pelago

SAN FRANCISCO — In the past, LinuxWorld has had a refreshing lightheartedness to it. Since the open-source people who usually flock to Linux events are more carefree than the marketing types who clog other Internet events, the conferences have been, at the very least, tolerable.

This year the marketers have attacked. Now, it’s virtually impossible to walk around LinuxWorld without hearing pitches from company reps extolling the benefits of Linux for “mission-critical applications in the enterprise,” or some such drivel.

A recent global wave of legislation is compelling government agencies, and in some cases government-owned companies, to use open-source or free software unless proprietary software is the only feasible option.

In a move aimed at making Linux more attractive to corporate computer users, Hewlett-Packard Co. Wednesday announced its own version of Linux that incorporates high-security features needed by business users.

For some reason, none of the financial companies like to admit that they use Perl, Linux and Apache, but all the firms are teeming with it because it’s the only way to get software to conform to the varying needs of a big business. (Tim O’Reilly, the conference’s sponsor, speculates that the firms don’t tell anyone about their use of open source because each considers it a competitive advantage.)

This paper emphasizes quantitative measures (such as experiments and market studies) on why using OSS/FS products is, in a number of circumstances, a reasonable or even superior approach.