Linux a Money Making Investment: Analysts, Jul 03, 2004

One the most straightforward ways to potentially profit from the open source movement and specifically the Linux operating system is buying stock in the leading vendors, according to one investment research firm.

A new research report recently published from Equity Research firm, Caris & Company, titled The Best Things in Life are Free? indicates that the research group has high hopes for both Novell and Red Hat.

A consortium that includes Sony, Panasonic, Royal Philips Electronics and other companies has taken a step toward advancing the use of the Linux operating system in consumer electronics devices.

The CE Linux Forum announced earlier this week the release of the first CELF Specification and Reference Implementation, a collection of open-source patches for Linux. Among the patches are some designed to make it easier for consumer electronics devices using the Linux OS to start up and shut down faster, consume less power and use less memory, among other things. They were chosen and developed by various working groups within CELF.

The President [of India], A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today advised defence scientists to shun proprietary systems and opt for open source codes to enhance software security in defence networks.

"Open source codes can easily introduce the users to build security algorithms in the system without the dependence of proprietary platforms. We should take maximum care to ensure that our solution is unique to protect our own defence security solutions implemented on open platforms," the President observed at the silver jubilee celebration of the Indian Navy's Weapons and Electronic System Engineering Establishment (WESEE). During his interaction with IT experts in civilian and defence fields, Mr. Kalam has consistently advocated the use of open source software over proprietary software whose building block is rarely disclosed by corporates who own and sell them.

In another sign competition is heating up in the software industry, Microsoft Corp. has slashed prices by more than half for Paris City Hall as the French capital considers switching to low-cost open-source programs.

The software giant agreed to cut prices to suppliers who work with the city "to the order of" 60 percent, said a Paris official, who spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday.

Klaus Zimmer, president of SAP Greater China, predicted that 30 percent of SAP products would be based on Linux by 2006. SAP has already begun the cooperation between its China Research Institute and Red Flag Software in terms of corporate application for Linux.

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