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Looking Back at Open Source in 2005 112

Posted by samzenpus from the remember-when dept.
bhmit1 writes "BusinessWeek is reporting on the open source progress in 2005. Their conclusion: "in 2005, the software movement finally gained traction in Corporate America and saw a new influx of VC cash." Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?"
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Looking Back at Open Source in 2005 More

Looking Back at Open Source in 2005

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  • It's about time (Score:5, Funny)

    by jrmcferren ( 935335 ) <robbie.mcferren@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:05AM (#14357602) Journal
    With open source software businesses will be able to save money. Needless to say these cost savings will be passed on to the consumer.
    • Is that like how every govenmental budget cut reduces my taxes?
    • Needless to say these cost savings will be passed on to the consumer.

      Since when have cost savings ever been passed on to the consumer? In reality, they're passed on to the CEO as a bonus, and maybe to the stock holders.
    • That's not really the way business works. Any achieved cost efficiency is usually used to be more market competitive, if they are in a competitive market, or to add to the profit margin. It is never really directly passed on to the customer, but used for some business advantage. The customer may only see an indirect cost savings.

  • huh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dajobi ( 915753 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:10AM (#14357622)
    Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?

    Old way of business = profit. New way of business = ???

    Seriously that doesn't make sense. Surely Red Hat's profitability indicates that they have a handle on the new way of doing business.

    • Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bhmit1 ( 2270 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:22AM (#14357858) Homepage
      You're thinking about the business model of Red Hat itself, which is a good one. I was referring to the business model of the large corporations who seem to be saying "open source is great, where do we buy it from?" Support is a great argument to pay someone else, but that choice frequently backfires. Support organizations make their money by hiring cheap labor and postpone resolving the problem until the customer frequently does it themselves, or blames someone else for the problem. I've seen it happen so often, that I don't understand why managers think support provides a valuable benefit for the cost.

      So the better business model for larger organizations would have a stronger IT organization that has enough capacity to understand the applications they are implementing and provide support internally.

      For smaller organizations, I think they are better served by getting a local resource that they can call for problems and that performs a checkup a few times a year just like that organization would do with legal and accounting services.

      And for the record, I don't think we've crossed the threshold yet, but it's interesting to see what the business types are watching.

      • Re:huh (Score:3, Interesting)

        by radarjd ( 931774 )
        For smaller organizations, I think they are better served by getting a local resource that they can call for problems and that performs a checkup a few times a year just like that organization would do with legal and accounting services.

        We have not, as you said, reached that point yet. I work for a "smaller" organization, and we have a terrible time finding support for OSS applications, even when we pay for it. No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's

        • Re:huh (Score:1, Redundant)

          by sydb ( 176695 )
          No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's terribly frustrating to call someone for support and find out that their knowledge ends about the same time yours does.

          Knowledge ends? It's open source. You have the code. If you don't know C (or perl or whatever), find someone who does. There is no such thing as knowledge "ending" with open source, you are limited only by your own ability to read and learn. Certainly, if I was paying for support for open source s
          • There is no such thing as knowledge "ending" with open source, you are limited only by your own ability to read and learn.

            That would be adding to one's knowledge. Until one does the work to do that, one's knowledge has ended.

            • Re:huh (Score:2)

              by sydb ( 176695 )
              That's quite right, but the difference between open source and proprietary code is that it's not actually possible to do the work to learn a proprietary code base, because you can't see it. Also, anyone I would call a decent human being doesn't give up on something when their knowledge "ends", they do the learning, because otherwise how can their knowledge ever grow?

      • Re:huh (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )
        So the better business model for larger organizations would have a stronger IT organization that has enough capacity to understand the applications they are implementing and provide support internally.

        Oh, I'm all for stronger IT departments.

        But even so, the logic is inescapable: if every nearly user spends several man weeks figuring out how to do some common things like get function A to work with function B, it makes sense to outsource this, in the form of getting documentation written, streamlining the ad
    • Red Hat is now apparently one of the good old boys. Mmmm, well ehm, that is good isn't it? Better then if it would be considered as a bunch of commie hippies. While I like commies and hippies they are usually not that popular in coorperate america.

      Red Hat perhaps shows that you can make money from Opensource software. IBM already knows this. You give the software away for free. Then charge them their first born for support. Business never changes. Buy cheap sell dear. Nothing is cheaper then opensource, an

  • This year... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mathiasdm ( 803983 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:11AM (#14357625) Homepage
    Ah, this definitely was the year of desktop Linux and the death of *BSD, the year in which I welcome Linus, our new KDE-loving overlord... Imagine a beowulf cluster of KDE-loving Linuses!

  • Be happy, not excited (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SilverspurG ( 844751 ) * on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:13AM (#14357632) Homepage Journal
    Industry estimates show some $400 million was invested in open-source startups in 2005
    All $400 million? That's enough to buy Bill Gates' lunch, maybe, if he's eating light that day.

    The market is still dubious about open source and for good reason. The big players, the ones pushing around 400 billion dollars, still control the legal avenues and we've seen that the legal avenues are being used in many ways to hedge out the OSS players. If $400 million in VC was invested in OSS startups then it really was venture capital in the truest sense of the term.

    I'm happy to see OSS getting a foot in the door but I'm not going to break out the champagne and glasses until we see some real reform on both the business and political fronts.
    • 400 mil in US terms is almost half a billion. Sure, in perspective it isnt that much but that money was spent on the "start ups", not all of OSS. I think you need to put things into perspective.

      2005 saw overall growth in OSS. It isnt going to overtake the world, but it is a step in the right direction.

      • Re:Be happy, not excited (Score:5, Funny)

        by rhsanborn ( 773855 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:53AM (#14357739)
        400 million is almost half a billion in non-US terms too...

        • Re:Be happy, not excited (Score:5, Informative)

          by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:22AM (#14357855) Journal
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion [wikipedia.org]

          10^12

          The original meaning, established in the 15th century, was "a million of a million" (1,000,000^2, hence the name billion), or 10^12 = 1 000 000 000 000. This system, known in French as the échelle longue ("long scale"), was formerly used in the United Kingdom and is used in most countries where English is not the primary language. 10^12 is referred to as a trillion in the "short scale" system .

          10^9

          In the late 17th century a change was made in the way of writing large numbers. Numbers had been separated into groups of six digits, but at this time the modern grouping of three digits came into use. As a result, a minority of Italian and French scientists began using the word "billion" to mean 10^9 (one thousand million, or 1 000 000 000), and correspondingly redefined trillion and higher numbers to mean powers of one thousand rather than one million. This is known in French as the échelle courte ("short scale") and is now officially used by English-speaking countries, as well as Brazil, Puerto Rico, Turkey and Greece.

        • No, it's not. In most countries, a billion is a million millions, not a thousand like in the US.
        • 400 million is almost half a billion in non-US terms too...

          Well, not in British terms, where a billion is one million million (10^12).
          • That's not correct. We Brits use the "thousand million" definition now as well - have done for many years. It would have been too confusing to have kept a separate incompatible definition of a number word like that.

    • Assuming a salary cost of $50k, we're talking about eight thousand open source programmers. OK, a chunk of this money is going to overheads. Say 5,000 open source programmers.

      That is not a lot in the global IT business, but when you consider that in order to be paid to develop open source you usually need to be a *lot* better than an average programmer, and when you consider that such programmers are significantly more productive (10 times or more) than average programmers, we're talking about a large sli
    • Bill Gates is worth, what, 40Billion? 400 Million is still a lot then: I hope your net worth is better than 100 lunches...

  • Support is King (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JumpingBull ( 551722 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:23AM (#14357654)

    IBM learned long ago that ongoing support generates a constant revenue stream.

    That lesson was not lost on Novell, Redhat and I believe Ubuntu is following the same path

    I think that we will see the application services and support companies running up the revenue stream. However, it takes talented people to seed this activity; one with a proven track record. I have been told that a VC looks briefly at the business plan, just to see it is thorough, knowing full well that as soon as the business opens it's doors, that plan will change as the prime movers identify the hot market needs.

    So the quality of the people in the enterprise, and their successes is what gathers the most attention from the VC. It is the people that will make or break the business.

    • Yeah right. IBM has opensourced a whole bunch of their products (DB2, lotus notes, rational, websphere). Nor do they use lock in strategies in their software or services ;-).

      With the $1 billion dollars they supposedly invested in Linux development a year or two ago, they could have funded RedHat for ~ 7 years..

      IBM is not the good guy. IMO, they are the #2 bad guy. They just spend tons of $$ on marketing to make them sound good.B ut when you look through the fluff they throw out there, very little of their m

    • IBM learned long ago that ongoing support generates a constant revenue stream.

      Yes, but IBM makes its support money by installing crappy software and then charging $325/hr for support (see this story http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 [kuro5hin.org] ). Is this a catch-22 for open source software: if their software is good (bug-free) then the support money won't materialize; but if the software is bad every one will run back to Windows.

      • No crap. Even their off-the-shelf software is terrible.

        The reason IBM is making tons of support on Lotus Notes is because *normal* email clients don't require support at all. (Note: I know Exchange servers need support, I'm talking about clients.) The stock reply to any gripe about Lotus Notes' crappy featureset or bugs is "your users need more training." Hmm, where do you get training for Notes? Well, IBM offers consultants for it...

        Needless to say, I think what IBM is doing is wrong. The real shame

  • Companies want someone to yell at! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:24AM (#14357659)
    Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?

    The reason why open source vendors who act more like "real" companies do well is because corporate IT absolutely demands that they have someone to complain to when everything goes to hell. Imagine you're the CIO of a 25,000 person company who depends on its IT systems to make money. I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??

    Companies like Red Hat enforce standards in an open source world that really doesn't have very many. They sell RHEL with the promise that you'll get tech support as long as you use their packages and software. That's a compelling argument. One thing I've been impressed with is commercial vendors' ability to call in massive amounts of help when a real emergency occurs. Red Hat, Novell, etc. are capable of that. Even if you have a support agreement with the makers of fooPackage, which happens to be the crucial link in your business process, can they guarantee that they'll work with you as long as it takes to solve a problem. Worse yet, let's say it's a multi-level problem between fooPackage, barPackage and blahPackage. Now you've got "dualing vendors" on your hands all saying "it's not our problem." Not that that doesn't happen in the commercial world, but a commercial OS vendor (Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) is helpful in mediating those fights.

    The Red Hats and the Novells are going to be the ones who finally get a Linux desktop on the market. That's because they'll pick one office suite, tweak the hell out of it, and make it a standard akin to MS Office. Companies want to know that their training dollars aren't going to be wasted. Most users learn one software package to do their jobs, memorize the commands, and will not readily learn anything new. That's what the Linux desktop is up against.

    • Worse yet, let's say it's a multi-level problem between fooPackage, barPackage and blahPackage. Now you've got "dualing vendors" on your hands all saying "it's not our problem." Not that that doesn't happen in the commercial world, but a commercial OS vendor (Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) is helpful in mediating those fights.

      I'm not going to say that people don't use this as an argument against F/OSS, but it doesn't hold water. The Big Boys will use it's-not-us-it's-them when two bits don't work together,

    • Re:Companies want someone to yell at! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ironsides ( 739422 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:53AM (#14357741) Homepage Journal
      The reason why open source vendors who act more like "real" companies do well is because corporate IT absolutely demands that they have someone to complain to when everything goes to hell. Imagine you're the CIO of a 25,000 person company who depends on its IT systems to make money. I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??

      Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building.

      • Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building

        Fire the CIO.
        Ok ok, I don't know the details and maybe it made sense in your specific instance, but for hardware I wouldn't pay 10x for the same thing; just buy 5x the number of required drives, swap your own drives

        • Ok, I guess I should clarify a little, the 10x is a bit of an exageration, but not by much, with some of the service contracts in the hardware. Some of the places are 20 miles from nowhere. A three hour drive to the airport would not be unreasonable and all of these places were scatered throughout the country (in every state). Some of the Alaskan sites would require a chartered flight to take you there as there are no regular flights. So we are talking some very remote places.

          As for Apache, that's one

      • Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building.

        For the companies I've worked for I've been the client side coordinator of hundreds of different software support contracts of one sort or another, plus a few hardware support contracts. I've been on the vendor side

    • Re:Companies want someone to yell at! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by richlv ( 778496 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:50AM (#14357978)
      we just recently had a "situation" with a big, well known commercial vendor and their "enterprise" system.

      the application supports only ancient operating system. and an unpatched version of it. nobody knows wether there will be a new version that would support something else.

      then, without a warning, a new beta version is released. nobody knows wether this version will support a newer version of chosen operating system. support is silent.

      public download is available. file, sized 1.5gb and containing "multiplatform" in the name. when finally downloaded, turns out, it contains only a version for a single platform. support does not respond to questions about versions/platforms supported (it is in beta already, remember).

      and this is for a bloody PAYING CUSTOMER.

      oh, installation of the software takes some 7 manual steps, each including a lot of obscure prompts and chances to screw something up. from 8 installations at the education lab _none_ is able to finish on the supported platform, there are no error messages. almost each install stalls at a unique point. the best was a finished installation that was unaccessible for unknown reason. of course, software is closed source, so good luck figuring out what is wrong.

      screw big vendors. we have had similar experience with most of them - and problems are either solved inhouse, or we find ways to avoid them.

      I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up.

      well, from my experience that is the only thing you can trust (of course, by designing systems both from technical and personnel viewpoint very carefuly). unless you can make or break their business, big vendors don't give a shit about your problems even if you are a paying customer.

      now, it is somewhat different with all these linux vendors, i assume - you get a support (and, at least at this state, they are interested in solving problems fast and nice) and if the support is unable/unwilling to help you in required time, you can tap into internal resources or look for help elsewhere. i believe that should be a requirement for any serious information system.
      • I hope that wasn't with a top-tier support contract they could offer you. If it was, then I see why you can't stand big vendors. Some are really bad. HP is a good example...they don't seem to know what products they produce from day to day.

        Believe me, I've been in your shoes trying to get Oracle, BEA, RedHat and HP to play nicely together.

        As a counterpoint, think of this scenario...
        1. CEO reads airline magazine article about open source, tells CIO to get right on it. Also stipulates that only "free" version
        • I hope that wasn't with a top-tier support contract they could offer you.

          that was a subcontractor who was dealing with them, and i am not even sure what support options were available for those products. but they supposedly were official distributors, who have to work with the company a lot, and their response when we asked "wtf ? why aren't they telling you supported platforms for beta stage software ?" was "oh, that's the way things are around here..."

          they were used to being fscked over even being the one

    • "I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??"

      I call that bullshit! The only thing that "die" is hardware, and you shouldn't be dependent of any specific hardware. Software doesn't simply "die" (unless you are using that very secure OS that that very competent company sells), you shouldn't have any software emergency (problems on projects, ot

  • samzenpus managed to put together words:

    "Corporate America" "profitability" "way of business" "influx of cash"

    with

    "Open Source"

    Wow! I've never seen them together before. Nice touch!

  • Issues with Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Exter-C ( 310390 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:30AM (#14357673) Homepage
    Its a pain that I cannot recommend Linux as an operating system into many of our customers corporate environments simply because the vendor support is still not there. Here is a classic example of issues that I have faced with Linux over the last year. Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported. So we ended up recommending Solaris 10 with Veritas Cluster Server which we knew we could backup using the Legato or Veritas backup software and remain fully supported. The real issue is not that we cant support the product in house but its who does management call when things break which from my experience does not happen too often in a well designed and implemented solution. For linux to really be accepted on a broad scale enterprise offering it must have

    - Fully supported file systems with fully supported backup agents for each system.
    - Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.

    As an open source advocate and someone who believes in the principals of open source things have come a very long way over the last year, but the real linch pins still remain and will remain for some time.

    • Re:Issues with Open Source (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported.

      Excuse me sir, but this is an issue with Legato and Symantec (Veritas), not with Red Hat, Linux or Open Source. Legato and Symantec both claim to support Linux, but obviusly this support lea

      • Re:Issues with Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Exter-C ( 310390 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @11:06AM (#14358055) Homepage
        The problem is with open source from the management view of things. It may not be something that you agree with but when you take a very simplistic view of things.. "it works with Solaris, It works with HPUX, it works with windows.. Linux must be the problem".

        Unfortunatly its all about comparisons of products that people are familure with and know work. Once there are working products in those segments enterprise will have very little to moan about.
    • In September, RedHat brought out a press release saying GFS is now supported by Oracle, EMC and NetApp [redhat.com]. I bet that Legato or Veritas backup support will follow next year.

      However, that's too late for your current client.

    • Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.

      What? Likewise, many closed source proprietary software vendors will support their packages on Windows 2000 but not on Windows 2003. So, guess what - many businesses are running a mixture of Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers for this reason alone. When the next version of the Windows server OS c

      • Re:Issues with Open Source (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Funny, we had several scanners that were bought by a PHB. Turns out the software works with Win95, 98, etc. but not NT. Guess what we use in our enterprise? Yep, lots of scanners that don't work with WinNT.

        So, do I call the scanner company, which clearly stated on the box which versions of windows it worked with (but the PHB just understands 'works with windows'). Or do I call M$ since obviously something in NT isn't there that is in the other versions, or it is something that works differently in NT.

        Oh
    • Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported.

      don't you see this is the problem with closed source software, imagine nbu being oss, a agent would have been available a long time ago, because a lot of people want/need this! ofcourse, ver

  • Open Source Innovation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by obender ( 546976 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @09:31AM (#14357676)
    Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software? All these applications that are open source are in fact stuff we all know how to implement, it's just a matter of time and effort. We have an operating system, a database, an office suite nothing really new, they were bound to get open sourced. It's quite amazing that these type of applications are still making money in their closed source incarnation after all this years.

    But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?

    I do admit that open source projects have features that commercial projects never bothered to implement (image dumps from video files in VideoLan comes to mind) but I struggle to find something completely new.

    • I've not seen anything in the closed source world which can match Xdmx lately.. I believe SGI used to do something similar, but only with certain apps..

    • Re:Open Source Innovation (Score:5, Informative)

      by Simon Brooke ( 45012 ) * <stillyet@googlemail.com> on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:51AM (#14357983) Homepage Journal
      Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning?




      So nothing very significant, no.



    • But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?

      Bittorrent? Of course, that was preceeded by the arguably superior (and also OSS) SwarmCast which never caught on. Otherwise I'd say that there is quite a bit of research which is done in an OSS manner... but most people never hear of this. (Eg someone got excited about the innovating idea of running physics simulations on a GPU on ArsForums. This has been done for years on

    • Ok, you are a troll. But I'll answer anyway.

      "But what about new stuff?"

      What about the internet, is it enogth? If not, take a look at Sourceforge or the Debian repository, you'll see plenty of new stuff there. But if you are expecting open source to magicaly create hard IA or something like that, it won't.

      "And even worse: will we notice?"

      It semms that you won't.

      "I do admit that open source projects have features that commercial projects never bothered to implement (image dumps from video files in Vide

    • Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software?...

      1. Apache: Open from the beginning; innovative at the core in its method of extensibility
      2. POV-ray: Open from the beginning; innovative from the beginning (one of the first ray tracers and consistently one of the best for single CPU work)
      3. Firefox: completely rebuilt as open source; innovative in its methods of extensibility (consider its XULishness)
      4. Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc: all without doubt innovative languages; al
    • Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software?

      That's an awful broad statement. There is constant innovation in both open and closed source software. In some cases, yes, stagnation of closed software has been a breeding ground for open alternatives.

      All these applications that are open source are in fact stuff we all know how to implement, it's just a matter of time and effort. We have an operating system, a database, an office suite nothing really new, they were boun

  • Best of 2005: Penguins hacked Microsoft Lobbyevent (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    One of the greatest events around open source in 2005 was for me the penguin-hack of a microsoft lobbyevent in the parliament of berlin. very funny and with lots of pictures: Microsoft in Parliament [netzpolitik.org].
  • I belive that it always has been the goal of a corporation to make a profit. That did change during the dot-com-boom, but we see where that lead us!

  • let's see what MS has to say about this !>!

  • My Impression (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:10AM (#14357802)
    I think open source did very well. We've seen some enhancements to KDE and Gnome, and even VI. I think UNIX as a whole has surpassed all obsticles that we couldn't have foreseen coming and I only hope things will get better. I have converted many over from the dark side to Linux/UNIX operating systems. I am also doing my part by contributing to a few open source programs in my free time. The movement is only growing stronger and will eventually overcome corporations producing closed source software because we as a community do not have to answer to shareholders. We do not have to meet unreasonable deadlines, we are developing for other users and we tend to get it right the first time. I look forward to contributing more code to various open source projects in 2006. If fact, it is one of my New Year resolutions :)
    • I can't say much for KDE or Gnome, having not used them for awhile, but I was a WindowMaker guy up until very recently; after trying out OS X, I switched, and I doubt that I'm ever going to go back, at least as far as my desktop is concerned. Servers are, of course, another matter -- Debian and FreeBSD where appropriate, all the way.

      Unix needs to come out of the dark ages of X; if there is one thing crippling Unix desktop deployment, it's that POS of a windowing system. No standardized look-and-feel, can'
      • I generally agree about X11, although on the specific point of switching resolutions I believe Xorg supports that. It's setting up the master configuration that sucks.

        You might be interested in a prior thread about this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171888&cid=143 13930 [slashdot.org]
        • It only supports res switching on a connected monitor. The problem with this is that, if you're a laptop user, that only one display is 'connected' when X starts up, so switching from the internal display to the external display doesn't work without losing X.

          Even Windows gets this right.
      • i stopped reading here

        > can't even support on-the-fly resolution swapping

        because my monitor must be getting closer/further away when i press control-alt-(minus/plus), or when i use krandrtray all the time at work (webdeveloper - need to test different resolutions)

  • One word: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dystopian Rebel ( 714995 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:11AM (#14357809) Journal
    Ubuntu.
    • I agree. I think that the biggest advance in open source software was the streamlining of Debian into Ubuntu. Its simplicity, ease of use, and the fact that it just works out of the box makes it a winner. Any idiot, including myself or my company's IT staff could install it.
  • Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?"

    What the hell does this mean? Are you saying the "new" way of doing business means not achieving profitability?

    • Re:Old Way? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bhmit1 ( 2270 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:37AM (#14357920) Homepage
      What the hell does this mean? Are you saying the "new" way of doing business means not achieving profitability?

      It means that corporate america seems to be saying "open source is great, where do we buy it" instead of considering how to adjust their business to better utilize OSS. They seem to be jumping on the latest buzzword or trend without really understanding the value. And the boom of Red Hat seems to be indicating that people are buying OSS rather than buying into the OSS concept. Phrasing it to avoid "shouldn't Red Hat want to make a profit" confusion would have taken a few more brain cells working than I had before the morning sugar rush, sorry.

  • Good year for Open Source... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ursabear ( 818651 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:20AM (#14357848) Homepage Journal
    I think it was a very good year for Open Source software.

    In 2005, my work projects benefited highly from open source libraries. My testing software would have been very time-consuming to write without open source software. In general, it has saved me quite a bit of time and aggravation.

    In addition, each time I proposed open source as a means of supplying something I needed to use, I didn't need to justify it to the project management types - they understand the power and the value now...

    Perhaps a sea change is occurring that makes it a little more understandable (to corporate types) that the volunteer work of a few benefits the many.

    A big thanks to those who have burned the midnight oil just to provide software for the rest of the world!
  • No year without a new release of Nethack [nethack.org] can be considered a good year for Open Source.
  • "in 2005, the software movement finally gained traction in Corporate America and saw a new influx of VC cash."

    It seems like I read very similar claims made in 2004.
  • It saw Microsoft's bloated slothful SBS replaced in it's thousands by swift lean *nix and bsd boxen, which are easy to administer, and easy to update.

    Not one of our clients are going to "upgrade" to another Microsoft server platform. Not one. After years of exploits, lock in, and "useless feature which leads to a format", even the most dedicated Microsoft fans are jaded.

    It saw USB support on all major distro's, plaug in a camera, and be greeted by an import photo wizard.

    Plug in an external drive, and star
    • *wipes away tear*

      Yes, it was most definitely a great year for open source. I believe more people will start using it now than ever before! Onward and upward! Long live, Firefox and Thunderbird! Now we've begun to invade that territory where the Gates had been shut before. Now sites will have to start changing their page so Firefox can see them well too. Oh, I can hardly wait...

      (-hrair-)

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