The gradual triumph of Linux, Aug 17, 2007

Open source moves at a different speed to commercial software. This has become apparent over the last decade as Linux and its Open Source fellow travelers (Apache, Open Office, MySQL, Firefox et al) gradually established their position in the software world.

What's the difference between Edward John Smith, the Captain of the Titanic and Darl McBride, CEO and President of SCO. Well, for one thing, Captain Smith didn't steer his doomed ship towards the iceberg, he hit it by accident.

The latest legal interchange between SCO and IBM concerns discovery. That Big Blue meanie, IBM, is asking the judge to dismiss the case and thus kill the entertaining stream of news that it regularly produces. SCO accuses IBM of not handing over millions of lines of code for SCO to analyze - indeed stonewalling - in order to deny SCO the ability to prove its ever-so-reasonable case. (After all, what's $5 billion between friends). SCO is also asking for IBM to provide a roadmap to help it analyze the code.

The latest news to emerge in the Linux v Windows battle is that Microsoft has cut its prices (rumour suggests by more than half) in an effort to dissuade the city of Paris from moving to Linux on the desktop. Paris is in upgrade mode and intends to spend nearly $200 million with IT suppliers in the next three years, a significant proportion of which could go to Microsoft.

Mozilla, in case you didn't know, is a project to build an open source web browser (Firefox) and email suite (Thunderbird). I had cause to use it recently when I ran into a little browser plug-in (from a security company called CoreStreet) that plays back to you the name of the web site that you are on. It's a neat little applet that CoreStreet intends to distribute for free to assist web users in seeing through some of the Phishing scams that are currently in play.

The GPL is, as far as I can see, the most innovative adjustment to copyright and IP contracts that has occurred for decades - maybe even centuries. The idea is, in essence, a simple one. Previously creators and collaborators in the creation of IP (or works covered by copyright - software happens to fall into both categories at times) chose either to defend their legal ownership via copyright and/or the lodging of patents or they chose to make it freely available. The GPL plows a middle course, allowing free usage of software source code on condition that whatever is added (source code and IP) is also provided to others on the same basis. It thus encourages collaboration by those who wish to share the fruits of their labour without direct commercial reward, but wish to retain a level of control on it usage.

It qualifies because it spans so many platforms - from small devices up to IBM's zSeries mainframe. It also qualifies because, like TCP/IP, it doesn't actually belong to anyone. It runs on most chips and is rapidly becoming the developer platform of choice. So the idea is starting to emerge that you virtualise storage by the use of SANs and NAS and you virtualise server hardware by the use of Linux - thus making it feasible to switch applications from one server to another automatically, and quickly. Within this capability you can cater for failover and make highly efficient use of resources.