Open Source Software: Iron Mountain Foundry

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Open Source Software

Understanding Open Source Software
—Mark Webbink, Red Hat, Inc.
The Open Source community:
(a) developed the Apache webserver which is used to run the majority of webservers in the world today;
(b) developed Sendmail, the most popular e-mail management software; and
(c) developed BIND, the basis for using domain names instead of IP addresses to locate websites.

VCs size up open source challenges and opportunities
—IT Manager's Journal, June 23, 2004
Linux in both the United States and Asia is the fastest-growing operating system ever. MySQL is the number one relational database in the world in number of deployments, and OpenOffice.org, a free office suite, is being downloaded more than 1 million times per month.

"How many of you use Linux?" I ask. Depending on the venue, 20-80% of the audience might raise its hands. "How many of you use Google?" Every hand in the room goes up. And the light begins to dawn. Every one of them uses Google's massive complex of 100,000 Linux servers...
— The Open Source Paradigm Shift, Tim O'Reilly, May 2004

Open Source Software has been a growing force for the last twenty years and now provides complete solutions for business systems.

Compared with proprietary software, open source offers some key advantages:

Reliability and Performance,
Ease of Deployment,
Freedom from Platform Lock-in,
Security, and
Millions of Trained and Certified Developers.

"The world's largest computer companies support the Open Source Software community. Firms like IBM, SGI, HP, Sun, Dell, Novell and Computer Associates to mention a few, contribute money and code to Linux and other projects such as Apache. Also, Apple Computer's current operating system runs on Open Source Software."
— Consulting Times, January 4, 2004

The European Commission's Information Society has a number of reports on Free & Open Source Software (F/OSS), including The Many Aspects of Open Source.