Tux Watch

Part- 2. Pakistan Brings Nation Closer To Realization

To take FOSS efforts to the next level in Pakistan, the Government initiated a project worth Rs29 million titled “Open Source Resource Center” (OSRC) [here] was established at the through the Ministry of IT’s [here] implementation arm the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) [here] in January 2004 in Islamabad to facilitates stake holders and investors in the software industry, should they decide to shift their businesses from vendor-dependent proprietary software to open source software technology. It aims to create a culture of open source software use in Pakistan through media awareness and training workshops, and act as a virtual community for experts in this field.

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Part- I. Realizing True Potential

Readers on this side of the world may not be aware of some very interesting ICT and FOSS developments taking place in the various regions of Asia. First of all, there are many FOSS initiatives that are very active within the overall region adding value to the global FOSS movement. These regional or country level initiatives include organizations and groups like:

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Interested in taking over the world with GNU/Linux? Ken Leyba’s blog on the Free Software Magazine website has a very interesting article [here] and as the title implies, it lists ten interesting ways to take over the world, and in this case, with Linux ofcourse. Some of the points are very useful and the rest are the basics that we have learnt from the test of time and practical experience in the FOSS Industry. The interesting fact nowadays is taht Linux has grown up into a commercial grade Operating System environment and as time is passing, more and more vendors are either developing versions of their software to run on Linux or intend to add this support in the near future. The ten ways listed in no particular order show what you can do whenever you can do :

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Can a wiki-based search engine compete with the established commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN? No one may have an answer to this at the moment but the the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales through a Dec 23, 2006 online posting announced that he was developing the search engine that could probably do so in the near future.

The Wikia website [here] states that search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet that stands broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken as it lacks freedom, lacks community, lacks accountability, lacks transparency and the Wikia project will change all that.

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The USC, Simi/Conejo, and UCLA Linux User Groups will be holding “SCALE 5X: The Fifth Annual Southern California Linux Expo” from February 10-11, 2007. The event will bring together Linux and Open Source Software companies, developers, and users. The event will be covering the growing technological Linux community and its future directions. The Expo’s educational focus is composed of (but not limited to) technical seminars and booths where, among other things, both commercial software and hardware vendors, and local non-profit groups (for example, Linux Users Groups), participate in product display, and software demonstrations and tutorials, respectively. The event will be bringing together a blend of business leaders and technical experts.

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Enterprise Resource Planning software integrates departments and functions across a company into one computer system, conceptually running off a single database, enabling various departments to share information and communicate with each other. ERP systems comprise of function-specific modules designed to interact with the other modules, eg Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Purchasing, HRMS, Sales and Marketing, Distribution etc. Business Intelligence software is used to mine data from large information system repositories such as Data Warehouses and the web.

The LinuxInsider reports [here] that IDC estimates that overall market for non-proprietary ERP applications will hit about US$36 billion by 2008 with FOSS ERP systems like Compiere ERP, ERP5, OpenMFG and Fisterra taking it there. Organizations worldwide are now looking towards as the possibility of mission-critical Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence (BI) solutions as FOSS is making its way into a number of “niche” markets. Another interesting fact is that Oracle and SAP are also making a major shift towards the Linux platform proving that FOSS is receiving adequate support by the global business and industry.

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The debate about how operating systems manage security has been the talk of the Tech Industry since long. If I was to answer this question that how secure is Linux or any other OS in the market today, it would be simply the Software Architecture and Design of that particular OS environment. From my experience with Windows after DOS, it gradually moved up the security ladder but today exists as a very unsecure platform that requires many applications to secure it.

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DistroWatch’s statistics on how the various favorite Linux Distributions have performed during 2006 are available [here]. A list of the top 25 distributions that are ranked by page hit figures in the past 12 months of 2006, compared with the same period in 2005 is available.

According to the list, Ubuntu Linux maintained its top spot for both 2005 as well as 2006. OpenSUSE stands second in 2006. Mandriva, KNOPPIX and Xandros have been loosing fans where as “geek” distributions like Slackware and Gentoo, swapped places in the table. New in the top 25 are SabayonLinux, Xubuntu and Freespire, replacing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Linspire and VLOS. And the biggest climbers? Zenwalk shot up 8 and PCLinuxOS went up 5 places. Good show Linux world!

Search engine giant Google Inc., is extending its corporate social responsibility to the developing world community through making significant grants for computer hardware equipped with Linux and various other FOSS applications. According to a post on Google’s official coding Blog [here], Google has made a grant that enables notebook computers running Linux and a variety of FOSS to be rolled out at rural schools in Fiji.

Google’s Open Source Program Office has extended the donation via the Imara Project at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The project aims to

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I really have no intentions of boring my readers but this FUD (fear-uncertainty-doubt) being injected by Oracle as means for self-promotion is getting worse. Recently, I found this Gartner Report offer in my mailbox. Really, why would Gartner even do a research on the comparison of Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux Programme and Red Hat Linux when Oracle is using Red Hat’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the first place? My possible hunch, Oracle is paying Gartner to these FUD reports, a common attribute of the closed source/proprietary source world member corporations. Remember that Microsoft was very active in using a similar strategy trying to defame the up rise of Linux on the Server side.

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TuxWatch.com Exclusive: I have been continuously analysing the various deals, new product launches and set backs of the Proprietary and FOSS industries globally and from my standpoint, the largest blooper for the year 2006 in corporate deals was the Microvell (Microsoft and Novell) deal whereas the grand winners of the corporate world deals are both Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux Support Programme and RedHat Linux.

Microvell Deal: The Microsoft and Novell deal has done a couple of things for both the Proprietary and FOSS worlds. First it shocked both the

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The December 2006 issue of CIO magazine carries an interesting story titled, “The Great OS Experiment” initiated and carried out by 44-year-old John Halamka CIO of the Harvard Medical School and CareGroup renowned for his adventurous experiments with medical and genetic technology. The experiment emerged out of interruptions caused due to updates, virus scans and much more when Halamka’s laptop was running Windows XP. This motivated him to

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According to the Software For [website], Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (also available to anyone). They’ve gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more. Why did they put this collection together in the first place? Well, they say the at the cost of a college education is always increasing and usually faster than students can earn money. They hope that

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Oracle’s move into the Linux world through its new product combined with Operating System platform support strategy and distribution, “Unbreakable Linux” has already caused an unrest in the market that was already buying Linux support from companies like Redhat and Novell. Most of the industry thinks that it might be possible that Oracle will only be supported on platforms blessed by Oracle itself. The FAQs available on Oracle’s website speak of such a ‘Transition Path for Red Hat and Novell customers’ on Page#4 [here]:

“What is the transition path for existing Red Hat and Novell Linux users?
Transition is very easy. Existing Red Hat and Novell Linux customers that move to the Unbreakable Linux support program may receive credit for

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Linux has been part of mainstream technological advancements worldwide with the momentum continuously increasing everyday especially when Linux enemies like Microsoft too are digging their way into the FOSS movement through partnerships with Novell. The Information Technology industry is vast and spans globally thus anything happening in the industry in one region also affects the other. After observing the overall Linux industry trends [you can read the year 2006 reflections by at Matt at InfoWorld here], I would like to make the following predictions that will drive the next year:

• Linux will continue to be the leading and preferred server-side operating system in 2007 worldwide.

• 80% of all US based Venture Capital investments will be targeted at

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