Twitter is a social networking platform that keeps you in conversation by allowing you and your friends to follow each others’ updates. The service lets users post and read 140-character updates, called tweets. With Twitter, you can do social networking on the fly, from your mobile phone or at your desktop, from a Web browser or a Twitter client. Twitter clients make the service more usuable by automatically checking for updates from your friends and allowing you to easily post your own updates. I tested four Twitter clients for Linux on a desktop running Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

Gmail, Google’s popular Web mail application, is already full of useful features all on its own. But Firefox users can further customize Gmail with a variety of add-ons. Some only change the appearance, while others add functionality that makes Gmail more like a personal planner than just a plain old email application. Let’s take a look at three Firefox add-ons for Gmail.

Extension series

The first extension, GTDinbox, is a complicated collection of helpful and semi-helpful features. GTDinbox author Andy Mitchell claims his add-on is based on the action management method popularized by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done, which is based on the premise that writing down tasks frees a person to actually get those tasks done in a more efficient way. GTDinbox tries to help Gmail users become more efficient by grouping and labeling email communications as projects and task-oriented to-do lists.

Right from installation. GTDinbox runs unobtrusively, making only a few default changes in the appearance of your Gmail screen. One of the first things you’ll notice is an option called “Compose Personal” under the original “Compose Mail” link. Click on Compose Personal and you’ll see a composition screen sans the usual From: and To: entry boxes. It provides a quick way of sending an email message to yourself.

GTDinbox adds a category called “Statuses” to your Gmail labels and places new labels under Statuses called “Next Action,” “Action,” “Waiting On,” “Some Day,” and “Finished.” All of your existing labels go under another GTDinbox-created category called “Miscellaneous.” By using these categories and labels, the extension hopes to help you get your inbox empty. That idea is based on another productivity theory authored by Merlin Mann, called “Inbox Zero,” which states that the fewer items in your inbox, the more productive you are. GTDinbox, Mitchell says, is highly compatible with Inbox Zero.

But how do you use all this to make it a worthwhile add-on? Mitchell has done a good job of explaining a typical process at the GTDinbox Web site. When a message arrives in your inbox, you have to determine if it represents an action that must be taken or a resource. Action messages should be acted on immediately, if possible; if not, you apply one of the status labels. You assign a project label to resource messages to group it with other related communication.

None of these GTDinbox features is unique, meaning that anyone could perform any of these functions with existing Gmail capabilities. GTDinbox simply makes it easier to get started with the GTD efficiency principles. The only unique feature of GTDinbox is the ability to right-click on any message and see a popup summary of its contents. It’s unique, but not that useful, since if you left-click on the message you can see the whole thing.

Overall, GTDinbox does what it is supposed to do, and will probably save you a little time in terms of getting your email organized, but it’s nothing even the greenest Gmail newb couldn’t do for herself.

A less complicated but more useful add-on is Gmail Manager, which helps you keep multiple Gmail accounts straight. To get started, register your Gmail accounts after installing Gmail Manager by selecting Tools -> Addons -> Gmail Manager from the Firefox menu, then click the Options button and add each Gmail account that you want Gmail Manager to keep track of.

The extension places a small icon in the lower right corner of the Firefox browser window. You can right-click on the icon and choose which Gmail account you’d like information for. Gmail Manager logs in to that account and gives you a small popup of statistics that shows the number of new messages in the inbox and in labels, with a small preview of each new message. This makes it easy for the “over the shoulder” email checkers (such as your spouse or children) to quickly check for new messages without disrupting your other work too much. Gmail Manager can also notify you when new messages arrive.

This add-on’s only drawback seems to be a lag time between the actual arrival of email in my Gmail inbox and when Gmail Manager reports that to me — sometimes a delay of several minutes. In spite of that one flaw, Gmail Manager is now a must-have for my household, if only because it keeps the compulsive email checkers at bay so I can get my work done.

Last, and tiniest, is dragdropupload. This little add-on is the simplest of the three, but for me the most likely to stay added to my copy of Firefox. Instead of browsing for the file you want to attach to a message, dragdropupload lets you drag and drop the file’s icon or file name onto the entry bar. This works best if you keep a window open for the directory in which most of your documents and other files reside. There are no options or settings to configure with this add-on — simply install it and you’re ready to save time, keystrokes, and mouseclicks.

There you have it: three add-ons for Firefox that make Gmail more useful, ranging from full-featured to simple goodness. All I need now is a Gmail add-on that will take dictation.

The application is packaged for quick download (less than 4MB for the most recent stable version 1.0.6) either in a Windows self-extracting installer, a Linux RPM, a generic ZIP format, or in source code format. A beta version, 1.1 v6, is also available. Download your preferred package, extract it, and install it according to the requirements of your operating system. You’ll also need to have Java Runtime Environment 1.4.2 installed locally, since Thingamablog is coded in Java.

Right from the start, I was pleased and surprised at how mature and easy to use this application is, even the beta version. To create a new blog, click File -> New Weblog. An interactive wizard guides you through the steps. First, you enter the relative path on the server where the files should be uploaded. For my Web host, it is /public_html/directory_name. Make sure you give your Thingamablog its own separate directory, but don’t worry about manually creating it on the server, since Thingamablog creates your blog’s directory automatically during the file upload.

Click to enlarge Next, enter the URL of your blog, which is simply the URL assigned to you by your host, with the Thingamablog directory name appended. The application creates subdirectories for archives and images on its own. One small nitpick is that the program doesn’t name the front page of the blog index.html by default, but instead dubs it blog.html, which unnecessarily lengthens the URL. I fixed this easily by clicking on Configure Weblog -> Front Page and replacing “blog.html” with “index.html,” then re-uploading the blog.

The wizard next asks for is the blog’s title and description, categories, and site authors (and in the beta version there is an option to post via email). You can then select from several included themes, and configure the application to upload the blog files to the remote host.

Thingamablog has a limited set of features that most blog owners expect, such as the ability to generate RSS feeds, the ability to create and maintain multiple blogs, and automatically ping your choice of blog aggregators. It doesn’t include any special bells and whistles for automatic search engine optimization, and unlike WordPress it cannot use plugins, but if you’re fairly adept with HTML it is simple enough to add your own keyword and content tags.

Click to enlarge The only deficiency in Thingamablog that could potentially be a dealbreaker is that it doesn’t allow your site visitors to leave comments. Since Thingamablog is a client-side application, the files on the server aren’t writable. One solution is to use a free commenting service like HaloScan. The only other option would be to recode it to allow commenting on the server side, a feature that Bob Tantlinger, the original developer, hasn’t added, probably since it would change the basic client-side nature of Thingamablog. Not every blogger wants or needs to allow discussion; for such bloggers, not having a comment option, which keeps away a lot of would-be spammers, could be a benefit.

The most recent beta version of Thingamablog was released in December, and there’s quite a bit of activity at the project’s discussion forum. Bob says a 2.0 version of Thingamablog is lurking somewhere in the future, but even now, this application could become one of your favorite blogging platforms.

Bodog CTO Carl Schmidt calls it a “fantastic story.” In late 2001, the company was going through the “dot-com craze.” Hits were racking up, and Bodog was trying to figure out how to scale to the increased traffic. But Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), a Sun product, started bringing everything to a halt whenever usage spiked. “Every time we ran into a peak load, our system stopped responding,” Schmidt says. “All the application servers would stop serving requests. It turned out to be a bug in EJB that was replicating over and over.”

With limited resources, Schmidt needed help from Versant and WebLogic. “We didn’t have catastrophic load testing but we knew there was a problem. We went to the vendors.” The bug could have been either in Versant’s or WebLogic’s object-oriented database, but neither company was willing to track it down; instead, each pointed the finger of blame at the other. “We needed them to work together,” Schmidt says. That wasn’t going to happen, so Schmidt and his team went for the other option: they decompiled the code themselves. “We found the bug and fixed it,” he says. “And life went on.” But that was the beginning of the end for proprietary code at Bodog.com. “We looked at that situation and went, ‘wow’. [The vendors'] whole ad campaign is that they’re supposed to offer you this great support, but we were hampered by it.”

Schmidt started shopping for an open source solution. “We felt that if we were going to have to fix bugs ourselves, we sure would like to have access to the source.” He looked at Java Open Application Server (JOnAS) and Enhydra before settling on JBoss. “They seemed to have the most momentum.” So Schmidt began taking down the three Sun application servers, gradually replacing them with generic hardware running Red Hat Linux Enterprise, Apache, and JBoss, as well as IBM’s DB2 relational database product. “We used to use the stock Red Hat 9, but we’ve found that it’s been worth it springing for the enterprise stuff.” Regarding the use of the proprietary DB2, he says, “I wanted to go with an open source database, but at the time I didn’t feel MySQL was quite ready. Today is a different story.”

Schmidt says the migration was relatively straightforward, with a team of six developers that completed a change from WebLogic to JBoss and from an object-oriented database environment to a relational database structure in about eight months. The new infrastructure has grown along with the site, which now sits on 14 Web servers and a 30-CPU application server cluster.

“What’s ended up happening is that we’ve taken what we would have spent on licensing and invested it in JBoss development training,” Schmidt says. “That’s translated into higher developer productivity on e-commerce, which is the lifeblood of Bodog.com.”

The goal of Red Hat High is to use free software to introduce disadvantaged kids to technology they might not otherwise be able to afford, encouraging them to pursue further education and career opportunities. Red Hat High bundles free software alternatives to expensive proprietary applications on a Fedora live CD that campers can take with them to use on any computer. The program has been in “beta” for two years, according to Greg DeKoenigsberg, Red Hat’s director of community development. “The first two years have been good,” he says. “Lots of happy kids and happy parents.” He calls it a successful trial, but one that must “scale up” in order to continue to be successful. “We’re not in the business of doing small things at Red Hat.”

Camp is in session for one week in July, on the campus of North Carolina State University. During the day, the 50 Red Hat High campers learn how to create audio and video files, design Web sites, and build 3-D animations using free software like Audacity and Blender. The evenings are reserved for field trips to bowling alleys and movies and other fun activities. DeKoenigsberg says, “We took them to the Digital Circus, a junior college level school for learning the same stuff they were learning at Red Hat High. One of the students at Digital Circus was showing them what he’s learned. ‘This is a wireframe,’ he said, and they said, ‘We learned all of that already.’ Then the professor comes in and says, ‘Let’s show you some stuff that you don’t know. Do any of you know what IK is?’ And they said, ‘Yes, that’s inverse kinematics.’” Free software gives the children the ability to learn the same techniques and skills that college-level students are learning, at a much lower cost, DeKoenigsberg says. Maya, the 3-D computer animation application that students at the Digital Circus use, can cost $7,000. Blender is free.

Now that DeKoenigsberg has two years of Red Hat High under his belt, he’s ready to take the program to the next level. “There’s some cost to holding a residential summer camp, and it doesn’t scale as well as we would like,” he says. Red Hat can provide all the financial backing necessary to translate the program into something that can serve the needs of more kids. “We would like to develop a strong affiliation with some entity that can house the kids,” DeKoenigsberg says. “We don’t run a residential summer camp as our core competency at Red Hat. But what we can do is gather a community of developers and users around open content for an important social purpose.”

DeKoenigsberg hopes that the education kids received at Red Hat High can be translated into something portable and scalable. “We putting together a deployable curriculum in a box, and making sure we have something that is turnkey.” The lessons have to be understandable and usable by the average junior high school teacher, so that more than just a handful of children each year benefit from the program. “If it’s only going to be 50 kids, it’s not worth doing,” DeKoenigsberg says. “It doesn’t make enough of an impact. The opportunity for free software to change the way kids learn is too big.” Along with the goal of making a teacher-friendly curriculum, DeKoenigsberg says it is important to get some real world feedback from actual teachers. “We are developing the curriculum in a wiki style, so that teachers can change it directly. After that, the next priority is internationalization.

DeKoenigsberg admits there are some real world challenges associated with providing kids with a free software alternative. One of those is the fact that just having a live CD is not enough for a student who doesn’t have access to a computer outside of school hours. And even for those who can use a computer at the library or elsewhere, saving files once they have been created can be a problem. At Red Hat High, each student had a scratch space on the network on which to save files. DeKoenigsberg says one of the possible future projects for the Red Hat High community is to bundle the files on a bootable, writable USB key. “The cost of that will become lower over time.”

As the senior community development manager, DeKoenigsberg is used to the idea of building a community around a cause. “People are deeply incented to spread the goodness of free software,” he says. “And the educational market is strategic to people who care about the advancement of free software. It’s strategic to the company for obvious reasons, and to the community for similar reasons.” He compares the philosophy behind Red Hat High to his company’s involvement with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. “We have a very calculated social consciousness. OLPC is about getting that laptop into the hands of as many kids as possible. Red Hat High is about getting the understanding of what free software can do into the brains of as many kids as possible.”

Kuhn says a Lindows insider tipped the FSF off to the possibility of missing source code. Lindows insiders are those who have registered and paid a $99 fee to receive beta releases of LindowsOS and other non-public information. LindowsOS is a distribution based on the Linux kernel, which is licensed under the GNU General Public License. The GPL states, in part, that the program instructions in their original form as written by the programmer (source code) must be available to users of the program. The GPL also requires that users be allowed to copy, modify and redistribute the program freely, but they must in turn provide the source code.

Robertson does not deny that the source code for LindowsOS isn’t included in either of the two beta releases. “It’s a work in progress. We’re hopeful our first release will happen around the middle of the year. When we release an official version, all the GPL pieces will be properly distributed.”

Robertson doesn’t appreciate the negative attention focused on the Lindows project, likening it to “eating your young.” He says he is surprised that “some in the Linux community are quick to cast aspersions, with no facts.” Robertson points to his contributions to the Open Source community as proof that he has its best interests at heart, beginning with his career at MP3.com.

“We battled for the consumer at every step. We battled for open formats. We fought against secure music schemes. And we made contributions to Open Source software, since MP3.com was entirely LAMP based.”

And now that he’s working on making the Linux desktop a reality, Robertson says his dedication to Open Source continues. “We’ve joined KDE League at the highest corporate level. We hosted and sponsored Wineconf 2002. We worked with the project leader to identify the top 25 contributors and paid for roundtrip airfare for all of them, from as far away as South Africa and Norway, to San Diego. There was no registration fee. We also sponsored LPBN.org to broadcast the event.

“We’ve agreed to sponsor the upcoming Debian conference. Our sponsorship included funds to pay for an awards banquet for all attendees, as well as travel support for some. We’ve made a large investment in an Open Source company; we’ve also paid about a million dollars to get code produced … We’ve paid these funds to companies as well as individuals.”

And, he says, support for Linux and the Open Source community will also come by way of ingenious marketing. “If we can get to 5% market share, an ecosystem of healthy Linux companies will emerge which will be around for the long run. Look at the incredible things that would happen. Hardware manufacturers will ship Linux drivers for their peripheral devices, in the box. Computer stores will dedicate sections of their store. Major OEMs would ship computers with Linux. It’s a travesty you can’t walk into major retailers today and buy a computer running Linux.”

And while the code is important, that is not what it will take to get Linux to “20 million desktops.” Robertson says to help more people understand Open Source, better marketing and lobbying is needed. “And yes, battling Microsoft and their huge coffers which influence OEMs, retailers, politicians, and the press in ways you only understand if you talk to them personally, which I have.

“Hopefully, Lindows.com will contribute on each of these fronts, but it will take more than one company. It’s a shame that virtually every commercial Linux company has abandoned the desktop. Our goal is to build a company that will give consumers a choice for their operating system. At the same time, we’re committed to being a good corporate citizen and being a supporter of Open Source for the long run.”

Robertson seems dismayed by the FSF’s attempt to enforce the GPL. “No wonder there’s virtually no healthy Linux companies. The community seems to attack them when the real focus should be elsewhere.”

Robertson says that many of the critical pieces of GPL code that have gone into Lindows have been distributed back to the community already. “Where do you think that Codeweavers got their code for Crossover Office?” he asks.

A high level source at Codeweavers confirms that Lindows has indeed contributed an “enormous amount” of code to the Wine project. But while Crossover Office contains code that was created in conjunction with Lindows, it has also been built on code that was around before Lindows existed. According to the Codeweavers source, Lindows returned modifications to the Wine codebase only because it was persuaded by Codeweavers staff to return it. The Codeweavers/Lindows association was terminated in part because Lindows wanted to be able to keep its Wine modifications private.

When Alexa first launched it ran on a “hodgepodge” of systems, like many startups at that time, Whitt says. “It was all about opportunism. But we started hiring more engineers that had previous experience with Linux, and we felt pretty strongly that there was a lot of effort going toward Linux.” Whitt says Alexa started with Slackware, tried FreeBSD for a while, then went to Red Hat and eventually Fedora Core and CentOS once Red Hat went commercial.

The engineering and development team found that with Linux platforms, it was easier to get patches and updates quickly. “We do a lot of things that are pretty cutting-edge,” says Alexa engineer Ron Shalhoup. “With Linux there’s a pool of resources and people working on updates, as opposed to a commercial operating system.”

Whitt likes Linux because it makes for a more satisfied IT team. “From a budgetary standpoint, there are many cost benefits to using open source software. But Linux is an operating system that a vast number of engineers want to use. They’re comfortable with it. They’re happier. They get to work in an environment that is very malleable, and that’s a big benefit. You’re not boxed in with a commercial version of an operating system.”

Whitt calls Alexa a “consumer” of open source. “We’re not officially submitting changes back into the open source community, although our developers submit patches back when they find bugs to fix. We usually use very stable versions of open source software; we’re risk-averse.”

Shalhoup says there isn’t even much need for support from the community. “We mostly just use the documentation available. We have enough expertise in-house, but if we need workarounds we go to a list or a specific group.”

Whitt says before operations managers give the boot to proprietary platforms, they need the right team. “I can make lots of operating and budget decisions, but I need a good staff that has a lot of experience with Linux. We have a small group of really bright people working on it.”

Whitt says even though there are challenges associated with open platforms, he wouldn’t change a thing. “Of all the ways that I’ve gone, this has been the best. If you’re not ready to sign up for open source, you’ll spend a lot of money on support and software. You’re still going to have issues in Linux. It’s a very complex system. Windows is like a mag wheel, and Linux is like a box of spokes and a hub. You have to understand the fiscal and staffing implications. If you don’t have bright people, it’s going to be a nightmare.”

And even though it was business as usual for the frontline employees, vice president Tommy Rouse knew things were very different.Rouse’s Supermarkets has been a family owned and operated grocery chain since 1959, when Tommy Rouse’s father started with one small store. The younger Rouse grew up living next door to the store, and so naturally he feels “deeply involved” in everything that happens with the business, which today has expanded to 15 stores.

Rouse’s has been utilizing ACR Retail point-of-sale (POS) systems since 1991. ACR, based in Jacksonville, Fla., has been providing software and systems integrations for grocery and drug stores since 1975.

ACR ported its ACR 5000 POS software to Linux about three years ago; before that, the company had worked with Linux for two years in a testing environment. When it came time for Rouse’s to upgrade its POS systems, ACR president and CEO John Huffman suggested thin clients and a server running ACR 5000 on Linux.

Tommy Rouse wasn’t a stranger to Linux. His IT staff had been using it for back office operations for several years, coding custom applications for data storage and retrieval. That experience, coupled with the desire to upgrade clunky Microsoft-powered boxes at each register to easily maintainable thin clients, made it easy for Rouse’s to say “yes” to Huffman’s suggestion.

In June 2003, Rouse and Huffman launched a single test store to “feel their way around it,” according to Rouse. By May 2004, they were ready to start rolling out the new system to the rest of the stores, and the switch was complete by July.

For Rouse, the top benefit Linux brings to the company is lower initial cost and lower overhead. Huffman agreed, citing the flexibility his customers have when choosing Linux as the base OS.

“[With Linux] we can supply the functionality from the server and leave the client utterly dumb,” Huffman said. The thin client “evolution” has resulted in drastically lower component costs, making the terminals so economical as to become almost “disposable.” Not only that, but stores like Rouse’s no longer need to hire highly paid technical people, since no special training is required to replace a thin client if something goes wrong. “Rouse’s keeps a couple of spare terminals in the back. If one breaks, all you have to do is plug it in — no software installation or configuration,” Huffman said.

Another benefit to using Linux is the flexibility it allows when selecting server iron. Rouse was pleased that he and his staff were able to build their own servers for less than $500 each. Because of the low cost, Rouse was able to install a separate cold backup server in most of the stores. “If we lose a server we can back that one in remotely just by making a couple of quick software changes,” he said.

Huffman is enthusiastic about the future of Linux in the POS space. The key, he said, is the ability to completely remove the operating system from the thin clients, something proprietary operating system providers do not allow, since that would cut deeply into their revenue. “Microsoft is trying to do thin clients, but they’ve got to keep their software in there,” Huffman said. “They don’t want to give it up. They live on the desktop and if that’s eliminated, they lose their market. They’re very desperate to keep some intelligence in their terminals. With Linux, we can do thin clients for effectively no cost, and Microsoft can’t. I love it.”

Jackson wanted to keep Sybase, in part because of the familiarity factor. “We looked at other databases like MySQL and SQL Server for Windows, and even considered just upgrading Sybase and running Solaris again. It made sense financially and from an ease of implementation standpoint to stay with Sybase, but with a much more current version running on Intel and Linux.” While MySQL is free, Sybase allowed Western & Southern to port its current licenses to the new infrastructure. Besides, MySQL didn’t pass Jackson’s evaluation with flying colors. “It just wasn’t good security-wise,” he says. “It’s not even close yet. It was missing a lot of the functionality that we needed.”

Even though MySQL didn’t pass muster, Linux was just fine. “We took Linux through the trials. We installed, we tested, and made sure everything matched up the way we expected it to. We had big concerns on the database side — moving the data is pretty easy but the key is the code. Anything that has database-specific code in it is a concern when migrating. By staying with Sybase, we didn’t have to rewrite the code, and that saved us hundreds of hours.”

Western & Southern reports an 80% decrease in batch cycle times on the new database servers running Linux, as well as a 60% reduction in the number of servers needed, which further reduced both hardware and software license costs.

Jackson’s biggest challenge with migrating to Linux has been version matching. “It becomes kind of sticky with all the different pieces. Versions are changing so fast now, you have to make sure vendors match the version between the database, the applications, and the operating system.”

Jackson’s experience with Linux has been so good that the company is now looking at other areas in which it could use the open source operating system. “I can’t say a whole lot about it, but we’re looking at some open source Web technologies and workflow software, and some other things.”

For other IT directors looking at migrating to an open source platform, Jackson recommends thorough testing. “They’ve got to be able to have a good test bed,” he says. “It helps to have a good understanding of how the application functions as it is now, and will it be able to bring the functionality you expect. That goes back to having people who are familiar with the application and how it will work. Especially with a database, it’s good to have people who can understand the code. Being able to play with it and experiment and get comfortable with it yourself, before you commit, is key.”

Today, Mindbridge has repurposed itself as an open-source-friendly company, and revamped its infrastructure to run completely on Linux and other open source software. “Having deployed [Linux servers] to our customers, we turned around and said, we can do the same thing internally and save bunches of money. We began a systematic but slow flipping of servers from the Microsoft world over to predominantly Linux — although there are a few BSD boxes around as well,” Christian says. “It’s to the point that today I only have two production Windows servers left, out of 15 or so.”

CEO Rick Puckette is enthusiastic about the change. “When we were using Microsoft, we had a lot more than 15 servers,” he says. “We had upwards of 50 or 60 that were becoming difficult to manage. So as part of this open source initiative, we also chose a virtual machine called Xen, which allows us to put multiple machines on one physical server, to consolidate.” Puckette says that Mindbridge evaluated other virtual machine software, including VMware, but Xen was “very cost-efficient and pretty bulletproof. We also use Hyperic to monitor the health and happiness of the servers,” he says.

Even though Mindbridge now delivers its security monitoring solutions mostly on a Linux platform, some customers still want Microsoft. “We’re willing to accommodate them, for a price,” Christian says. “It costs us significantly more to support a Windows box than a Linux box. It’s almost like Microsoft is now an afterthought.”

The transition to open source has had its share of challenges, Christian and Puckette say, but nothing that they couldn’t overcome. For Christian, the biggest deal was sysadmins who had to learn Linux. “It’s people’s learning curves, no doubt,” he says. “They had only ever administered Microsoft boxes in the past, and had to get used to the idea of command lines. The interesting thing is that a number of our developers came from strong Linux or BSD backgrounds, and they helped the sysadmin people make the transition.” To aid the process, Christian looked specifically for new hires who were eager to learn. “The people I like are pretty inquisitive type people. I tried to filter out the others in the interview process.”

Puckette says it takes some extra time to get an open source infrastructure configured the right way. “The challenge as opposed to buying solutions from one vendor is that when you buy from Microsoft, you can assume it works with other Microsoft products. With open source you have to take more time to make sure all the products interact and all the pieces fit together. But the cost benefits clearly outweigh going with all Microsoft.”

Christian likes the flexibility of open source. “We always find that at the end of the day, when we hit a problem, there was almost always a configuration file you could tweak and make it work the way you want it to work. The management of the systems, the flexibility in the vendors — even within our infrastructure we have three Linux vendors. We pick and choose based on the best tool for the job.”

Mindbridge has also transitioned its development environment. “We use it for all our development of new services that we sell to our customers,” Puckette says. “We bring in as much open source software as possible, and we integrate that software to solve business problems, get to market faster, and focus more on our customers.” Puckette likes the fact that the development community is self-motivated enough to continuously update open source software applications. “I don’t have to fund new features.”

Christian appreciates the benefits of the open source community too. “You get your problems solved easier,” he says. “You put out an email to a user mailing list, and you may get a response from the developer. Try doing that with most commercial vendors. It’s hard to get access to those people. In the open source world, it’s relatively easy.”

For other companies that might be considering a switch from a proprietary foundation to an open source one, Christian has some advice. “Choose a small project and don’t try to flip your infrastructure all at once. Choose something with a high probability of success,” like a Web-based application, “and go for that first. What you’ll be doing is allowing people to learn about the operating system and how to hook that operating system into your existing infrastructure — for example, hooking Linux into your Active Directory structure.”

Puckette says choose something “non-mission critical” to start with. “Put your toe in, pick an application that, if it does go down, the CEO won’t scream about it. Get smart about that one, then take on a mission-critical. Once you cut it over, you’re not paying the big guys.”