This week, Nick Petreley examines how companies can make

money in open source and how much money they're likely

to make. Along the way, he predicts the eventual demise

of proprietary software and the evolution of the open source

market away from the software itself.

BSD is likely to rival Linux very soon in total number of users, and the BSD community is primping for center stage.

BSD is likely to rival Linux very soon in total number of users, and the BSD community is primping for center stage.

Exactly what work of yours does your employer own? A group of system administrators has been working on ways to clarify that issue for computing professionals who also work on Open Source projects in their spare time. The fruit of their work, released a few days back, is itself Open Source.

European shipments of servers for corporate networks and the Internet grew by four percent in the third quarter, bouncing back after two quarters of declines, research firm Gartner Dataquest announced recently.

European shipments of servers for corporate networks and the Internet grew by four percent in the third quarter, bouncing back after two quarters of declines, research firm Gartner Dataquest announced recently.

The configuration system that PHP uses for installation is one of those nice, simple things in life that makes it rosy. At first it might seem a little confusing, but it's really very easy.

The fact that a number of companies, such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, had representatives at both press conferences added to the feeling of déjà vu.

The two projects are quite different under the surface. Leaving licensing issues aside, many people choose to develop for one or the other because of the development APIs and tools available.

Many observers have suggested that the only means of guaranteeing that votes are fairly tabulated is to develop a system based on an auditable, Open Source software platform.