Quentin Stafford-Fraser's blog
One should always have something sensational to read on the net...
[Original Link] The thrust of this article, despite the title, is that Linux is causing more problems for traditional Unix vendors at present than for Microsoft. Interestingly, however, the largest Unix vendor is now Apple, and is perhaps the only one winning converts from Linux.
If I had to take away one thought form LinuxWorld this time, a common theme which occurred in several talks I attended, it would be this: Open Source software gives you back control over your business decisions.
With proprietary software, it is often somebody else who tells you when you need to upgrade your hardware, when you need to switch operating systems, when you must re-train your staff. If you have a network now which runs very happily on Windows 3.1, or NT 3.51, or even NT 4, you will not be able to keep it that way for long. What about Office 95? Try buying extra new licenses for these systems. Try getting support for software that runs on them.
With Linux & Open Source, you have no need to upgrade until you want to. If you have a very old system and the original suppliers won't support it for you, you can maintain it yourself or pay somebody else to do so. The point is that the choice is yours.
[Original Link] Doc Searls quotes Vint Cerf: "The history of the Net is the history of its protocols".
And then in this Linux Journal article he emphasises
...that the real virtue of Linux and other forms of infrastructural software...is not only that it's open and free, but that it's transparent. It is see-thru infrastructure. In fact, what makes it infrastructural is the fact that you can see through it. You can trust it because it has no secrets. ...Bill [Gates] says, "Trustworthy Computing is computing that is as available, reliable and secure as electricity, water services and telephony." We should note that all those services are pure infrastructure whose workings are mostly transparent.