A friend said to me recently that “Firefox is for the home, Internet Explorer is for the office.” His comments reflect commonly found stigma and fears that free and open source software – and Linux too – are not suitable for a business environment. Let me set the record straight, giving real feedback from companies who have made the switch and don’t look back.

Although Mozilla's Monday release of Firefox 3 Beta project, a developer preview release of its popular open source Web browser, has been a global effort, a significant portion of its core development takes place in Toronto.

The recent fine levied on Microsoft by the European anti-trust authorities has reminded people just how dominant Microsoft is in the industry.

Although some companies and government agencies have embraced open source, the level of adoption in Singapore is still low by most counts, industry observers say.

CIO.com asked the lead guys for each distro about its suitability for business use. In "The Fedora OS: Free, Stable and Customizable," Max Spevack, Fedora Project leader explains why this one is a stable, robust operating system fit for use on millions of computers worldwide.

CIO.com asked the lead guys for each distro about its suitability for business use. In "Red Hat Enterprise Linux: The Business OS for Flexibility and Value" Brian Stevens, CTO and vice president of engineering, Red Hat makes his case that Red Hat is the choice for reducing operating costs and providing a secure, reliable, scalable operating system.

Google could be heading for a showdown with Sun over the way Android, Google's new mobile phone software platform, handles Java.

A few years back, some proprietary hardware companies hit the panic button when Dell and Microsoft Windows moved into point-of-sale (POS) systems. Fast forward to the present, and open source is trying its hand at disrupting the POS market. You already know about Linux running on POS systems. Now, POS applications themselves are going open source. Here’s how.