Re: How far Open Source has come...

[TVSET]

Well, it might come as a shock to you, but most ISPs have been running on open source for most of their lives. Look at the Internet today, and you will see a bunch of Linux and FreeBSD servers staffed with Apache, MySQL, Sendmail, INN, SQUID, etc.

Closed source software solutions were, are and will be in minority. One reason for this is that ISPs usually have qualified people (yeah, yeah, I know), which are capable of reading documentation, tweaking configuration, and patching (yes, patching) their systems.

If you want to see the progress of open source, check out the average law office, or an accounting firm. Chances are that they have a Linux machine sitting somewhere in the corner doing file and printing sharing (Samba), and maybe some email. Desktops are not yet that often, but it will come eventually. There are many success stories today, but there are much more to come.

Leonid Mamtchenkov aka TVSET

[Abigail-II]

Open Source still has a long way to go. Yes, there are successes. Apache can rival any commercial webserver. Linux and BSD are often good alternative OSses for low-end servers. But there are also places where there's still a lot of work to do. MySQL is way behind Oracle, DB2 and Sybase. Linux and BSD don't scale well enough to multi-processor systems (and I don't mean 2 or 4 CPU's, but 16, 32, or more), nor are they well equiped to run hardware with swappable system boards, or able to run in multiple domains. And there are areas where you hardly find open source software. Enterprise backup solutions, or high-available clusters, to name a few.

Abigail