拉塞尔·纳尔逊预言：2006将是LINUX桌面年
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"I really think 2006 is going to be the year of the Linux desktop,"
Russell Nelson, vice president of the Open Source Initiative predicted.
"That's when people are going to start taking it seriously. You may not
see too many installs," he continued, "but you're going to start to see
people thinking about it."
As revelers wish each other happy New Year this weekend, members of the
open-source community will be reveling in events from the past year --
a year that saw their movement make significant strides in
strengthening its position on the technology landscape.
"This year we saw a lot of CIOs and a lot of big businesses signing off
on open-source projects," Laura DiDio, a senior analyst with the Yankee
Group in Boston, told LinuxInsider.
"We saw a lot more applications being written," she continued, "and
we've seen a lot more acceptance on the part of the big companies like
Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and HP. So it's been a big year."
Ubuntu
It has indeed been a big year for open source with Linux distributor
Red Hat's (Nasdaq: RHAT) stock price zooming from around US$10 a share
to nearly $30 a share; Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) releasing
almost all its software into the open-source wild; Motorola (NYSE:
MOT) starting a big push behind Linux on mobile phones; Web browser
Firefox cracking the 100 million download mark; and venture capitalists
investing an estimated $400 million into open-source startups during
the annum.
There were also some less seismic events with significant potential for
open source.
Russell Nelson, vice president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a
non-profit organization that certifies open-source software, points to
the release of Ubuntu as an interesting development during the year.
Desktop Bridgehead?
The software is based on a version of Debian Linux. "What's nice about
Ubuntu is that it's aimed at the desktop," Nelson asserted. "And right
now, Ubuntu is the only company pushing strongly for Linux on the
desktop."
"People feel that the desktop space is not profitable," he noted. "They
feel it's a low margin business."
But if it doesn't have to be a low-margin business, he reasoned, if
it's sold for the corporate desktop.
"I really think 2006 is going to be the year of the Linux desktop," he
predicted. "That's when people are going to start taking it seriously.
"You may not see too many installs," he continued, "but you're going to
start to see people thinking about it."
The Video Front
Open-source solutions also gained more acceptance during the year in
the digital media arena, according to Mukul Krishna, a program manager
with Frost & Sullivan in Palo Alto, Calif.
"H.264 was basically created through open-source development, and most
people are evangelizing that as the next big video codec," he told
LinuxInsider. "It's gaining popularity and is thought to be a popular
successor to MPEG2.
H.264 is the technology used by Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) for video content
sold through its iTunes store for its new iPods. MPEG2 is used to
encode movies on commerical DVDs.
"There's a religious war out there right now," he said. "People are
asking, should they go with something open or go with something more
proprietary, something on the Windows media platform."
Threat to Microsoft
He explained that the reasons driving open-source solutions in the
digital media arena are the same as those driving the movement since
its inception: desire to avoid licensing fees for proprietary products
and, once purchased, lock-in to those products.
Beyond digital media, Krishna sees the open-source movement becoming a
formidable challenger to proprietary shops like Microsoft (Nasdaq:
MSFT) .
"Open source is not a huge threat right now, but it's becoming a thorn
in the back for proprietary systems," he said. "In another five years,
you will see open source being a very, very big threat to people like
Microsoft."
Nelson, of the OSI, sees Microsoft continuing to lose market share to
open-source solutions.
"There's no doubt Microsoft will continue to be a dominant player in
the market, but there's no question that open source is creeping up on
its tail," he declared.
来源：http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/svMVJT2jhscQNE/Happy-Past-Year-for-Open-Source-Community.xhtml