For many sports fans worldwide, Formula One racing is the pinnacle of all competitive racing. The degree of technology and skill that go into turning one lap in a Formula One race car is unsurpassed in any form of racing. The drivers are the world's best; the racing circuits the most demanding; and the cars are masterpieces of design and form alike.

A funny thing has happened to the computer industry over the last few years. The traditional wisdom was that there were two types of companies. At one extreme, there were small, fast startups that could maneuver nimbly and rapidly gain market share. On the other end of the spectrum were old, established, conservative companies that slowly faded into extinction or irrelevance as they lost track of what the market wanted.

At this point, Linux has gone a long way toward totally infiltrating Microsoft's server business. For databases, Web servers, and file servers, Linux competes on an equal footing, if not a superior one. There's only one missing link left - a replacement for Microsoft's business-ubiquitous Exchange Server.

This article explores the recent trend toward open telecom platform solutions as proposed by three key industry consortia - PICMG, OSDL, and the SA Forum - working in the areas of highly available hardware, middleware, and carrier grade operating systems.

'I did a research degree entitled 'The Linux Operating System: A Socio-Legal Study' at the University of Warwick, UK, from 1999 to 2001,' writes Maureen O'Sullivan. 'The conclusion of this work was that users and developers of free software needed and deserved legislative protection and recognition, in addition to the licenses on which they rely. This was so glaringly obvious that I was surprised at the time that no one seemed to have pursued this idea vigorously.'

For this roundtable discussion, I sought out Linux gaming industry folks who were willing to let me pick their brains. Once I had them, I began our discussion by sending them a list of questions to start us off on what I hoped would be a productive chat. Rather than take up precious page space with commentary, I'll take us right to the more interesting bit, the results of this conversation starter...

This article describes the HA-OSCAR architecture and features, and demonstrates how to set up a highly available Linux cluster using the first beta release of HA-OSCAR version 1.0.

It's a familiar story. IT departments in industry, government, and academic organizations struggle to keep up with their users' insatiable demand for processing power. Every 18 months, just as Moore's law predicted, processing power doubles. IT departments buy and install new systems. Users find better and bigger applications that consume this processing power almost before it's installed.

Maybe we're taking the whole recycling thing too far, but the Linux.SYS-CON.com editors decided to do a little archive-diving for the most interesting, popular, controversial and recyclable Linux stories of 2002. As a year-end treat, we've posted our list of standout stories here and added a few insights from the authors, as well. (2,000 words)

Richard Stallman is easily the most controversial figure associated with Linux and the open source movement. And the controversy begins with this very terminology. Stallman, fairly or not, believes the operating system is and should be called GNU/Linux, and the movement that he is a part of is not favoring 'open source' but 'free software.'

This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Understanding Open Source Software Development by Joseph Feller and Brian Fitzgerald, published by Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201734966. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (c) 2002 Addison-Wesley

This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Understanding Open Source Software Development by Joseph Feller and Brian Fitzgerald, published by Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201734966. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (c) 2002 Addison-Wesley

This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Understanding Open Source Software Development by Joseph Feller and Brian Fitzgerald, published by Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201734966. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (c) 2002 Addison-Wesley

This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Understanding Open Source Software Development by Joseph Feller and Brian Fitzgerald, published by Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201734966. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (c) 2002 Addison-Wesley

Those of us who have had the pleasure of buying MS products and wonder where it will all end only to realize it's not going to end, consider this. I'm going to illustrate from my own experience and pocket book what the cost comparisons for Linux versus comparable MS products cost you and I.

Open source software combined with commercial licensed software has become a market reality as open source technologies, like Linux and Apache, which are already tremendous market successes, are combined into business models by vendors who want to win in the marketplace. It's happening today and will continue to flourish.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 13 of Linux System Administration: A User's Guide written by Marcel Gagne, published by Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201719347. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (c) 2002 Addison-Wesley

This is an excerpt from Chapter 13 of Linux System Administration: A User's Guide written by Marcel Gagne, published by Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201719347. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (c) 2002 Addison-Wesley

This is an excerpt from Chapter 13 of Linux System Administration: A User's Guide written by Marcel Gagne, published by Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201719347. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. (c) 2002 Addison-Wesley