More news of Open Source from ACM

[Steve Jenkin]

Here are some more snippets from the ACM newsletter that relate to Open
Source.
What's interesting is the number of them is increasing.

PLEASE tell me if these are interesting/useful to any of you, I don't
want to be Spamming this list ;-)  [If I don't hear from anyone, I'll
STOP sending these notes]

cheers
sj
=====
"What's New on the Open Source Front?"
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1002w.html#item10
(points to: http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19532.html )

Reports on RPM, GTK+, and Hewlett-Packard's Open Source SSI
AND that "OpenOffice has proven very popular among schools"

=====
"Honeymoon Over for Linux Users"
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1002w.html#item15
(points to: http://www.vnunet.com/News/1135481)

Slapper worm.... Virus writers now looking at Linux [The price of
Success :-)]

=====
"Linux Ready for Prime Time?"
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1002w.html#item18
(points to: http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=3d8f9b981 )
      
"Linux sneakes in through the back door;"
"demonstrates that companies are incapable of selling Linux to
executives directly"
Talks about need for Linux Standards base so that (commercial?) Apps run
on all distros.

Under 'misinformation' comes:
Accenture's James Hall says [like he'd know & isn't biased] 
"many IT consultants are still reluctant to embrace Linux because of
high maintenance and upgrade costs that offset the low deployment costs"

AND importantly
"IDC estimated that Linux owns a mere 2 percent of the corporate desktop
market, but... the NOS [server] market share has leapt from 7 percent to
about 30 percent over the last five years"

==> That's TWO doublings in 5 years - a 2.5 year doubling time [Does
this sound right??]
==> Projecting ahead Linux could/should achieve 80% of the 'NOS'
[Server] market in JUST 4 years.  This ignores effects of MAC OS/X and
Microsoft competing by _giving away_ it software OR causing legal
problems [if _only_ they could figure out who to sue :-)]

-- 
--------
Steve Jenkin, Unix Sys Admin
PO Box 48, Kippax, ACT 2615
0412 786 915