[WEB4LIB] Re: Imminent Netscape demise

[Richard L. Goerwitz III]

"Drew, Bill" wrote:

> > ...That means that the increasing number of academics and library
> > technologists who use OSs like Linux would be left out in the cold
> > if it weren't for Netscape.
> 
> Where are the hard numbers?

Unless you've had your eyes shut for the last five years you've wit-
nessed the explosion of open-source technologies.  Although usage is
certainly increasing at the desktop level, ground zero for this explo-
sion is at the mid-range server level.

As far back as 1999 there was evidence that Linux had become the most
widely deployed Internet OS
(http://leb.net/hzo/ioscount/data/r.9904.txt).
Interestingly, the Linux server-OS market is growing faster than NT's
(http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0228growth.html).  Netcraft's well-
known survey (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) shows Apache running on
about two thirds of web servers worldwide, and industry analysts expect
Linux in the commercial world to become the dominant Internet platform
worldwide by 2003 (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010403/lntu009.html).

Recent published studies have pegged Linux as more reliable than IIS/
Windows (http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/issue/0,4537,2387282,00.html,
http://www.syscontrol.ch/e/news/Serversoftware.html).

IBM, among, others is pouring millions of dollars into Linux, in ef-
forts to bring Linux up to the level of reliability its customers
expect in mainframes (well beyond the reach of Windows).  Recently
they announced that they were partnering with a number of Asian firms
to bolster this effort.  The Linux 2.4 kernel has already made huge
strides in the areas of reliability and scalability, particularly
in MP environments.

I've worked in academia most of my career (two MAs, a PhD; plus a
series of positions in higher-ed IT), and my impression is that the
trend we're seeing is accelerated in academia generally.  To the
extent that libraries are behind the curve here, they are behind
the curve, I suspect, not because of reasoned purchasing decisions,
but because of a simple lack of knowledge - or in some cases a re-
actionary spirit.  Sometimes this causes an annoying split between
university IT departments and libraries (and library IT depart-
ments).  In some institutions, executives have decided that IT and
library functions are of the same ilk, and ought to be merged,
and the results there can be fun.

Anyway, open-source software is here to stay, and, in many situa-
tions, is the best and most appropriate solution out there.  My
belief is that at this point it's worth spending a little time to
investigate it, especially now that the big OPAC vendors have
woken up:

  http://www.iii.com/html/news/00press.shtml#APR2600
  http://www.exlibris-usa.com/news1.asp?categoryId=53&admin=
  etc.

I've worked as a systems administrator in a Solaris and a Linux
environment, and frankly at this point I don't see how Sun (or
Microsoft) are making money in low and middle-tier institutions
in the server arena.  There's just too much energy and promise to
Linux and open-source software generally to ignore it.  And the
price is right.

-- 

Richard Goerwitz                               richard at Goerwitz.COM
tel: 401 438 8978