“In the first few articles in this series, I talked about
strategies for getting Linux into your organization and covered
areas where it’s possible to work Linux in your enterprise as a
stand-alone entity, such as a network sniffer or as a web server.
However, one of Linux’s strongest suits is as an
“interoperability agent” that can allow a company to support
multiple platforms, such as Windows, Unix systems, NetWare, and
Apple Macintoshes painlessly from one central server.“
“How does this happen?”
“One of the most interesting aspects of Linux development is
that, apart from the kernel itself, there has been no grand plan
governing the evolution of the overall system. In true open source
fashion, the various kinds of applications and non-kernel services
available for Linux have developed directly in response to the
needs of the user community. This is true in the *BSD world too,
but Linux advocates have raised it to an artform, as can be seen in
the offerings available at the open source software site
Freshmeat.net or at the open source collaborative development
nexus, SourceForge.Net, both of which are owned by VA Linux
Systems.”