Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO -- When IBM introduced a version of Lotus Notes that runs on the desktop computers using the Linux operating system last month, it was a sign of confidence that open-source software is gaining market traction.

Lotus Notes, the popular collaboration and e-mail software, has operated on Windows machines for 16 years and Apple's Macintosh computers for more than a decade, said Ed Brill, IBM's Chicago-based Lotus strategy executive.

"A lot of enterprises, especially government and educational organizations, like the cost and flexibility of Linux," he said. "This is geographically driven. Linux has taken off in Germany, India and China."

Linux is what the industry calls open-source software. Led by Linus Torvalds when he was a computer science graduate student at the University of Helsinki, Finland, a team of programmers from around the world developed the software that has its entire code open to programmers and developers, unlike proprietary software such as Windows. Users continue to maintain and upgrade Linux and allow it to be downloaded and used for free.

Most enterprises that use Linux prefer to pay for commercial versions provided by Red Hat, Novell or other firms. These versions are more user-friendly, but they still cost about one-tenth of what Microsoft charges for Windows, the world's most pervasive computer operating system.

Rather than compete with Microsoft by offering its own proprietary operating system, IBM has opted to support open-source software. Linux is perhaps the best-known example.

Linux software has become a mainstream product for computer network servers, said Al Gillen, president for International Data Corp., a market research firm. But as a desktop computer operating system, it faces a huge challenge posed by the widespread embrace of Windows.

"There are some very good Linux operating systems out there," Gillen said. "You keep hearing that desktop Linux is the next big thing. But we've been hearing that for about five years now.

"Customers are looking at Linux and piloting it, but you don't see many big deployments."