Just a few days ago the Linux World 2006 conference took place in Boston.
Some of the news from there:
One of the largest problems faced by Open Source, is the disparity in the ability to contest a patent claim through litigation. That’s according to Bruce Perens (his full statament is here). Bruce Perens is best known as the primary author of The Open Source Definition, one of the formative documents of the Open Source movement.
Another, perhaps the most important, news came from Dell’s CTO Kevin Kettler:
Among other things, he said, “Linux is bound by traditional platforms; virtualization sets it free. It can really open a lot of opportunities for unique software applications and environments to run on a single platform.”
CNet report that “Virtualization lets a computer run multiple operating systems side-by-side in partitions called virtual machines; with two shipping or imminent features, Intel’s VT and Advanced Micro Devices’ AMD-V, the same system can run Windows or Linux. Kettler said virtualization’s big advantages on servers are letting one machine work more efficiently and making it easier to match computing tasks to changing needs.”
More about virtualization can be found at the following addresses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen, Dell, or IBM. Red Hat has a special site for it at http://www.redhat.com/virtualization/
That news made me think about a certain aspect of the importance of free and open source software for the general development of services and for access to the Internet.
ISOC-Bulgaria has worked (and continues to work) in the last two years on different FOSS-related projects.
Some of the most important conclusions we’ve reached to: System administrators of organizations where they use both FOSS and proprietary software refuse to support users, who have still use MS Windows, and esp. who use MS Internet Explorer and MS Word.
Why?
Because a sysadmin has less problems with computers, which are running software that does not crash, does not infect the computer, etc. This is also something worth considering, when deciding what software to use.