Linux in the news... (fwd)

[Bruce Smith <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Future Of Linux Meeting Set For Today With OS Luminaries

July 15, 1998

SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., Newsbytes via
NewsEdge Corporation : Whither Linux? The freely available,
Unix-like operating system (OS) has gained ever more attention
as its share of the server market grew faster than traditionally
commercial products like Windows NT and various flavors of
Unix. In a sort of summit conference Tuesday evening, major
Linux figures like the system's original author, Linus Torvalds,
were slated to try to get a handle on where the upstart OS is
likely to go from here. 

The freely distributed, openly developed, Unix-like Linux OS runs
on Intel- based PCs and Internet servers. It has become the
most celebrated of a new breed of "open-source" software
developed incrementally by many volunteers, who mostly write
snippets of code to solve immediate problems and contribute
them to a growing body of related code. 

Netscape recently adopted a Linux-like development model for
its browser, making the source code for Navigator 5.0 freely
available but retaining control over new features adopted into its
"mother version." It is a very different way of doing things from
traditional methods, in which a software company jealously
guards the secrecy of the source code for its products. 

The Tuesday meeting on Linux was scheduled for a 700-seat area
at the Santa Clara Convention Center but was overbooked
almost immediately. It is produced by Taos Mountain Inc., a
system consulting and staffing firm, as one of a continuing series
of "Tech Talk" panel discussions involving Silicon Valley insiders. 

Michael Masterson, Taos Mountain director of technical services,
will host the meeting. He told Newsbytes his firm invited the
Silicon Valley Linux User Group (SVLUG) to co-produce the
meeting because "we didn't want to do it without the prime
audience, which is recognized and admitted Linux users. The ones
who are out of the Linux closet, so to speak, and proud of it." 

Scheduled to appear for the discussion, in addition to Torvalds,
are: Sunil Saxena of Intel's Unix performance laboratory, who
will demonstrate Linux running on a four-processor, Intel P-II
Xeon platform; Robert Hart, an executive with the Red Hat
Software, a Linux distribution firm; Larry Augustin, director of
the non-profit Linux International consortium; and Jeremy
Allison, developer of SAMBA. 

The high interest in this meeting reflects the growing stature of
Linux as a stable server OS. A year or so ago, an industry analyst
described Linux to Newsbytes as "cobbled together by a bunch
of longhair geeks on the Internet." As recently as last month
some industry commentators passed along rumors of people
being let go for suggesting that Linux be used on the enterprise. 

But many industry watchers now say the development model
results in a rapid and responsive, if not centrally directed,
evolution of software. And companies are noticing the widely
hailed stability of Linux, not to mention its price. It's free, and
per-seat licensing is not required. 

A recent survey by market research firm ZD Market Intelligence
found that Linux has reached third position among Internet
service providers (ISPs), following Windows NT and various
commercial flavors of Unix. 

Announcements of support for the fast-spreading OS have
come recently from industry players like Ascend Communications
and network interface card (NIC) company Phobos Corp. Sun
Microcomputers, with its SPARC (Scalar Processor
ARChitecture) based servers, works on compatibility issues
directly with premier Linux distributors like Red Hat and Caldera.
PowerQuest recently added Linux to the list of hard drive
partition types supported by its Partition Magic software. And
International Data Corp. (IDC) now includes figures for Linux in
its annual "Server Operating Environments" report. 

Said Masterson, "Linux right now is a phenomenon and no one
really knows how it will shake out. ISPs led the way, but now it's
making its way into business server rooms too. That was not
predicted by anyone -- which is what I meant when I called it a
phenomenon. It's raising open source development to entirely
new levels." 

Taos Mountain maintains a World Wide Web site at
http://www.taos.com 

More information on Linux is available at the co-sponsoring
SVLUG site at http://www.svlug.org and many other places on
the Web. 

Reported by Newsbytes News Network:
http://www.newsbytes.com . 

(19980713/Press & Reader Contact: Michael Masterson, Taos
Mountain, 408-588- 1200, e-mail mmasterson@taos.com
/WIRES *PC, *NETWORK, ONLINE, BUSINESS/) 

<<Newsbytes -- 07-14-98>>