Interview: Linus's latest lieutenant, Mar 21, 2002

Tosatti: I wouldn't have switched it at that time. Something about Linus that is a problem is that a lot of things come from his mood. He'll just say, "Oh, this is good: Apply. This is good: Apply." He should not accept some of the patches he does. He accepts some patches too early, without thinking too much about them. He does not have the time to really care about some stuff. For example, with Andrea's VM, he just got one VM and then he switched it to another: Boom! He didn't think about all the issues involved with this. I wouldn't have done that the way he did.

Internet video and audio pioneer RealNetworks accused Microsoft in court on Wednesday of seeking to restrict RealNetworks' products because they posed a threat to the software giant's Windows operating system monopoly.

"Linux will be adopted, but who will profit from it?" Berquist said in a report Wednesday. "We expect that within three to five quarters, it will become clear whether or not Red Hat will be able to become the leading, established provider of Linux solutions to the enterprise. While we expect it to be a challenge, we think that the company may be able to compete effectively with larger firms, given its leading Linux operating system and significant capitalization."

Those robots would not exist today if Galeotti had to use Microsoft Windows, the world's dominant computer operating system. Because Windows is a proprietary system, users cannot get access to or modify its source code.

Galeotti turned to Linux, an open-source operating system that welcomes users to tinker with the source code as a chef might play with a recipe. Galeotti created a stripped-down version of Linux and then added features to make the robots do their tasks.

Many enterprises use the same version of Office companywide to standardize desktops. However, enterprises now realize that most workers consume information but don't create it, so they don't use more than 20 percent of the features in Office. At the same time, changes in Microsoft's license policy could force some customers to pay twice as much for the next version. Enterprises looking for alternative suites may eventually find one in StarOffice 6.0, which will likely become available in the second quarter.

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