I think that everybody knows what Microsoft's goal is. It is the same answer that Brain gives to Pinky every night. I think that everybody knows what Apple's goal is, if you don't have an isomething then you are just not cool. That company makes it hip to be square (who is the artist of that song?). But how many people know what Linux's goal is?

The pragmatic and ethically-rooted world of free software might seem about as far away as possible from the highly abstract and, at times, morally dubious world of high finance. But as Richard Stallman has frequently pointed out, free software is by no means antithetical to making money: it's just a question of how you make money.

At Underwriters Safety & Claims, security abruptly rose to the top of IT Director Grant Nickle's to-do list late last fall when it became clear that the existing security system needed replacement.

Oracle and now IBM seem to have strange ideas about creating a business around open source software for the enterprise. First it was Oracle's Unbreakable Linux program, derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux sans its proprietary bits and supported for peanuts to beat RHEL and similar community projects such as CentOS.

The European Union's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, delivered an unusually blunt rebuke to Microsoft on Tuesday by recommending that businesses and governments use software based on open standards. She called using open technology a "smart business decision".

Nothing warms the cockles of a Linux lover's heart more than to hear that X or Y big company/city is migrating its desktops to the free operating system. And nothing can evoke more bitter insults than the reversal of any such decision.

Open-source security from companies such as Untangle may offer a viable alternative.

've been blogging about OSS for nearly 2 years now. My in-the-trenches experience with OSS goes back to early 2004. The constant drumbeat of "proprietary software is dead, open source is the only path forward" has been deafening at times. I'll admit that I, too, used to espouse similar words. But, I am fortunate enough to work with colleagues who've been in the software industry since day one.