John Koenig

With an estimated 850 million PCs installed worldwide, it's not surprising the mantra continues for displacing Windows with a Linux desktop. But is this a commendable objective anymore? Microsoft undertook a lot of dismal software engineering and even legal run-ins with the antitrust police to establish 90% desktop penetration. Linux application developers have better things to do than build a desktop that personal computer OEMs would never adopt anyway. Furthermore, even Windows is arguably not viable as a future desktop platform for Microsoft. Microsoft cannot afford another five-year release cycle like the one it took to launch Vista. The late Peter Drucker, in his book entitled The Effective Executive, outlined advice fit for any decision maker, whether business exec... (more)

It's Time to Formalize Your Open Source Adoption

As the adoption of Linux and other open source software within corporations grows, enterprise IT managers should, using reasonable oversight, establish policies that allow open source to benefit the company. Open source may be free and not ordinarily expose a company to piracy claims, but open source usaage should not be ignored. For most companies it makes sense to establish policies an... (more)