Inflection Point

The burgeoning Linux vendor industry is facing its first challenge from beneath as companies like SpikeSource, SourceLabs, and Optaros compete with them for support contracts. Who will win, and what will the open source community gain or lose as a result?

Meanwhile interesting technology like Ruby on Rails and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) has turned the world of web apps on its head. The web as we know it was built on HTML and some combination of the LAMP stack. What web will emerge from AJAX'd Rails, Plone, PHP, and Perl apps? And where's Java in all of this?

And even at the bottom layers, the world is changing. Linux has thrown out the BitKeeper source control system and is looking for an open source replacement. Xen is spreading the virtualization gospel to the Linux vendors. And Microsoft is open sourcing software! Something is definitely afoot ...