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Technology Stocks : Red Hat Software Inc. (Nasdq-RHAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric Wells who wrote (1046)	9/8/1999 3:13:00 PM
From: Smart Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1794

Lets see 200 today! Bought at 80 last week, and enjoy the ride!

To: Eric Wells who wrote (1046)	9/8/1999 3:17:00 PM
From: Eric Sandeen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1794

Eric - I'll barge in. :-) One of the most prevalent success stories is that of Apache, the open source web server. See netcraft.com for info on market share of the various web servers, but here are the current stats this month: Apache (55%) Microsoft (22%) Netscape (7%) Another very successful project is SAMBA which allows a Unix box to act like an NT server in terms of shared disk space, printers, and other tasks normally performed by NT for Windows clients. samba.org This is probably running in the back offices of many companies, transparently providing services normally performed by NT. With managers who crow about how their "NT" fileserver never goes down. :-) The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) is a great drawing program for Linux. Looks fairly simple on the surface, but it's actually very powerful. Regarding Linus's contributions - I can't remember the stats, but very little of the current kernel code is actually "his" anymore. And that's just the kernel. Linus had no direct involvement with the vast majority of the hundreds of packages that make up a "Linux" system. Usually, when people say "Linux" they are referring to the Linux kernel and all of the packages that support and interoperate with it.

To: Eric Wells who wrote (1046)	9/8/1999 3:34:00 PM
From: Mitch Blevins	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1794

Please educate me - what successful software products have been developed via Open Source? Of course the obvious answer is Linux. But are there others? I certainly do not know all of them, but I can think of a few off the top of my head: Apache - the most used webserver on the internet, more than twice as popular as IIS or any other competitor. Samba - I don't have statistics, but very widely used and effective. Perl - The defacto automation language of the Internet. Python - A close runner-up to Perl. Bind - Hard to argue with the success of this one. Sendmail - You've used it if you've every used email. As for Linux - is it truly easier to use than NT? For the most part, I'd say no. But it depends on what you are using it for. It is much easier to automate and customize, so if your usage strays outside of the pattern envisioned by the original developers, then it is much easier. Does it offer more advanced functionality than NT? Again, depends on what you are using it for. I'd say stability and automation capabilities are it's strong suit. And how much of Linux was actually developed via the Open Source method - and how much of it was created through the work of Linus. Measured in bulk (lines of code), the estimate is that about 10% is still Linus' work. Of course, he does contribute in a supervisory role. I would counter your claims by saying that your one example of Linux does not lessen the strength of the arguments I presented in my earlier post. Now that I have given more, will you reconsider? I agree that your arguments have weight, but I think it would be more productive to explore why the Open Source dev model is effective in spite of your insights. There must be something there, after all... Have you ever worked in software development? I am currently involved in a project similar in scale to your work with Microsoft. This is why I am interested in your opinions. You can read about it at debian.org It is an international project, with over 500 active developers, and many more than that in a satellite role. It supports many different languages, which is similar to the Programs Group at MS. However, it is much broader in scope, as it covers applications, core OS and utilities, servers, documentation, and everything in-between. It also runs on many more architectures than MS products. The resulting product is also very large in scale, requiring 5 CD's to hold the complete thing. Any insights you have that can be applied to this project would be appreciated. -Mitch

To: Eric Wells who wrote (1046)	9/8/1999 3:49:00 PM
From: Pink Minion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1794

Please educate me - what successful software products have been developed via Open Source? The main reason this is such a better method of developing software is because the code has been rewritten so many times. The best software I write is the 2 and 3 iteration. In a closed proprietory model it is impossible to delete or rewrite production code. It gets cloned. Add functionality - clone it. This is why you have a 125 meg word processing, crash and burn bloatware program. Oh, look - RHAT up 24 - did ynot say low 20's per day? LOL!!!!! MH