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Open-source apps could better meet the needs of small and midsize businesses, software exec says.

Linux has been gaining ground on Microsoft for some time now in various market segments, but up until recently nobody really broke down the figures to see where Linux was making the most progress. Most everyone assumed Linux was making inroads into small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) due to its up-front pricing advantages over Microsoft. Analysts also assumed big businesses were only tentatively using Linux due to corporate stodginess.

Computer-based automotive crash simulations haven't made significant headlines since the 1990s, when vendors like Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. were providing workstation-based simulation software to automotive players like Audi and BMW. With that information in hand, many authorities in the automotive circuit may have been scratching their heads this week about the relevance of an IBM announcement that had the Volvo Car Corp. purchasing a high-performance computing (HPC) platform to conduct automobile crash simulations.

You might think that Compiere Inc. is the new kid on the enterprise resource planning (ERP) block. But large businesses like early adopter Goodyear Dunlop Tires Germany have been using the open source program since 2000. Compiere co-creator Jorg Janke said most of his company's business users hail from outside the U.S., though that is beginning to change. Janke talked to SearchEnterpriseLinux.com about his company's product at the Open Source Business Conference. Here are some excerpts from that conversation

Hoary Hedgehogs are apparently a bit slow out of the gate. The next release of the Ubuntu free Linux distribution, dubbed the "Hoary Hedgehog," now will be released on Friday, according to new messages posted on the Ubuntu site.

A new study funded by Microsoft Corp. suggests some web servers running on Windows are more secure than those employing the leading Linux-based solution. Microsoft says the results refute the commonly held belief that Linux offers a more secure environment for web servers.

Hewlett Packard is readying a new enterprise-quality NAS (network attached storage) device that will be based on the Linux operating system and managed using the company's StorageWorks Grid architecture, according to an HP executive.

Most mid-size enterprises are not interested in using Linux, the seemingly fast-growing alternative to Microsoft operating systems. According to a recent study by Info-Tech Research Group, London, Ontario, a technology research firm, just 10% of surveyed mid-size enterprises plan to evaluate Linux within the next three years and only a portion of these will actually adopt it.

On the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting held in Brussels, Belgium, Free Software Foundation’ (FSS) president Richard Stallman spoke about The Free Software Foundation's Campaign for Free BIOS.

"OpenNMS is an open source package that has not only been successful as a tool to help network managers run their networks, but also as an example of how open source software can be leveraged to create a service business. The latter will be the focus of this article..."

The U.K. government is backing a new initiative aimed at promoting the use of open-source software in the public sector, providing a forum for those working in the public sector to test and use such software.

Those who have been concerned with the number of security vulnerabilities found in the BIND server through the years, or who prefer an easier DNS solution, may wish to investigate an alternative, djbdns. This software, written from scratch by D.J. Bernstein, provides a much more robust, simplified and secure framework for DNS. djbdns is easy to install and configure, and is much less complex than BIND, essentially the same functionality.

Linus Torvalds offered an explanation to the lkml of the recent decision to switch away from using BitKeeper to manage the Linux kernel.

Sudhir Gandotra is an open source marketeer par excellence. He is best known for Kalculate, an accounting package for the Linux desktop, but Gandotra has been providing support for Linux desktops for almost a decade. In this interview he talks of various open source adoption barriers that exist in India, his experience marketing a product that mandates the use of a non-standard operating system, and the reasons behind his Linux desktop for India.

The man who maintains the Linux kernel says he's quite confident that the latest versions of the operating system are the best and most stable. For now. Andrew Morton of Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) said the current builds of the Linux 2.6 kernel are being adopted by enough of the enterprise distributions in the market that work on a 2.7 kernel tree has been placed on hold.

The enterprise-focused CHAOS system will be able to turn your office PCs into a single supercomputer at night

It's been in the air for a few weeks... Mandrakesoft has decided to change its name! All details are available in the press-release below.

The success of open source lies in its ability to deliver solutions that are too costly to maintain and don't deliver any revenues to providers, a leading strategy consultant and author Geoffrey Moore said at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

Mac emulator CherryOS is apparently moving from a commercial product to the world of open source, according to note on the Web site. Yesterday the Web site said the product was on hold, until further notice, but that was changed today to say, "Due to Overwhelming Demand, Cherry Open Source Project -- Launches 5.1.2005."

Microsoft's Jason Matusow, director of the company’s Shared Source initiative bravely went where no Vole has gone before yesterday -- an Open Source Business Conference. You have to admire such bravery.