Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
California Digital has purchased assets related to VA Software Corporation’s former Linux server business. Previously known as VA Linux Systems, Inc., VA exited the hardware business in August 2001 to focus on its SourceForgeTM collaborative software development platform. Editor’s note: VA Software owns NewsForge.
California Digital offers the popular 1220, 2230 and 2241 ultradense Linux servers as originally designed by VA Linux, as well as newer versions incorporating the latest technologies.
California Digital’s servers include “Total Linux Coverage”TM – a support package covering both hardware and Linux software. California Digital also provides Linux-based professional services focused on performance, porting, driver and kernel development and configuration, as well as specialized parallel code development.
“California Digital provides comprehensive Linux solutions encompassing hardware, software, and consulting,” explains B.J. Arun, California Digital’s CEO. “This enables enterprise customers to implement the cost-effective yet robust solutions that Linux-based infrastructure delivers.”
California Digital also offers extended warranties, spare parts, and limited technical support to VA’s installed server base.
“We’re pleased that California Digital is now providing systems, services and support for our former server customer base,” said John Villadsen, Vice President of Operations, VA Software.
About California Digital
California Digital provides enterprise customers with Linux solutions including ultradense rack-optimized servers, software support, and Linux-based consulting and development. Information about California Digital, is available at http://www.californiadigital.com or by calling 1-888-LINUX-4-U or email sales@californiadigital.com.
Author: JT Smith
“We hope to set a good example with this,” explains Jan-Oliver Wagner,
Managing Director of Intevation GmbH, the company which contributed
the award. “There are countless activities within universities in
Germany regarding Free Software. The work done and the often exceptional
engagement has to be honored appropriately.”
The Intevation-Award for Free Software is one of 25 awards
given out each year at the University of Osnabrück
for excellent student work. The monetary part of the award is 750 Euro.
Information about the Awards at the University of Osnabrück in German:
www.uos.de/career_service/foerderpreise/update/stifter_liste.cfm
Elmar Ludwig is autor of serveral Free Software applications,
which he has maintained for years. GToolKit is an Objective-C binding for
the well-known Gimp Tool Kit (GTK+).
www.informatik.uos.de/elmar/projects/gtoolkit/
Andreas Beyer developed “StatistX” while working on his doctoral
degree in Environmental Systems Research. StatistX is a graphical user
interface to a command line statistics programm and uses GToolKit.
www.usf.uos.de/~abeyer/private/StatistX/index.html
Intevation GmbH, located in Osnabrück, Germany is a high level
Free Software consulting company. It empowers its clients
to utilise the advantages of free software culture and usable IT-solutions
offering management and strategic consulting throughout Europe.
Additional business units are Geographic Information Systems
and usability design.
www.intevation.net
Author: JT Smith
Four years ago, Paris held its first Linux Expo and the hype then had Linux equaling or surpassing Windows on the desktop within five years. This year, the predictions have changed just a wee bit and few believe those predictions, but many say they see, at least in Europe, that Linux is gaining significant ground, especially in the business world.
At the 2000 Linux Expo, Jacques Le Marois, co-founder of French Linux company MandrakeSoft, made the prediction that Linux would equal Windows on the desktop within five years. “Linux currently is not very well fitted for the
desktop side, because you don’t have a lot of games. And there are not a lot of office applications. So I don’t recommend it for business use. But it’s evolving
very quickly. In order for Linux to be equal to or ahead of Windows on the desktop, we just need to go faster and faster. With the big projects like KDE, each new version is more and more useful and players like us and Caldera and Red Hat bring more and more
user friendliness to Linux.”
But at the LinuxWorld Expo this week, Philippe Ambon, MandrakeSoft’s services marketing project manager, said because Linux personal finance packages like GNUCash are available and can import files from Quicken, that cancels one of the one of the main drawbacks to Windows users switching to Linux. At least as importantly, a new Linux-based, business accounting package, EUROLogiciel, based on French accountancy
law, is coming to market, indicating that Linux is mature enough to be seriously considered by a range of businesses.
But critics say it’s the lack the Linux desktop applications, such as office suites to compete with Microsoft Office, that is holding the OS back from universal acceptance.
“I’ve been using StarOffice 5.1 and more recently 5.2 for several years and there are a few things lacking,” Ambon says. “They’re very minor, but they’re lacking.” Ambon says StarOffice’s spreadsheet functions need work, but the imminent release of StarOffice 6 will resolve that situation.
Daniel Thebault, general manager of Aliacom, a Linux consultancy, agrees that Linux is making headway in Europe. “The market is developing. Two or three years from now it will be way up, but still not equal to or surpassing Windows.” He bases his analysis
on observing that the number of people making apparently serious “contact at our stand today, the first day of the expo, surpassed the number for all of last year’s three-day event.”
And, like Ambon, Thebault believes “there needs to be improvements to the desktop applications to make them more competitive with Word and Excel. Star Office’s
functionality just isn’t as good.”
According to Alexandre Lefebvre, a leader of the ObjectWeb consortium of Open Source Java application developers, Linux is gaining ground in Europe on servers, as it is in other parts of the world, rather than on desktops. “Linux is taking over the server
market before the desktop market,” Lefebvre says. “One reason for this
is you’ve got a lot of middleware on Linux and it’s still true today that Linux is not as easy to install as Windows and the office suites on Linux are not up to what Microsoft Office is. And finally there’s the problem that changing habits of using a particular
word processor is much more difficult than switching from a XYZ Web server to Apache.”
For example, Lefebvre said, within France Telecom, there were 2,000 machines on OS/2 recently moved to Linux and Samba for use as file servers for a savings of about UDS $1 million per year in licenses “and for a better service as well.” But on France Telecom’s desktop, there’s been no switch from Windows.
“But where the desktop is concerned,” he said, “the StarOffice suite is gaining in compatibility with Microsoft Office. And it’s gaining in reliability. But
the publicly available version 5.2 isn’t very good in converting to Microsoft Office. But the OpenOffice (the Open Source version of StarOffice) is almost perfect in its conversions.”
Another key issue, he says, is the perceived lack of support. “People are of a mindset that they’ve always paid big bucks for licensing, which supposedly included
support. They’re afraid that a free license means they get no support. They don’t know or understand that they can get top-grade support for free from thousands
of Linux experts on the various mailing lists and newsgroups. They can even pay specialist companies for support if they want.
“Of course, the same guys providing the support via the company from whom they buy those support contracts are some of the very same people who supply free support
on the mailing lists and newsgroups, but that’s neither here nor there. The bottom line is the support for Linux products is every bit as good as that provided for Windows products and far superior in most cases.”
Lefebvre concurred with the others that “the only thing holding Linux back from replacing Windows is actually not Windows or Linux, it’s the office suite. All the other
applications are just the same. But it’s getting there and within a couple of years it will be there, and the only thing then that will be missing will be for Microsoft Office to make available plugins to allow it to import the Star Office documents you receive from
just about everyone.
“I mean you’ve got everything else everyone wants,” he concluded. “You’ve got mail, Opera Web browser is fine. But when it comes to the office suite, that’s Windows territory. So things are happening faster on the server side because it’s not end-users, it’s technical users and techies who don’t have problems using Linux. And Linux is more stable, most people don’t care if their desktop fails, but they care if their
main database behind their e-commerce site fails.”
And finally, perhaps the key indicator of the huge adoption of Linux throughout Europe is the increasing numbers of European governments looking into requiring Open Source software for their agencies. Among the European governments considering greater use of Open Source software are Germany and the United Kingdom.
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Open source products numbered by category:
2. Best Enterprise Database
MySQL mysql.com
PostgreSQL postgresql.org
3. Best Java Application
eForum/eContent jcorporate.com
Jive Forums coolservlets.com
Lutris Enhydra 3.5 enhydra.org
4. Best Java Application Server
JBoss jboss.org
6. Best Java Component
eContent jcorporate.com
9. Best Java IDE Environment
Netbeans.org netbeans.org
11. Best Java Messaging Tool
Open3 E-Business Messaging System open3.org
12. Best Java Modeling Tool
ArgoUML argouml.tigris.org
14. Best Java Reporting Tool
FOP for XSLT xml.apache.org/fop
15. Best Java Testing Tool
JUnit junit.org
17. Best Java Virtual Machine
Blackdown Java-Linux JVM blackdown.org
23. Best Wireless Application
Lutris Enhydra 3.5 enhydra.org
24. Best XML Tool
Apache Cocoon xml.apache.org/cocoon
Brock and Jfaq enhydra.org
BXXP bxxp.org
XMLC enhydra.org
25. Most Innovative Java Product
Apache Cocoon xml.apache.org/cocoon
26. Best Java e-Business Framework
Apache Cocoon xml.apache.org/cocoon
Expresso Framework jcorporate.com
Struts jakarta.apache.org/struts
29. Best Database Tool or Driver
MM.MySQL JDBC Driver mmmysql.sourceforge.net
PostgreSQL JDBC jdbc.psotgresql.org
Author: JT Smith
Changes:
This release fixes sub-menu popups, keyboard moves between pages, the size of the geometry window, dual head pointer warps, focus in Netscape windows, unmanaged windows mapped too fast, auto repeating in FvwmScroll, a crash in UseStyle, excessive redraws during unshade, a minor memory leak in the style command, FvwmButtons background pixmaps in text-only buttons, a crash in FvwmIconBox, a libstroke configure problem, a crash while parsing $[$v], and a problem with parsing more than one comma. Pointer grab time was reduced. A new BackingStoreWindowDefault style was added. Extra redraws during style changes were removed.
Author: JT Smith
“Members of the Open Source Software communities have created robust
products such as the Linux operating system and Apache Web server which have
captured significant market share from their commercial competitors,” said
Karim R. Lakhani, a consultant at BCG, a doctoral student at MIT’s Sloan
School of Management, and coauthor of the survey. “This survey highlights the
motivation factors that contribute to the success of Open Source Software-
factors that can be adapted to improve a company’s intellectual capital and
its innovation and product development processes.”
These OSS contributors self-identify as “hackers.” A hacker, as defined
by Eric Raymond, a major voice in the Open Source community, in his New Hacker
Dictionary, is someone who enjoys exploring the details of programmable
systems and who is good at programming quickly, rather than a malicious
meddler who pokes around for sensitive information-the correct term for this
person is “cracker.”
“This survey shows that intellectual stimulation, or pure enjoyment, seems
to be the primary motivating factor for this fervor, followed closely by a
desire to improve one’s skills,” said Bob Wolf, a senior manager at BCG and
coauthor of the survey. “Imagine the competitive advantage that awaits a
company that achieves this level of motivation across all of its core
processes.” Wolf went on to say that “this survey has created a fact base for
understanding self-organizing communities in general and Open Source
communities in particular.”
“We are excited to be working with The Boston Consulting Group on this
research initiative,” said Jeff “hemos” Bates, Director of OSDN Online.
“Although the Open Source movement has existed for several years, the business
implications of this movement have never been adequately analyzed.”
“I’ve estimated that large organizations typically operate at something
like 10-20 percent of their creative potential, measured by their actual
accomplishments in peak situations compared with their accomplishments on an
average Tuesday afternoon. It’s worth considering whether the Open Source
model responds to that and other possible corporate shortcomings,” notes Bob
Shapiro, the former CEO of Monsanto and retired chairman of Pharmacia and now
a senior advisor to BCG.
“In fact, there already are some examples of companies that are
successfully following approaches evident in OSS,” Mark Blaxill, a senior vice
president at BCG said. “IBM has embraced the Open Source movement,
simultaneously increasing the credibility of Linux and promoting its own
position. By allowing consumers of its Mindstorm toy robot to rewrite its
operating system and programming language, Lego increased the functionality to
the user and outperformed its initial sales forecasts. Similarly, Harley
Davidson relinquished control of its brand to its biker community, with
overwhelmingly positive results. Even industrial products companies have
created value by more dynamically linking networks of experts to increase the
efficiency and utilization of their operations.”
Wolf and Lakhani note the following key findings from the survey:
About The Boston Consulting Group
The Boston Consulting Group is a general management consulting firm that
is a global leader in business strategy. BCG has helped companies in every
major industry and market achieve a competitive advantage by developing and
implementing unique strategies. Founded in 1963, the firm now operates 52
offices in 34 countries. For further information, please visit our Web site at
www.bcg.com.
About OSDN
OSDN, the Open Source Development Network, a subsidiary of VA Software, is
the leading news, collaboration, and distribution community for IT and Open
Source development, implementation, and innovation. Each month, more than 5
million IT professionals, developers and systems administrators visit OSDN
destinations, which deliver more than 110 million page views per month. OSDN
sites offer IT news, development tools, distribution and discussion channels,
cutting-edge editorial, and ongoing education and evangelism among the IT and
Open Source community. For information on OSDN please visit www.osdn.com.
Editor’s note: OSDN owns NewsForge.
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
