Business Week Coverage (March 2003). Want to know what's really interesting about what I do at work (and at home for that matter?). Be sure to check out the March 3 cover story in Business Week. You can also click here to see an advance copy of the article that includes interviews from my staff. The cover doesn't look to shabby either! Be sure to read the rest of the issue for the special report on Linux and Open Source Development (OSD) in general.
My group actually saved closer to $1.5M (yes million!) by going open source in the few areas we could get approval to use it. I'm sure 2003 will be a different story as the corporate environment begins to embrace the open source philosophy in general. We've already made extensive use of CVS and Sun One Studio for our integrated java/web development. For production web systems we also tools from the Apache Software Foundation, including the apache webserver, mod_perl, mod_ssl, and several tools from the Jakarta Project (Tomcat, Struts, Log4j, etc). For our application infrastructure we make extensive use of JBoss and JaCorb for our EJB and CORBA environments. My internal (company) weblog for my staff is running GreyMatter, which is hosted on my own Solaris-soon-to-be-Linux server. This christmas holiday project turned out be be especially rewarding !
For the record, I've been running Linux at work and at home for several months. The only "rude" awakening I've had at home was the effort needed to get my modem up and running. Unknown at the time, I purchased a cheap ($19.99) PCI "winmodem" that wouldn't work right out of the box. Designed exclusively for Microsoft, these "communications controllers" require proprietary hardware emulation software for the "missing" chips (16550 UART, etc). Luckily other folks have encountered and resolved this issue before me. Armed with the specific chipset (PCT 789) I was able to search the net, download and compile a version of the drivers as loadable modules for my linux 2.2.4 kernel. And I learned a TON OF USEFULL STUFF in the process. I was practically dancing in my office the first time I was able to make the modem sing that familar connection tune. Linux handled my USB hardware with no problems, including my digital camera and my new CD-ROM burner.
BTW, At home I've completely replaced my proprietary software with open source tools. My favorite tools include GNOME for the desktop environment; Mozilla (see mozdev for neat add-ons) for the web; Ximian Evolution for the integrated email, calendar, contacts and task manager; OpenOffice.org for all word processing, spreadsheets and presentations; my SuSE 8.1 Linux distribution comes with several thousand packages which I've only begun to explore.
My group actually saved closer to $1.5M (yes million!) by going open source in the few areas we could get approval to use it. I'm sure 2003 will be a different story as the corporate environment begins to embrace the open source philosophy in general. We've already made extensive use of CVS and Sun One Studio for our integrated java/web development. For production web systems we also tools from the Apache Software Foundation, including the apache webserver, mod_perl, mod_ssl, and several tools from the Jakarta Project (Tomcat, Struts, Log4j, etc). For our application infrastructure we make extensive use of JBoss and JaCorb for our EJB and CORBA environments. My internal (company) weblog for my staff is running GreyMatter, which is hosted on my own Solaris-soon-to-be-Linux server. This christmas holiday project turned out be be especially rewarding !
For the record, I've been running Linux at work and at home for several months. The only "rude" awakening I've had at home was the effort needed to get my modem up and running. Unknown at the time, I purchased a cheap ($19.99) PCI "winmodem" that wouldn't work right out of the box. Designed exclusively for Microsoft, these "communications controllers" require proprietary hardware emulation software for the "missing" chips (16550 UART, etc). Luckily other folks have encountered and resolved this issue before me. Armed with the specific chipset (PCT 789) I was able to search the net, download and compile a version of the drivers as loadable modules for my linux 2.2.4 kernel. And I learned a TON OF USEFULL STUFF in the process. I was practically dancing in my office the first time I was able to make the modem sing that familar connection tune. Linux handled my USB hardware with no problems, including my digital camera and my new CD-ROM burner.
BTW, At home I've completely replaced my proprietary software with open source tools. My favorite tools include GNOME for the desktop environment; Mozilla (see mozdev for neat add-ons) for the web; Ximian Evolution for the integrated email, calendar, contacts and task manager; OpenOffice.org for all word processing, spreadsheets and presentations; my SuSE 8.1 Linux distribution comes with several thousand packages which I've only begun to explore.
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