Open Source

Open Source technologies are always looked upon with lots of myths and

misconceptions. This is true with all things that come for free. The word 'Free'

has two different meanings in English. For those who know Hindi well, free means

'Muft' (without any cost). It also means Mukt (Freedom). But the essence of Free

in Open Source is not 'Muft' but it's 'Mukt.' So, with those enlightening words

let's proceed further and look at the hot trends in this field.

Current trends



In the last 15 years Open Source technologies have undergone lots and lots

of major developments and have evolved as a stable, secure, cost effective set

of alternate applications. A number of key developments happened in Open Source

this year. We saw most major Linux distro vendors introduce their new desktop

Linux releases. It's rather apparent from them that Linux at the desktop is

slowly becoming a reality. It's becoming very easy to install as well as use at

the desktop.

At the enterprise level, Linux has moved beyond being an Operating System for

the basic IT infrastructure. Today, it's seriously being considered for running

enterprise business applications. Interestingly, all the hype and noise

surrounding Open Source software has settled down. Today, it is considered as

one of the options while evaluating a purchase decision for a serious business

application.

Another hot trend that is one of the driving forces behind Open Source is Web

2.0. A lot of Web 2.0 technologies are based on Open Source, and widely being

used on Internet portals around the world.

One more thing that was hot this year was the debate by governments around

the world on whether to embrace Open Source or not. Some governments did proceed

with this mandate, while others were still debating the same. Whatever the case

may be, Open Source software is definitely a serious option to consider while

implementing business applications.

Let's now take a look at the key trends and applications that have

made the adoption of Open Source by enterprises a reality.

CVS



Essentially, all development is community driven rather than vendor driven.

This means developers from across the world contribute their technical expertise

to build a particular project. Also community driven support is provided in some

cases.

Developers who contribute are volunteers from different organizations and

educational institutes. And even a person with some basic knowledge can

contribute to Open Source projects. So, it's not necessary to be a hardcore

developer to be able to contribute. Even developers who have good command over

languages can contribute for UI development and localization. But such a form of

contribution is very difficult to keep track of, as hundreds and thousands of

developers, designers and translators would be working on the same project

simultaneously.

A Concurrent Version System (CVS) is used to record changes made to a

particular document and is based on a client-server architecture. The client

uses a local copy to make changes which can then be updated onto the server for

the rest of the users to view. This system is popular not just over intranet but

also over Internet, which is why it has become so popular. This is the key

technology that has made Open Source contributions a reality. Nowadays we also

see many more such type of applications, and with a lot more functionality. An

example of the same is Subversion.

Torrents



Another technology that has driven Open Source industry in the recent past

is Torrents. It's derived from P2P technologies such as peer-to-peer resource

sharing. In simple words, one can establish a connection between two systems

over Internet and exchange data. This technology cuts down the need for hosting

resources on a central server or on a website. This reduces the cost of hosting

Linux distros and other applications to almost negligible, helping developers to

easily share their software across the globe. Moreover, it's not a client-server

model so that leads to bandwidth saving as well.

App level firewalls



This is another good technology to have emerged, albeit a little late.

SELinux in RedHat and Novell's AppArmor are two examples of this. It works by

restricting applications (not the kernel application) to access only those

resources that an application needs to complete a process. This helps in

controlling malicious applications from accessing the not-to-access data and

corrupt it. It is actually a very handy initiative from the Open Source world to

make things secure and hence become popular in no time.

Live Media



Another interesting thing to have happened in Open Source world was the

introduction of 'Live Media.' Media here could be anything from a USB drive, a

CD or DVD and so on. Using this technology one can use OS without even

installing it on the host machine and if you like you can even go for a full

installation of the OS on the host machine as well. This is a great way to

provide a taste of Linux and Open Source to the general public as it doesn't

require any technical expertise. The first such distro was Knoppix developed by

Charles Knopper.

Desktop enhancements



The renowned Open Source operating system, Linux was thought to be only for

servers and geeks. About three years back, the CEO of Red Hat in an interview

stated that Linux is not ready for desktops. And since then the whole Open

Source community started working hard to make Linux the first preference for

desktops. And in no time they have completely revamped the look and feel of

Linux and made it one of the most attractive desktop systems available.

This had become true with the development of Compiz and Beryl. These are

essentially 3D desktop managers for Gnome (Compiz) and KDE (Beryl). With these

enhancements lots of eye candy effects can be created on top of Linux desktop

environment. And most of them are not just for the sake of good looks but also

have huge usability. For instance a 3D cube with 4 desktops is very useful for

organizing multiple running applications. Or just by pointing a mouse, you can

view all open applications in one desktop at a glance.

The road ahead



Touch Me: Microsoft is coming out with a very fascinating technology called

Surface Computing (read more about it elsewhere in this issue) that allows you

to operate a complete system by either just touching it or by placing other

objects on top of it. The Open Source alternative to this technology is Touch

Me. Well, this one is not as good in look and feel yet, but yes such

technologies are being worked upon in the Open Source world as well. It uses

Multi-pointer X, the modified version of X Server and we hope it will give a

tough fight to MS Surface technology in the near future.

Cross Platform Integration



Cross platform integration with Windows and Linux was always there since

ages for different applications such as File Servers, File System, Office Suite

File Formats, etc. but the major chunk of labor was done independently from the

Open Source world. Today we see more trends coming out in the industry. For

example, with the strategic alliance between Novell and Microsoft we are seeing

a lot more development in terms of interoperability. Because of this alliance,

SuSE Enterprise Linux distribution (the Linux based enterprise class distro from

Novell) has the capability to understand all Office 2007 file formats in

OpenOffice. And we are also hearing that in the near future MS Hypervisor and

SuSE Hypervisor will also have interoperability between each other for virtual

hard disk https://www.pcquest.com/2007/images// and virtual appliances. We also hope to see lots more of such

kind of interoperability features in near future.