Paul Nowak

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.com/pub/').  This tells me that, in LinkedIn anyway, there might be approximately seven to eight times as many Drupal developers as there are Plone developers. Below I will outline the strength an... (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 yea... (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, e... (more)

Opinion: Linux May Be the Main Life Support for Intel's Itanium

There was a report last week at the “The Inquirer” that gave us a little insight into the prospects for the future arc of Intel’s Itanium server chip line. For the past two years with the advent of the Opteron line of server chips that offer 32 and 64-bit native capability for the X86 code base, there have been loud rumbles about where Itanium now fits in the CPU landsc... (more)

Why Revealing Any Infringing Source Code is 'Game-Over' for SCO

Everybody in the open source world and in IT in general knows that the forces of open source software development will quickly replace any code SCO shows as being clearly infringing of any SCO rights. SCO knows this. You know this. My grandma might even know this. Yet, no rational individual or company is going to pay SCO's licensing fee for use of Linux until SCO can show that there is in... (more)