“In the first post in this series, I talked about how
open-source operating systems were one of a galaxy of three major
and complementary forces. The second, and in some ways more
important force, is open-source applications.“One problem that comes right up is what you define as an
‘application.’ You could describe a Linux-based appliance that runs
in a 1U rackspace module (or in a virtual machine) as an
application, and you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Maybe less so
a live distro running as a firewall/router, but there’s little
question this particular water can be muddied freely…”