Maria Winslow

When people hear that open source software is often free and overall cheaper than proprietary solutions, they're intrigued. But how much cheaper is another question. What other costs are involved? This article examines the budgetary impact of migrating corporate desktops to open source solutions. This is one of many areas where open source can positively impact IT budgets. Classifying Desktops The first step in evaluating the license savings on the desktop is to determine which desktops in your organization are candidates for migrating to Linux, OpenOffice, or both. Step One: Inventory and Distribution Do a complete inventory of desktop applications in your organization. Be sure to interview users directly, since some may be dependent on Windows-specific applications that... (more)

Promoting Open Source Solutions

The Open Source Software Institute is an advocacy group with a mission to promote Open Source software in government. We caught up with executive director John Weathersby to tell us more. LWM: There are several advocacy groups for Open Source - how is your mission different? John Weathersby: There are many really strong organizational groups at work in the Open Source Community. Each of ... (more)

AJAX Performance Measured

AJAX Performance, Measured The latest buzzword in web design is AJAX, or Asynchronous Javascript and XML.  New sites like http://flickr.com manage to provide the interactivity of a desktop-based application in a web page, while using only the javascript that's been in web browsers for some time now.  While many people are aware that this style of design can create a big improvement in the ... (more)

Why We Should Drop the 'Free' Moniker

It became apparent to me recently at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo that our choice of words matters. I was standing at the Mozilla booth when two guys came up and peered over my shoulder. "They're selling the T-shirts here, too," one said with disappointment in his voice, "Let's go." I couldn't believe it - access to the source code isn't enough. Getting award-winning software at no... (more)

The Rapid Development of SugarCRM with LAMP

After all the buzz about SugarCRM at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo this year in Boston, we caught up with the company's co-founder and VP of Open Source, Clint Oram, to find out more about his hot new project. How did you get started with SugarCRM? The three of us who co-founded SugarCRM, Inc., and the SugarCRM Open Source Project worked together in the CRM industry for several years a... (more)