In today's proprietary-dominated software marketplace, companies large and
small must live with the fact that their own priorities can and do diverge
from those of their key suppliers.
IT departments and other software and hardware consumers constantly face
capability gaps from product end-of-life, features and functionality missing
from product releases, and limited hosting options.
These gaps raise their real costs and impact the timeliness of internal and
external deliverables. Such problems are endemic to any technology ecosystem,
but are further exacerbated in markets dominated by a small number of
players.
At a minimum, open source Linux broadens these technology supply bottlenecks
by "N+1" - that is, with open source, IT departments and other enterprise
technology consumers gain the critical option of looking inside their
organizations for viable, cost-effec... (more)
In the past 18 months, mobile phone manufacturers in Asia and elsewhere have
introduced over a dozen handset models based on Linux, and before the end of
2005, you can expect to see a dozen more smart and feature phones announced
and shipping. While it's easy to gush over this emerging trend, and to wax
eloquent over the technical particulars of these intelligent mobile devices,
it may be more interesting to examine the drivers behind this wave of
adoption.
This article examines the economics of building next-generation mobile
handsets with Linux. In particular, it explains how ... (more)
The global mobile phone market is enjoying explosive growth. With annual unit
sales in the hundreds of millions, Gartner analysts estimate that by 2009 the
worldwide installed based will top 2.6 billion mobile handsets. For the Linux
and Open Source segment of the IT industry, such numbers are tantalizing,
orders of magnitude beyond shipments and even the installed base for servers,
and far greater in volume than the worldwide desktop market. For the Linux
software and related hardware markets, mobile phones are an opportunity to
"break out" and enjoy greater market share in clie... (more)
Linux and other Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) enjoy a reputation for
ubiquitous use in educational settings. While FOSS openness and low
acquisition costs resonate with the approach and needs of academia, it's
proving difficult to establish a clear adoption trend. Certainly there exists
ample anecdotal evidence of adoption, school-by-school,
department-by-department. Certainly a range of Open Source projects arise
from and also target education. However, close investigation reveals a mixed
reality for Linux and FOSS in education: perusing college course listings, at
leas... (more)
The enormous success of GNU/Linux as an operating system and as an open
source project has captured the imagination of developers, IT staffers,
business people, journalists, educators, and even politicians. Linux is so
visible, its brand and allure so strong, that most people forget or never
notice the existence of an array of other open source OSes. Some of these
platforms "compete" with Linux for market share and popular attention (like
BSD and OpenSolaris), some complement Linux with additional capabilities or
virtualize aspects of its operation (like RTLinuxFree and T-Kernel)... (more)
Bill Weinberg brings over 18 years embedded and open systems experience
David Lucas
Shaul Efraim
Terence Martin Breslin
Cory Marchand
David Hughes
James Carlini
John Iffert
Dan Stolts
Joe Zeto
