Fewer in Asia Seek Linux Support, Jan 26, 2008

More users opt for free service rather than paying for vendor support, but as open source catches up in the region, this may change

Novell has extended a set of development tools so they can be used to write applications and other software for rival Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS.

How Red Hat's founder developed a business model that steered a course between those of proprietary and open-source software vendors

What do you see as the biggest danger to open-source software today? On the one hand, there's still a locus of resistance. Microsoft still maintains strongly the view that its business model, which depends upon concealing source code from users, is a viable and important and indeed necessary model. And so as long as a company that sells a billion dollars a week in software is in that sense fundamentally still trying to [fight] the free way of doing things, Microsoft remains a very dangerous party.

Linux, Apache and other open-source applications have long been used to power Web and file servers. But when it comes to managing the data center, many companies have held back. Now, though, some users have turned into big believers that open source works here, too.

The purchase of mySQL completes Sun’s transformation into an open source company.

Give Novell credit. Rather than slamming The VAR Guy for a particularly harsh blog post about the software company, Novell reached out to him and engaged in a healthy dialog.

Actually, I'm sticking with Ubuntu. But there's no denying that one of the appeals of Linux is the DIY spirit behind it. While many find the number of distributions daunting, it's also evidence that anyone, even you, can build their version of Linux just like Linus and friends did in the beginning.

The other day in my Open for Business blog, I bemoaned the beginning of the new year simply because it brings with it a plethora of pundits predicting what the new year will hold. Particularly irksome (to the cynic in me, I guess) are posts that declare the new year as “the year” for a particular technology.

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