• Assessing the costs, benefits, and risks of pursuing Linux and open source initiatives
• Open source licensing: avoiding the minefields
• Managing Linux and open source projects within your company
• Assessing the size, breadth, and capabilities of the open source community
• Building strong, positive, synergistic relationships with external open source communities
• The crucial role of Linux standards
• Integration, development, deployment, migration, coexistence, support, and training
• Understanding the difference between the Linux kernel and the Linux operating system
• Understanding and choosing Linux distributions
• How the open source paradigm impacts commercial software developers
• Open source business models: what it takes to make a profit from open source technology
• Applying the open source development methodology in a corporate setting

"A thought-provoking analysis of the role of open source software in the corporate environment. A must-read guide for managers considering how open source can help their organization."

Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.

About The Author


MARTIN FINK is General Manager for Hewlett-Packard's Linux Systems Division, where he has been leading Linux development activities for more than three years. He is responsible for driving HP's overall Linux and open source strategy and managing the firm's open source business processes. He is also Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Open Source Development Lab, a global consortium of industry leaders dedicated to promoting Linux and Linux-based programming for enterprise and carrier-class environments.

Customer Reviews & Comments
The author is definitely speaking from experience, providing valuable insights and recommmendations. Coming from a person who's been heading the Linux Systems Division of HP for over three years, it's not surprising. Part I brings the reader to a sufficient level of familiarity with Linux, open source, licensing, communities and celebrities. Unless you are fully in touch with the open source world, you will certainly learn useful information in this part. Part II explains what it means to implement Linux in your operations. No attempt is made to review or benchmark available distributions, and no selection process is presented, only some guidance is provided. This is understandable: Linux can take many shapes and forms and you can even create your own distribution. Because of this diversity, a whole chapter is devoted to standards that make it possible to use multiple distributions. The subject of Total Cost of Ownership is also covered, not in terms of numbers, but in terms of items to consider for calculating a total cost. There is no magic formula here, only an indication of what you should consider and how open source can affect the bottom line. The author then discusses the activity of deploying Linux, considering the issues of migration, coexistence, hardware, support, and training. Here again the author provides essential guidance without covering all the details of such undertaking. Part III is about how to integrate open source into your organization. This is probably where most of the added value of this book lies. It is really in this part that the author draws from his experience in managing open source in a large organization. He first attempts to provide a functional model for an organization developing software, focusing on enabling an open source process as opposed to a conventional development model. This model may assume a large set of developers and may come out of the blue (it is presented then discussed), but it clearly demonstrates how much of a cultural change it requires to fully reap the benefits from an open source process, and how much other corporate functions such as marketing and HR have to adapt accordingly. Most importantly, this model can boldly be used as a replacement for conventional closed-source development. The author then covers other valuable topics: gated communities, the time value of software and how open source changes the equation and can be used to your advantage, the business models around open source, when to participate or create open source software, and what should be considered when deciding to use open source. A highly recommended reading for anybody who is considering leveraging the benefits of open source within their organization. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)