“Yet, the lords of Linux are no longer Don Quixotes living in
the counterculture of the operating systems world. Fewer pony-tails
and beards, which proliferated at earlier conferences that promoted
open source, were in evidence this year.”
“Among the 200 exhibitors at this year’s Linux World,
International Business Machines Corp. , Oracle Corp. and Dell
Computer Corp. sat squarely in the middle.”
“Now, it’s big business,” Graham said. “You start to see a lot
more money spent on Linux.”
“The question is: Will information technology (IT) managers, who
buy and oversee corporate technology purchases and operations, opt
to use Linux and other open-source technologies?”
“Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown analysts Philip Rueppel, Ghazi
Benothman and Kevin Burke think so. In a recent report, “Open
Source Infrastructure, a Manifest for the Coming Big Bang,” they
argued that open source operating systems offer more value than
proprietary systems. Because the source code is known and available
to all, it can be easily customize by each company’s IT department,
unlike generic products software makers sell.”