Why The Open-Source Model Can Work In India, Sep 18, 2004

Open-source software meets the basic criteria of useful and affordable that people and businesses in emerging economies such as India need to adopt them. But, says a prominent Indian IT scholar, there's no shortage of other reasons why Linux and its ilk are leaving an indelible mark on the Indian software market, particularly for the country's 2.5 million small and medium businesses.

The open-source model suits India, where most businesses have previously made no investment in IT; many large businesses rely on Unix; and Microsoft Windows is seen primarily as a desktop operating system, says Deepak Phatak, the Subrao M. Nilekani Chair Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology's Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology. Phatak, who spent much of last year traveling his native country evangelizing Linux and open source, also contends that the open-source model offers better support than proprietary vendors do in India. And he isn't concerned with the intellectual-property concerns that have arisen from Linux use in the United States.

Open source may have many benefits over closed systems, but don't count security among them--yet. This article looks at why open source software may currently be less secure than its commercial counterparts.

A small company is threatening legal action against some users of the open-source Mambo software for publishing content on Web sites, arguing that the package includes proprietary code.

Brian Connolly, president of Chicago-based Furthermore, plans on Monday to distribute broadly a warning that asserts that users of some Mambo features "are potentially exposed to civil litigation and possibly criminal prosecution" because of copyright infringement. In a rebuttal, Mambo programmers deride the claim as "frivolous and without substance."

Utah's SCO Group says it needs an evidentiary "road map" in order to prove IBM improperly released proprietary Unix code into the freely distributed Linux operating system.

And the Lindon-based software company told U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball on Wednesday that IBM itself should be compelled to provide that map to navigate millions of lines of Unix and Linux code and identify key contributors to its Linux-related applications and releases.

Jonathan Schwartz looks to Wall Street as one of the few industries with the means—money and will—to regularly redefine the computer industry. So Sun's president and chief operating officer is making it a goal to get to know Wall Street a lot better, including a visit to New York next week trying to drum up some attention to this effort. Wall Street & Technology did a quick E-mail question-and-answer with Schwartz in which he, among other things, predicts a growing disillusionment with Linux. Sun has had to battle a cost-cutting mentality that prompted many financial companies in recent years to migrate off Solaris to Linux running on cheaper boxes. "I would say about one customer a month is telling me that the honeymoon is over because for all practical purposes, the Linux market has tipped to a single vendor—Red Hat," says Schwartz. Here's the full exchange:

Vulnerabilities in code libraries that could potentially affect open-source programs using the GUI toolkit GTK+ were reported on the security Web site Secunia on Thursday. As initially discovered by Chris Evans, these problems could theoretically be exploited to spark a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack and otherwise compromise a computer system.

Sometimes the big software vendors act like their customers are locked into the proprietary products they sell. You may think your only options are to wait for patches and updates on your vendor's schedule, or completely switch to Linux. But here's a little secret: You don't have to dump Windows to benefit from the open-source software revolution. A raft of new applications is available, giving you the best of both worlds: software that is repaired and enhanced by a community of users, and that runs on the PC you use every day.

Following last week's column about Baxter, my idea for a distributed kinda sorta peer-to-peer Internet data back-up scheme, I expected this week to write about all the problems readers found with the idea, and all the existing Baxter-like services none of us had heard about. Well, things change, and I'll be doing that column next week, leaving this space to describe how Microsoft is planning a preemptive strike against Linux using its control of the PC hardware standard.

Lockheed Martin delivered a High Performance Computing (HPC) solution to the US Navy last year to run sonar systems in nuclear submarines. The solutions involved Apple Xserve systems using G4 processors and a Red Hat Linux-based operating system. While few people noticed the announcements made by Terra Soft, makers of Yellow Dog Linux, the event triggered ripples in the industry.

As pressure mounts to meet state-mandated educational technology standards, some Hawai'i schools with limited budgets are getting updated computer labs at a fraction of the typical costs.

With help from the nonprofit Hawai'i Open Source Education Foundation, a dozen schools and organizations have opened PC labs using recycled computers loaded with free software for about $3,000, much less than what a lab using off-the-shelf computers and commercially-available software could cost — up to $30,000.

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