Linux Journal: The FOSE Report: The View from NOVALUG

“A review of the Linux Solutions panel at this year’s
FOSE.“

“SGI’s Jan Silverman (VP Marketing) kicked off the panel and set
the tone for the speakers. Silverman’s presentation was a corporate
spiel, including some very informational graphs, that painted Linux
as the winner in the race for market growth rate (in 1998-99, Linux
grew by 93.2%). He explained how Wall Street loves Linux
(especially in the investment arena of supercomputers, Beowulf
clusters, etc.), and how 52% of the “Vendor Authorized Resellers”
for software consider Linux to be a viable alternative for any OS
solution (this rate of acceptance is growing). He had a “Top Ten
reasons why Linux is winning” list, and a “Top Five things limiting
Linux” list. The winning list was a very high-level highlight of
the advantages of Linux. Just the obvious points, why it’s
reliable, scalable, fast, powerful, developer base, etc. The
limiting-list had only one decent point: Mainstream, traditional
companies haven’t yet figured out how to make a dollar by selling
free software. His four other points were superficial, and
indicative of the corporate aloofness from the robust
resourcefulness that comprises the Open Source community; I would
be glad to send you them, should you want them. Silverman used
PowerPoint slides.”

“Chris Dibona batted second, and gave a heck of a
straightforward talk about “Linux & The Government: Why it
Works”. The crowd gathered to hear the panel discussions was quite
small, maybe about seven people, tops. Three of those were open
source players, including myself, and the other four consisted of
the PR manager for Corel, a FOSE staff person, a curious audience
member with esoteric and non-specific questions about mainframes,
and another private press photographer. Among the topics Chris
touched upon were Chris’ role in the Open Source community, the
reliability of Linux, the cost effectiveness, how open-source
sharing works, and the freedom behind it all. Chris was brief; he
used Linux, pulling slides up from the Web, through his laptop
connection.”

Complete
Story