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Linux developers shift the course of an industry

Scott Handy ZDNet.com

Published: 11 Sep 2003 11:05 BST

It's 2:00 in the morning, the Coca-Cola buzz is starting to fade and it's been hours since Domino's Pizza came calling. The only light is the white glow emanating from the monitor. It's time to run the last test and -- poof -- the system crashes. Welcome to the all-too-familiar world of software developers.

They're a breed unto themselves: the geeks, the nerds, the trendsetters.

That's right -- the trendsetters. This motley crew is the driving force behind a revolution. Developers from around the world have shifted the course of the IT industry.

Like most revolutions, it started small. A young developer by the name of Linus Torvalds got tired of dealing with commercial operating systems like Windows, and set off to create his own platform. But instead of keeping his operating system to himself, he made Linux open to all the geeks on the Net so the best and brightest minds in the development community could look at the code and make it better. He wasn't the first person to use this open method for developing software, but his little chunk of code has certainly been among the most successful.

The popularity of Linux has been unprecedented. It continues to be the fastest growing server operating system in the world. The primary driver for its success is the development community.

The development community collectively created a highly reliable, low cost operating system. Over the last couple of years as businesses from a variety of industries realised the benefits of Linux, they turned to the developer community to create applications, like e-commerce, banking, accounting, customer relationship management and inventory management systems that support the open-source operating system.

The geeks have responded in full force. In the last few months, the number of new Linux-based applications has skyrocketed. PeopleSoft is moving its entire application portfolio -- over 170 different applications -- to Linux.

IBM alone has seen a huge shift in the number of corporate developers and Independent Software Vendors creating Linux-based applications to run on its software like WebSphere, DB2, Lotus and Tivoli. Over 50,000 developers have cranked out more than 6500 Linux-based applications built on IBM software. Developers are clearly moving applications to Linux at a rapid rate, but that's not the only thing they're doing with Linux.

Developers embrace Linux on multiple fronts
As software vendors, developers see the opportunity to impact their bottom line and add incremental revenue by porting their existing applications to run on Linux. Look at ACCPAC. They deliver one of the leading accounting software offerings around. By supporting just one operating system, like Windows, they might go head-to-head with Great Plains, another accounting software vendor. But ACCPAC is looking to get an edge over the competition.