I assisted a company today with a spectacular Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) crash. The experience showed some folly in the oft-claimed mantra that Windows-based applications are graphical and friendly. In fact, here’s a free Linux-friendly open source package called Afresco which makes a better SharePoint than SharePoint.

The UK's position as the open source laggard of Europe is preventing the growth of UK software industry and skills, according Alfresco, an open source enterprise content management company. Alfresco is a UK success story, counting top investment banks and the European Commission among its customers, yet only 5% of its business comes from its home turf.

Alfresco Software's survey found that companies that decided to launch its software -- as opposed to those evaluating and testing the applications -- tended to prefer open source operating systems, application servers, databases and browsers. That is, when companies eventually adopted the open source content management application, they deployed it using Linux.