Stories by: Russell Pavlicek

I have been encouraging businesses to look into Linux and open source since 1997. Some people have mistaken this as the missionary zeal of one so taken by a movement that he or she can no longer think straight. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

I have been using Linux on my desktop since 1997. I found the platform's features and supporting applications usable back then, and much has changed for the better. Some things which were great back then are still great today.

The open-source world is abuzz about The SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM. SCO alleges that Big Blue has incorporated SCO's intellectual property surrounding Unix into its Linux efforts. The SCO Group, formerly Caldera Systems, acquired Santa Cruz Operation back in the summer of 2000.

There must be something in the water at conferences these days. A couple weeks ago, the Desktop Linux Summit made headlines when some participants accused Lindows, the primary sponsor, of hijacking the agenda.

January saw the return of LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, the current king of Linux business shows, to New York City . Defying the freezing temperature outside the Javits Center , large numbers of Expo attendees swarmed the aisles of the show floor and walked away with plenty of information.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a young man named Jon. Jon was a decent, intelligent young man, who lived a fairly normal life with his family. One day, Jon purchased a DVD. He thought to himself, "I have a laptop with a DVD drive on it. Why don't I watch this movie on my laptop?" But there was a problem. His Linux laptop had no program that would allow him to watch his DVD, and one was not available commercially.

I have one basic prediction for open source in 2003: The competition between Microsoft and the open-source world will become fierce.

The year is drawing to a close, so now is a good time to evaluate my predictions for 2002. It's an interesting exercise, especially because most tabloid psychics don't tend to fare well when you evaluate their annual prophecies. Thankfully, I'm no psychic, and I'm not shy about having my statements evaluated in the light of history.

A recent Aberdeen Group report claims that open source is less secure than Windows. And how did they come to this profound conclusion? Apparently, they counted the number of CERT advisories in the past couple of years and found more associated with open-source software than with Windows.

Occasionally, I hear people say about open source,"Hey, it's just software." But from a market perspective, open source is far more than software -- it is the force that is recreating the software market.

If your organisation has a number of older PCs running Microsoft Office, there are now several good reasons to seriously consider switching to the OpenOffice.org office suite. Most of these reasons have been supplied by none other than Microsoft itself.