This paper surveys Linux's suitability for use by owners of very small businesses and the self-employed. It was written by Howard Fosdick, a self-employed database consultant who finds Linux fairly well-suited to his needs, and reckons it has saved him thousands of dollars in recent years.

Two EU-funded projects in the area of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS), namely OpenTTT and FLOSSMETRICS, have recently published a F/OSS guide for SMEs. Different types of software applications and businesses are addressed, making this guide useful for most SMEs that wish to simply use F/OSS or even build a F/OSS-based business approach.

Open-source software has found increasing acceptance within IT for infrastructure application - but many may still wonder, 'Is it possible to run a company almost entirely with open-source offerings?'

This blog entry on Matt Asay's Open Road blog at C-Net talks about the emerging advantages to off-shoring development to Latin America, because of the incredible free software movement happening there and the benefits over far-away development to "code factories" in India or Eastern Europe.

Michael Liedtke
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE–Microsoft Corp. has withdrawn its $42.3-billion (U.S.) bid to buy Yahoo Inc., scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc

Kamloops Thompson School District #73, British Columbia, Canada, with 55 elementary and secondary schools, chose a majority of open source software on Debian GNU / Linux as it is easier to maintain and in their experience offers better support.

It is no secret that Microsoft uses a lot of GNU/Linux in house and we covered some examples of this in the past. Even just a week ago Microsoft acquired yet another company (Forecast) for over 100 million dollars and that company has merely everything based on Free software, including GNU/Linux. It brags about it in its Web site.