Maria Winslow

Some organizations will find that they are able to make wide use of open source software, while others will find only limited suitable migration candidates. Some of the discrepancy will be due to differences across industries. Industries that tend to make conservative technology decisions, for example, are likely to have more legacy systems that are difficult to migrate. But even within the same industries, technical managers will find a range of potential migration scenarios. The differences in experience will depend on the platform-neutrality of the applications in use. Those organizations that have made heavy use of Web-based technologies, and kept it platform-neutral, will have the most migration opportunities now. When the Web browser began to replace the operating system as a computing platform, some technical managers understood that this was the wave of the ... (more)

Huge Savings with OpenNMS for Managed Hosting Company

When Rackspace Managed Hosting started in 1998 to lease Internet colocated servers to customers, they went with Linux almost everywhere in an effort to keep costs down. In fact, heavy use of Linux was standard in the low-margin managed hosting sector. According to IT manager Eric Evans, "people would be surprised by how much they would save if they went with Linux." Linux Servers and a Mix of DesktopsEvans supports a little under 200 servers for internal company use. Evans put all of the internal services that he could on Linux servers, including e-mail, file servers, print serve... (more)

Open Source Web Site Content Management Systems

Web site content management can be difficult, and commercial products can be expensive. Luckily, a few open source projects are highly recommended for the job. In fact, eWeek has claimed that Bricolage was one of the best content management systems it has ever seen, even among commercial offerings, and Mambo won best of show at LinuxWorld this February. In this article, I'll get you started with an overview of these examples of production-ready open source projects. Bricolage Bricolage (http://bricolage.cc) is a free open source content management and publishing system. Its full... (more)

Open Source Java Application Servers

Open Source Java Application Servers Activity around open source projects related to Java is building.  You probably already know about JBoss, an open source Java application server, but there are other options as well. Geronimo, an open source Java application server under the Apache umbrella, has come a long way towards becoming a potential replacement for proprietary servers like IBM's WebSphere. IBM even employs a majority of the committers on Geronimo, an indication that they see the writing on the wall.  And the high status of being a part of the Apache Software Foundation ... (more)

Linux.SYS-CON.com Q&A with Lead Developer of Joomla!, Andrew Eddie

In September, core developers of Mambo, the popular open source content management system, announced a fork of the project, called Joomla!, with virtually all active participants following the fork. I caught up with Andrew Eddie, lead developer of the new Joomla!, to find out more about the decision to fork the Mambo project, and to find out how things are going so far. LWM: I'll start with the hard question first: What led you to the decision to fork Mambo? Andrew Eddie: Forking is a very serious decision to make and one that I and the team did not take lightly. In the words of... (more)