Open Source roundup

ZDNet Interactive Week released a flock of Open Source stories this week. Here’s a quick rundown on each one:– Does openness help or hurt? – Is open code a help or a hindrance? That, of course, depends entirely upon who you talk to about that subject.

— Finding profit in partnership – Business and Open Source does indeed mix, as this profile of Open Source companies, including Red Hat, Digital Creations, Lutris Technologies, an CollabNet attests.

— Open Source code: A corporate building block – “If it’s developed n a volunteer basis, it’s free, and support depends on an appeal to an invisible crowd, how can it be any good?” That’s the phrase that’s heard less often around IT departments these days as Linux becomes a mainstay of many server rooms.

— Open options – Linux and Apache are far from the only Open Source success stories. What about OpenNMS, Tomcat, Velocity, and Zope? They’re all covered, briefly, in this column.

— Ulterior motives – “At first glance, the work seems so noble. After late nights and long hours, bleary-eyed programmers take their valuable code and toss it onto the Internet as a gift to the world. The ultimate sacrifice? Not exactly.”