger and will eventually overcome corporations producing closed source software because we as a community do not have to answer to shareholders. We do not have to meet unreasonable deadlines, we are developing for other users and we tend to get it right the first time. I look forward to contributing more code to various open source projects in 2006. If fact, it is one of my New Year resolutions :)

  12. One word: by Dystopian+Rebel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ubuntu.

    --
    Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
  13. Good year for Open Source... by ursabear · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think it was a very good year for Open Source software.

    In 2005, my work projects benefited highly from open source libraries. My testing software would have been very time-consuming to write without open source software. In general, it has saved me quite a bit of time and aggravation.

    In addition, each time I proposed open source as a means of supplying something I needed to use, I didn't need to justify it to the project management types - they understand the power and the value now...

    Perhaps a sea change is occurring that makes it a little more understandable (to corporate types) that the volunteer work of a few benefits the many.

    A big thanks to those who have burned the midnight oil just to provide software for the rest of the world!

    --
    A Passionate Independent Musician
  14. Sign of succes I guess by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Red Hat is now apparently one of the good old boys. Mmmm, well ehm, that is good isn't it? Better then if it would be considered as a bunch of commie hippies. While I like commies and hippies they are usually not that popular in coorperate america.

    Red Hat perhaps shows that you can make money from Opensource software. IBM already knows this. You give the software away for free. Then charge them their first born for support. Business never changes. Buy cheap sell dear. Nothing is cheaper then opensource, and nothing is more expensive then IBM tech support. Well MS support if you think downtime expenses should be charged to support costs.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  15. Re:Old Way? by bhmit1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What the hell does this mean? Are you saying the "new" way of doing business means not achieving profitability?

    It means that corporate america seems to be saying "open source is great, where do we buy it" instead of considering how to adjust their business to better utilize OSS. They seem to be jumping on the latest buzzword or trend without really understanding the value. And the boom of Red Hat seems to be indicating that people are buying OSS rather than buying into the OSS concept. Phrasing it to avoid "shouldn't Red Hat want to make a profit" confusion would have taken a few more brain cells working than I had before the morning sugar rush, sorry.

  16. Re:Really occurred? by sstern · · Score: 3, Informative

    I keep beating the drum about this. There's no reasonable way to do a mail merge *to email* in Oo. It's just a couple of clicks in Word. Evolution is not as good as Outlook. I would love to go Linux on the desktop (and have done so at home), but I cannot see bringing it into the office as the default setup.

    --
    --Steve
  17. Re:Really occurred? by Kjella · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Office suites are a bad idea. MS Office is proof of that; it's the best product in its category, but it still really really sucks."

    I hate comparisons like this. They are so useless. It's like saying the Babylonians were the best mathematicians in their day, but they were really, really stupid.

    Well, not really. It's like saying "Yes, this dual Gefore 7800 GTX 512 SLI overclocked and watercooled is the fastest you can get, but you still can't get photorealistic renders in real-time and that really really sucks."

    In marketing they'd call that an unfulfilled desire, a "market pull" (as opposed to creating a new desire people didn't know they had until they saw your product). Saying "I think it could be done much better than what is the current state of the art" is not useless. The opposite would be "This software already does everything I need in an excellent way." Big difference.

    Then again, it doesn't really help unless someone can find a better way. Customer wishes often go from unrealistic (really obscure features) to egosentric (I want it custom-tailored to fit me, despite that making it worse for all others) to psychic (I expect this program to know what I'm trying to do, even if I'm completely inept at describing that to the program).

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  18. 2005 was a great year for open source by gnuguru · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It saw Microsoft's bloated slothful SBS replaced in it's thousands by swift lean *nix and bsd boxen, which are easy to administer, and easy to update.

    Not one of our clients are going to "upgrade" to another Microsoft server platform. Not one. After years of exploits, lock in, and "useless feature which leads to a format", even the most dedicated Microsoft fans are jaded.

    It saw USB support on all major distro's, plaug in a camera, and be greeted by an import photo wizard.

    Plug in an external drive, and start filling it up. Plug in almost anything USB and just start using it. Thanks kernal gurus, you just made the garden variety user want to use Linux.

    Happy new year to Apache, QMail, Sendmail, Bind, DJBDNS, Xorg, Firefox, and Bram Cohen.

    All the best for the next year!!