Paul Nowak

Bruce Perens, cofounder of the Open Source Initiative and long-time leader of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, announced plans at the November 2003 Desktop Linux Consortium event in Boston to start a project called UserLinux. UserLinux is to be a Linux distribution based on a subset of Debian that will target large and small business desktops and servers. Bruce is currently continuing negotiations with his customers while also beginning to put the first broad brush strokes on UserLinux as a technology. A key aspect of the UserLinux strategy is to build on a solid open source software core and then augment that core with customer-funded engineering work to support further software development, certification, support, and service. Bruce and Paul Nowak discussed what UserLinux is and what it means to software users and to open source developers. LWM: What does UserL... (more)

After Ubuntu, Windows Looks Increasingly Bad, Increasingly Archaic, Increasingly Unfriendly

My recent switch to a single-boot Ubuntu setup on my Thinkpad T60 simply floors me on a regular basis. Most recently it's had to do with the experience of maintaining the software. Fresh from a very long Windows 2000 experience and a four-month Windows XP experience along with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu. Three prior attempts over the years at using Linux as my daily desktop OS had me primed for failure. Well, Ubuntu takes Linux where I've long hoped it would go - easy to use, reliable, dependable, great applications too but more ... (more)

The Powerful Economic Underpinnings of OSS

In 1968, Garret Hardin wrote a seminal paper that ran in Science Magazine called “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin defined the commons as a place where multiple people are each endowed with the privilege to use a given resource, and no one has the right to exclude another. Think of a pasture where many farmers can graze their animals. When multiple users have such privileges of use, each user benefits directly from using the resource (one more cow in a farmer’s herd benefits that farmer directly) but the cost of each person's use is borne by all users (the increased use that o... (more)

Red Hat Is "Growing Up"

Today’s confirmation from the Red Hat Network that support for Red Hat 7.x and 8.0 is ending in December 2003 and that Red Hat 9.0 support will end in April, 2004, has all the trappings of a company that is growing up and growing out of its freely downloadable history. I sadly mark it as an end of an era - and yet another sign of the OSS movement moving toward the enterprise and maturing as it goes. As a Red Hat user since 1995, I know there are simply too many people in my boat for us to go without great alternatives going forward. Perhaps these will come from within Red Hat, b... (more)

Plone and Drupal: Different Approaches, Different Results

Drupal Developer's Journal on Ulitzer Plone and Drupal are two leading open source Content Management Systems (CMS). Both were recognized in the 2009 Open Source CMS awards, run by Packt Publishing.  Both also have large installed bases and large developer communities.  This is made evident by some quick searching on Google: A search for LinkedIn profiles that mention Plone (search for 'plone site:linkedin.com/pub/') turns up 1350 pages-a large increase from 500 results in 2006. The same kind of search for Drupal developers turns up 9700 pages (search for 'drupal site:linkedin.c... (more)