"Much like the early days of the Microsoft venture into the data center operating system market, which took a decade for large-scale penetration and acceptance, the Open Source marketplace is forming -- and its viability is being proven. We will look back in a decade’s time, and maybe quicker, to see an industry that has been radically transformed by virtual engineers, working collaboratively with great innovation, supported by a new model of service companies."

"Separate reports from The 451 Group and Evans Data this week confirm what seems obvious: open-source software is impacting commercial software companies and continues to gain adoption worldwide."

"New research from Gartner analyst Laurie Wurster shows that open source and its aggregate IQ are catching on in companies. 'They're using open source components for internal development,' says Wurster, 'and in about 70% of cases where that's happening, they would have purchased a proprietary product if open source didn't exist.

"Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports of savings on the long term – costs of ownership of the software products."

"Open source has won the first battle: It is now listed among the default platform decisions,' says Dave Jenkins, CTO at online outdoor sporting goods retailer Backcountry.com in Park City, Utah. The next step, open source users agree, is moving up the stack and figuring out which open source tools are ready for enterprise deployments.

"The financial services industry is constantly changing. Time to market is key and the desire to reduce costs in order to remain profitable drives the need for innovation. The first hurdle for financial services companies was for them to become completely comfortable with the capabilities of open source products and to recognize that they could support enterprise customers with this model. Now that this has happened we need to see more vendors offering support for open source tools so that financial customers feel they can get as much assistance and protection as they would with a proprietary solution."

"Waves start long before you see them on the surface,' says Ann Winblad, co-founder of Hummer Winblad, a San Francisco-based venture fund. 'We've long since learned that open source is not about free software."

"Much of the debate about open source has been in technical terms, or increasingly in political terms. I'm not criticising either approach, but I suspect many potential open source converts are left cold by discussions that border on the religious in their fervour. What many companies really need is a direct and clear discussion about the tangible benefits of open source, without the political baggage."

"With open source as a centerpiece of your IT strategy, you will find yourself gaining business agility faster than your competition, and releasing yourself from dependency on vendors who have failed to deliver."

"Driven by cost containment pressures, many cash-strapped organizations are turning to open-source applications for relief. But once they've implemented a system component and found it is good, they come back for more."

"The study declares that open source software represents the most significant all-encompassing and long-term trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s. IDC believes that open source will eventually play a role in the lifecycle of every major software category, and will fundamentally change the value proposition of packaged software for customers."

"Experts say enterprise use of open source has long been the provenance of developers and other rank-and-file IT pros, but as open source matures and more enterprise-ready tools become available, CIOs are taking over, bringing a new top-down approach to adoption."

"IBM is putting more product development and sales resources into building markets for open-source software in addition to Linux, a move the company says can increase use of its products including chips, desktop applications, and middleware."

"Then there's all those other open-source app servers, such as Apache, Geronimo, and Tomcat. Research I have been involved in over the past two years shows these platforms are even more widespread than JBoss — and are increasingly moving beyond Web serving on the periphery and taking on larger enterprise workloads."

"Concerns over competitive advantage mean that it can be difficult to persuade companies to share code with the open source community, as it can then be easily accessed by competitors. But for technologies that have little impact on competitive advantage, financial companies could probably be encouraged to contribute code, the conference panel agreed."

"This report examines the development and distribution of open source software, and describes how it may help health care providers overcome the problem of incompatible IT systems that can disrupt the smooth exchange of information."

"Open source is becoming a vital piece of enterprise infrastructures. Open-source development is becoming a moneymaking proposition. And now understanding the companies that sell and the communities that create open-source code is becoming a critical part of the CIO’s job."

"Carr said the enterprise software stack of the future would have a mix of open source and commercial code, with the more specialized layers, such as industry-specific applications, remaining the province of private suppliers. But the operating system and middleware layers will move toward open source code because of its low cost and the inability of commercial suppliers to strongly differentiate themselves and add value at that level."

"There will be a continuation in health care and education. I think financial services will have a big year. They're always looking for efficiencies and greater economies of scale. Retail is another area, as we see a lot of standardization work going on there."

"The effort will help put open-source development on a par with commercial software efforts, Park said. 'The open-source community does not have access to those kinds of tools, so we are trying to correct that to some extent,' he said. The list of open-source projects that Stanford and Coverity plan to check for security bugs includes Apache, BIND, Ethereal, KDE, Linux, Firefox, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSSL and MySQL, Coverity said."

"Open source software has gone far beyond the Linux operating system, and is found in all parts of the technology infrastructures of most U.S. organizations (both corporate and government) and has resulted in cost savings for companies of all sizes, a research study led by Optaros Inc. has found. Emboldened by cost savings and other benefits, these companies expect to use significantly more open source software over the next five years and decrease their use of commercial software packages in their organizations."

"Criticisms of the open source development model come from misunderstanding the nature of the model. FOSS is not about doing work for free; it's about doing work for which there's a real market. FOSS is developed by paid developers to add value to their employer's products, or for their employer to use. A FOSS customer is free from vendor lock-in; they can buy a solution from one company and then switch to a second source with no problems."

"Referred to by some as a "paradigm shift," the open-source software phenomenon is having a significant impact on the information technology landscape. Although the revenue generated by open-source software does not come from the products themselves but from related hardware, software, and services, that revenue is now in the billions of dollars and growing. This issue of the journal contains 18 papers on a variety of topics related to open-source software, including Linux, Eclipse, the open-source project collaboration model, the use of open-source software within governmental institutions, and IBM activities in open-source software development."

"The phrase "open source license" refers to a large number of agreements that license the copyrights inherent in software widely, fairly, and with the fewest restrictions possible. This article -- the first of two -- describes the tenets of copyright and explains the intents of an open source license."

"But Brenner, who has emerged as a champion of open-source software in enterprise IT, said he's since learned that, beyond cost, "there are tremendous advantages for a company like us in working with that model." Thanks to increased competition among open-source providers, large and small, and the evolution of the open-source development business, Brenner and others have more and better choices, along with improved support and innovation as they seek relief from burdensome licensing costs."

"ABN Amro has used open-source tools to help create some of its banking applications, most prominently its Mortgage.com Web-based service. The company is running some mission-critical applications on Linux and is considering the use of open-source business-intelligence and reporting tools."

"This is the essential meaning of open source: the source code--the language in which the software is written and the key to understanding how the software works--can be obtained and improved by anyone with the right skills. More precise definitions extend this basic concept by adding provisions concerning derivative works, the rights to use the software for any purpose, the rights of the original author, and prohibitions against discrimination."

"He explained the phenomenal growth of open source software over the past few years as a combination of things: reaction to proprietary licensing terms, the success of grass roots lobbying efforts, the growth of open source applications outside of the data center, and -- as a result of the Microsoft antitrust case -- the growing awareness of the power held over the industry by just a few companies."

"Once seen as flaky, cheap and the work of amateur developers, open source has emerged blinking into the daylight. With unrestricted access to the source code to run or modify at will, and support coming from an ad hoc collection of software developers and fellow users, the open-source model is very different from proprietary software. But it is nevertheless proving attractive enough for a host of CIOs to make the switch."

"Many public institutions like government agencies and civil society organizations are obliged by new legislation to place information in the public domain. Unfortunately many of them are using proprietary format which require members of the public to purchase or illegally copy expensive proprietary software. This primer provides a rationale for the use of Open Standards in Government."

"Think high-priced commercial software is your only option? Don't be so sure. Free alternatives are available in a wide range of enterprise software categories, including some that may surprise you."

"In many ways, Microsoft has done us a favor by creating a standard that developers can write for. IBM created a hardware standard that software developers can create for. IBM did us a favor my making it open. Microsoft hasn't done that. I think that in the long run, the PC platform will outlive Windows, and for a very good reason: because it's open."

"In the next five to 10 years, the open-source movement will transform the software business, according to several top industry executives speaking at the AO 2005 Innovation Summit at Stanford University."

"Despite Microsoft's claims that its .Net platform is sprouting its own ecosystem and is undergoing substantial adoption in the industry, some say the adoption of open-source opportunities appear to outpace .Net. Indeed, if investors are any indication, it appears that some are more apt to fund companies based on open source technology than they are to fund .Net-based opportunities."

"Stacey Quandt, principal of the IT analysis firm Quandt Analytics, agreed. "Many users gravitate toward open source or consider it because of the perception of lower cost," she said. 'But, when someone chooses open source software, they're choosing it based on technical requirements.' Besides, Quandt added, 'software costs are a small percentage of an overall IT budget. The largest part of the IT budget is usually staffing, not software.'"

"Open source is changing the economics of information technology at the software level rather than the hardware level. And that's a big deal. Because whether or not you believe that information technology or information processing is a core piece of competitive advantage for many companies, what happens in that space really does matter a lot. So I think the commoditization of a big piece of that infrastructure is pretty significant, for lots of different industries."

"The freedom, to which free software proponents refer to, has a direct correspondence with the need of transparency required by SOX. It is our claim that Free Software allows for a higher degree of transparency than Proprietary Software, and therefore Free Software will allow corporations to comply to SOX more easily."

"Microsoft and Apple fans will argue that open source "drop-ins" are not true substitutes for their favorite Microsoft Office or Windows Media Center or slick Apple offerings, and maybe they are correct. For now. But Windows and Mac fans should understand that the flexibility and low cost of open source could erode the margins in the lower desktop market tiers, leaving Windows and Mac nowhere to go but into the relatively smaller-volume upper-tier markets. Getting trapped up market happens more frequently than you would think to market leaders. According to Harvard Biz Prof Clayton Christensen, the margins in disruptive technologies like open source are too small for companies like Microsoft to pursue."

"This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software (abbreviated as OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS) is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper’s goal is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS when acquiring software. This paper examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, OSS/FS on the desktop, usage reports, governments and OSS/FS, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions."

"Companies did not cite low cost as their main reason for deploying open source, a factor usually considered one of the main reasons for open source's success. Rather, companies said open source's top benefit was the flexibility allowed by the open-source licence."

"While vendors are enhancing their products, those looking for low-cost, no-frills DBMS software don't need to look very far for viable options. Open source database software has been available for more than 20 years; the products dominating the market today include Berkeley DB, Cloudscape/Derby, Ingres, MySQL, and PostgreSQL."

"The open source software industry has a radically opposite vision: mix-and-match applications from a variety of vendors that interoperate because they're built on open standards. 'The original concept of Web services was platforms and development frameworks that were application-independent,' Wilcox said. Now, Microsoft is making Web services an essential tool of virtually all the products, 'but it's either Microsoft's way or the highway.'"

"But given the low barrier to entry, it's easy to understand why thousands of companies are tempted to use open source for, at the least, those projects that fall shy of the mission-critical line. And for those CIOs nervous about the support and licensing issues that surround open source, well-known vendors are increasingly releasing some of their own code to the open-source community."

"Microsoft, Oracle and other conventional vendors must do more than conduct angels-on-pinheads debates and self-interested studies of total cost of ownership. They must deliver tools that can develop better applications in less time, and they must deliver application suites that streamline business processes, not merely tie users into an endless locked-in upgrade cycle. Ultimately, they must reinvent themselves to vie in the global marketplace where open source contends, demonstrating tangible and superior return on investment."

"None of these companies are doing it because they get warm fuzzies from neo-hippie, socialist dreams of open software and free love, as some hyperventilating critics have claimed. They're doing it because Linux makes good, hard business sense. There's more happening here than Linux, though. Take software development, for example. Open source produces better code. Period. End of statement."

"For as long as most technologists can remember, there has been "Wintel," the $250 billion industry dominated by Microsoft's Windows operating systems and Intel's microprocessors. But "Lintel," or the Linux operating system and Intel, is now encroaching on this empire, and behind it is the entire open-source software movement, which threatens to overthrow the Windows industry. Faced with this challenge, Microsoft is showing classic symptoms of "incumbents' disease." Rather than remaking itself, Microsoft is using legal threats, short-term deals, and fear, uncertainty, and doubt to fortify its position. But this strategy probably won't work. The Linux operating system and the open-source model for software development are far from perfect, but they look increasingly likely to depose Microsoft."