Open Solutions Alliance Optimistic for 2009
The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), a consortium of commercial Open Source providers, sent its members a survey as to the challenges ahead for free software and received some optimistic responses.
The nonprofit OSA consortium is "dedicated to making enterprise-class open software solutions work together." Its members include, among others, Ingres, Jaspersoft, Talend and Unisys. Those heads of companies who answered the five questions generally assessed the current economic crises as a challenge yet opportunity and expect commercial offerings of free software to be on the upswing in 2009. For one thing, the licensing cost advantages should play an increasingly larger role in these budget-starved periods.
The alliance is tasked, among other things, with establishing new markets, quality control and Web 2.0 functionality. CEO Brian Gentile of Jaspersoft explained that "Today’s young workers have much higher expectations of their software, and as they enter the workforce and expect the same Web 2.0-like experience in the workplace, we better give it to them."
Responses to the question about the impact President Obama will have on the IT industry were generally favorable. CEO Michael Grove of CollabWorks, however, feels that if Obama "proceeds with his stated tax policy, than we will see fewer jobs, less growth, and less IT spending."
The OSA Annual Prediction Survey 2009 results are available here.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.