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Open Source is the most rapidly growing technology today. Within five years, 54% of CIO's surveyed, said Open Source will be their primary platform. CIO Weekly 3/03. A recent Forrester Research report ("The Linux Tipping Point" by Ted Schadler) states that three powerful forces will cause Linux to tip in 2003 and sweep new Unix installs out of the datacenter on all but the data tier by 2007.

These forces are: Unix reliability at Intel prices, falling technology barriers, and commercial support from high-tech giants. "Proprietary Unix on RISC will all but disappear by 2007," the report predicts. Additionally, the report states that Windows-on-Intel systems are also being replaced by Linux.

Open Source Resources

There is a lot of information about Open Source available on the Internet, most of it very technical. Olliance has picked a few resources that give a good overview of Open Source and Linux.

Title	Date Released	Link
Whitepaper - IP and Licensing Best Practices	November 2004
Whitepaper - Company Policies and Open Source	February 2004
Whitepaper - Engaging the Open Source Community	November 2003
Your Open Source Plan - CIO Magazine	March 2003

Open Source Users

Among the organizations using Open Source to achieve business and technology goals are:

•   HP
•   Merrill Lynch
•   Daimler/Chrysler
•   IBM
•   Bell South
•   SAP
•   L.L.Bean
•   US Navy

What is Open Source

The term Open Source represents a set of collectively developed applications with the following characteristics:

•   the source code is publicly available and may be redistributed
•   redistribution is permitted without requiring a fee
•   derived works are permitted and may be redistributed

Why Open Source

Today 39% of large corporations now use Linux and open source (Business Week) and many more are in the planning and evaluation stages. Much of this can be attributed to: current economic conditions, changes in key commercial software vendors licenseing plans, applications running on Linux becoming more widely available, the ability to leverage a global community of software developers, reduced vendor lock-in, and the maturing of Linux.

Open Source Advantages

Open Source offers it users a number of key advantages, among them are:

•   Reduced vendor lock-in
•   Scalability and stability increase in a Windows to Linux transition
•   Control of upgrade timeline
•   Potential access to thousands of qualified developers
•   A more efficient development methodology
•   More stable and reliable products
•   Source code availability
•   The ability to self-support and customize
•   Standards-compliance
•   Diverse support options

Potential Disadvantages

Although Open Source offers many advantages there are still challenges for users and future adoption:

•   Technology delta - transitioning between Windows & Linux
•   Need for retraining staff
•   Maturity, Linux still young at 10 years
•   Critical infrastructure applications are just recently coming available
•   Many Open Source applications have poor documentation
•   Lack of a commercially driven product roadmap

History

Open Source has a rich history of innovative thinking and evangelism that has driven it to the commercial opportunity it represents today.

1984	The GNU Project at MIT, Richard Stallman, and the Free Software Foundation
1991	Linus Torvalds releases first Unix-like kernel; combines it with GNU software to form first release of Linux operating system
1994	Redhat is founded to distribute and support Linux commercially
1995	A community of developers start work on the Apache Web Server
1997	The Cathedral and the Bazaar is published by Eric Raymond
1998	The term "Open Source" is coined
2001	Linux 2.4, a highly scaleable version, is released
2001	HP Open Source's printer drivers
2001	IBM "invests" $1billion in Linux
2002	Significant commercial adoption commences in financial services, government, retail, and manufacturing industries

How is Open Source Used

Open Source is used today in virtually every segment of the technology market, including: embedded systems, PDA's, laptops, workstations, mainframe computers, and set top boxes. Additionally, it is permeating throughout company's entire technology environment from back office systems to the edge systems and even the desktop.