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QUE LO TRADUZCAS, C0J0NES!!!!!!!

>-----Mensaje original-----
>EMPAPATE MVP TELLA JEJEJE
>
>
>Linux Inc.
>Linus Torvalds once led a ragtag band of software geeks. 
Not anymore.
>Here's an inside look at how the unusual Linux business 
model
>increasingly threatens Microsoft
>
>Five years ago, Linus Torvalds faced a mutiny. The 
reclusive Finn had
>taken the lead in creating the Linux computer operating 
system, with
>help from thousands of volunteer programmers, and the 
open-source
>software had become wildly popular for running Web sites 
during the
>dot-com boom. But just as Linux was taking off, some 
programmers
>rebelled. Torvalds' insistence on manually reviewing 
everything that
>went into the software was creating a logjam, they 
warned. Unless he
>changed his ways, they might concoct a rival software 
package -- a
>threat that could have crippled Linux. "Everybody knew 
things were
>falling apart," recalls Larry McVoy, a programmer who 
played
>peacemaker. "Something had to be done."
>
>
>The crisis came to a head during a tense meeting at 
McVoy's house, on
>San Francisco's Twin Peaks. A handful of Linux' top 
contributors took
>turns urging Torvalds to change. After an awkward dinner 
of quiche and
>croissants, they sat on the living room floor and hashed 
things out.
>Four hours later, Torvalds relented. He agreed to 
delegate more and
>use a software program for automating the handling of 
code. When the
>program was ready in 2002, Torvalds was able to process 
contributions
>five times as fast as he had in the past.
>
>The Twin Peaks truce is just one of the dramatic changes 
during the
>past few years in the way Linux is made and distributed. 
The
>phenomenon that Torvalds kicked off as a student at the 
University of
>Helsinki in 1991 had long been a loosey-goosey effort, 
with little
>structure or organization. Young students and caffeine-
jazzed
>iconoclasts wrote much of the code in their spare time, 
while the
>overtaxed Torvalds stitched in improvements almost 
singlehandedly.
>
>TURNING PRO 
>Today, that approach is quaint history. Little 
understood by the
>outside world, the community of Linux programmers has 
evolved in
>recent years into something much more mature, organized, 
and
>efficient. Put bluntly, Linux has turned pro. Torvalds 
now has a team
>of lieutenants, nearly all of them employed by tech 
companies, that
>oversees development of top-priority projects. Tech 
giants such as IBM
>(IBM ), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), and Intel (INTC ) are 
clustered around
>the Finn, contributing technology, marketing muscle, and 
thousands of
>professional programmers. IBM alone has 600 programmers 
dedicated to
>Linux, up from two in 1999. There's even a board of 
directors that
>helps set the priorities for Linux development.
>
>The result is a much more powerful Linux. The software 
is making its
>way into everything from Motorola (MOT ) cell phones and 
Mitsubishi
>robots to eBay (EBAY ) servers and the NASA 
supercomputers that run
>space-shuttle simulations. Its growing might is shaking 
up the
>technology industry, challenging Microsoft Corp.'s 
(MSFT ) dominance
>and offering up a new model for creating software. 
Indeed, Torvalds'
>onetime hobby has become Linux Inc. "People thought this 
wouldn't
>work. There are just too many people and companies to 
hang together.
>But now it's clear it does work," says Mark Blowers, an 
analyst at
>market researcher Butler Group.
>
>Not that this Inc. operates like a traditional 
corporation. Hardly.
>There's no headquarters, no CEO, and no annual report. 
And it's not a
>single company. Rather, it's a cooperative venture in 
which employees
>at about two dozen companies, along with thousands of 
individuals,
>work together to improve Linux software. The tech 
companies contribute
>sweat equity to the project, largely by paying 
programmers' salaries,
>and then make money by selling products and services 
around the Linux
>operating system. They don't charge for Linux itself, 
since under the
>cooperative's rules the software is available to all 
comers for free.
>
>How do companies benefit from free software? In several 
different
>ways. Distributors, including Red Hat Inc. (RHAT ) and 
Novell Inc.,
>(NOVL ) package Linux with helpful user manuals, regular 
updates, and
>customer service, and then charge customers annual 
subscription fees
>for all the extras. Those fees range from $35 a year for 
a basic
>desktop version of Linux to $1,500 for a high-end server 
version. The
>dollars can add up. Red Hat, which employs 200 
programmers, is
>expected to see profits triple, to $53 million, in its 
current fiscal
>year, as revenues surge 56%, to $195 million.
>
>Those numbers are dwarfed by the winnings for computer 
makers that
>sell PCs and servers preloaded with Linux. IBM, HP, and 
others
>capitalize on the ability to sell machines without any 
up-front charge
>for an operating-system license, which can range up to 
several
>thousand dollars for some versions of Windows and Unix. 
At HP, sales
>of servers that run the Linux operating system hit 
nearly $3 billion
>during the past fiscal year, almost double the tally 
three years ago.
>
>In the Linux community, this kind of red-meat capitalism 
is combined
>with the sharing philosophy of the open-source movement. 
Dick Porter,
>a T-shirted coder who often works under an apple tree in 
his garden in
>Wales, is on the same team with Jim Stallings, a hard-
charging
>ex-Marine who travels the world making deals for IBM. 
What they have
>in common is a keen interest in making Linux ever more 
capable. The
>result is a culture that's cooperative, meritocratic -- 
and Darwinian
>at the same time. Any company or person is free to 
participate in
>Linux Inc., and those with the most to offer win 
recognition and
>prominent roles. "Linux is the first natural business 
ecosystem," says
>James F. Moore, a senior fellow at the Berkman Center 
for Internet &
>Society at Harvard Law School.
>
>STRANGE GROUND 
>To understand the inner workings of Linux Inc., 
BusinessWeek took a
>journey through the fast-evolving ecosystem. The unusual 
trip included
>everything from sitting in on gritty developer meetings 
to
>interviewing dozens of tech execs and engineers from 
Germany to China.
>One stop was Torvalds' home, just south of Portland, 
Ore. The
>34-year-old moved from Silicon Valley last summer, in 
part because he
>was hired by the Beaverton (Ore.) Linux advocacy group 
Open Source
>Development Labs Inc. (OSDL). He spent several hours 
talking about
>Linux as his three towheaded daughters played nearby. 
Something of a
>rock star in techie circles, he was preparing for a 
flight to Los
>Angeles for the premiere of Shark Tale -- which was 
animated on Linux
>computers -- and was taking along his oldest daughter, 
Patricia, then
>7 years old.
>
>What's clear from these interviews is that the 
organization supporting
>Linux has matured more dramatically than most outsiders 
realize. While
>Torvalds remains at its center, he has ceded some 
control and accepted
>lots of help, thanks to some prodding from individual 
programmers like
>McVoy and some coaxing from tech giants whose fortunes 
have become
>inextricably linked to Linux. One important step was the 
move by IBM,
>Intel, and others to set up OSDL as the focal point for 
accelerating
>Linux adoption.
>
>Perhaps most surprising, the legal attacks on Linux over 
the past year
>have unified the community. There continue to be some 
internal
>tensions -- for instance, Linux backers fret that 
different versions
>of the software will become incompatible with one 
another. Yet a suit
>by SCO Group Inc., a software company that claims IBM 
handed some of
>SCO's intellectual property to Linux, gave Linux 
aficionados the
>motivation to coordinate their efforts as never before. 
Tech companies
>have opened their checkbooks to pay for administrative 
support,
>including a legal staff that scans every stitch of code 
to make sure
>it can bear patent scrutiny. Even Linux' original 
idealists, who have
>grumbled at times about the corporatization of the 
community, put
>their complaints on hold and rallied to defend their 
baby. The SCO
>suit against IBM is slated for trial late this year.
>
>Put it all together, and Linux has become the strongest 
rival that
>Microsoft has ever faced. In servers, researcher IDC 
predicts Linux'
>market share based on unit sales will rise from 24% 
today to 33% in
>2007, compared with 59% for Windows -- essentially 
keeping Microsoft
>at its current market share for the next three years and 
squeezing its
>profit margins. That's because, for the first time, 
Linux is taking a
>bite out of Windows, not just the other alternatives, 
and is forcing
>Microsoft to offer discounts to avoid losing sales. In a 
survey of
>business users by Forrester Research Inc. (FORR ), 52% 
said they are
>now replacing Windows servers with Linux. On the desktop 
side, IDC
>sees Linux' share more than doubling, from 3% today to 
6% in 2007,
>while Windows loses a bit of ground. IDC expects the 
total market for
>Linux devices and software to jump from $11 billion last 
year to $35.7
>billion by 2008.
>
>In response, Microsoft has launched a counterattack 
against what it
>calls its No. 1 threat. The software giant's "Get the 
Facts" publicity
>campaign claims that Windows is more secure and less 
expensive to own
>than Linux. Microsoft has notched some victories. The 
city government
>of Paris, for instance, decided in October against a 
complete
>switchover to Linux, citing the costs of such a change. 
Now that Linux
>distributors are charging more for subscriptions, 
Microsoft figures
>that it can use the same cost-benefit arguments that 
helped bury old
>rivals, such as Netscape Communications Corp. "It's 
getting to be much
>more like the old world instead of the new world for us, 
and we know
>how to compete with that kind of phenomenon," says 
Microsoft Chief
>Executive Steve Ballmer.
>
>But Ballmer may have a tough time persuading customers 
that Windows is
>cheaper than Linux. It often isn't. With Windows, end 
users pay an
>up-front fee that ranges from several hundred dollars 
for a PC to
>several thousand for a server, while there's no such 
charge for Linux.
>The total cost over three years for a small server used 
by 30 people,
>including licensing fees, support, and upgrade rights, 
would be about
>$3,500 for Windows, compared with $2,400 for a Red Hat 
subscription,
>say analysts. The situation where Microsoft can have an 
edge is when a
>company already is using Windows. Then, in some cases, 
it can be
>cheaper to upgrade to a newer version of Microsoft's 
software, rather
>than replacing it with Linux -- once you take into 
account the
>retraining expenses. Analyst George Weiss of market 
researcher Gartner
>Inc. says that Microsoft may trumpet those individual 
cases, but
>"there's no study that says Windows will be a better 
total cost of
>ownership in general."
>
>Microsoft isn't shying away from brass-knuckle tactics 
in an effort to
>win this battle. Several sources say that its executives 
have been
>warning corporations that they're taking a legal risk by 
using Linux.
>A spokesperson for one company whose CEO met with 
Ballmer says the
>implication of their conversation was that Microsoft is 
considering
>suing outfits that use the software and claiming that it 
infringes
>Microsoft patents. Although legal experts doubt 
Microsoft would
>actually sue its own customers, Linux supporters say 
such warnings are
>an effort to spread doubt and uncertainty. "Our friends 
in Redmond
>[Wash.] are rattling their swords. They're trying to 
scare people into
>not switching from Windows to Linux," says Jack Messman, 
CEO of Linux
>distributor Novell. Microsoft acknowledges discussing 
legal risks with
>customers but denies trying to intimidate them. It won't 
say whether
>it believes Linux infringes on its patents.
>
>COMMUNAL IMPULSES 
>That Linux is more than holding its own against 
Microsoft's onslaught
>suggests it could become a model for others in the tech 
industry.
>Otherwise fierce competitors -- think IBM and Hewlett-
Packard (HPQ )
>-- are demonstrating that they can benefit from 
embracing the
>open-source philosophy of sharing work. By collaborating 
on the
>operating system, they all get a stable foundation on 
which to build
>tech projects and save millions in programming 
costs. "Much software
>will be developed this way. It's especially good for 
infrastructure --
>stuff that affects everybody," says Torvalds. "In the 
long run, you
>can't sanely compete with the open-source mentality."
>
>Linux Inc. has become so mature that it's clear it could 
continue to
>thrive even without Torvalds. Already his chief 
lieutenant, Andrew
>Morton, shares leadership duties and makes all the 
public appearances.
>From 1997 to 2003, when Torvalds worked for chipmaker 
Transmeta Corp.,
>putting out Linux wasn't even his full-time job -- yet 
its market
>share in servers rose from 6.8% to 24%. Plus, this isn't 
the army:
>Programmers don't wait around for orders. Linux' legions 
know how the
>development process works, and they just do it. "I 
manage people, but
>not in the traditional sense," says Torvalds. "I can't 
say, 'You do
>this because here's your next paycheck.' It's more like 
we know what
>we want to do, but we don't know how to do it. We try 
directions.
>Sometimes somebody disagrees and has a vision. They go 
and sulk in
>their corner for a year. Then they come back and 
say, 'I'll show you
>it's much faster if you do it this way.' And sometimes 
they're right."
>
>This mix of commercial and communal impulses has its 
roots in the
>early days of personal computing. Academics and 
corporate researchers
>originally shared many of their software innovations. 
But that started
>to change in the 1980s as the industry took shape. In 
response,
>programmer Richard Stallman launched the Free Software 
movement. His
>answer: the GNU operating system, modeled on Unix, to be 
shared by a
>community of programmers. It was Torvalds who came along 
with a piece
>of software called the kernel, which is the control 
center of the
>operating system and coordinates the work of other 
pieces, such as the
>software that tells the printer to produce a page. 
Programmers called
>the kernel "Linux," a contraction of Linus and Unix, and 
Linux caught
>on as the name for the whole thing. Torvalds decided the 
group's
>mascot should be a friendly penguin, named Tux, partly 
because a
>pint-size Fairy penguin once nibbled his finger at an 
Australian zoo.
>
>Stallman is still an evangelist for free software, but 
with his wild
>long hair and odd behavior, he doesn't fit in with the 
suit-and-tie
>crowd. He doesn't even speak to Torvalds anymore -- 
since Torvalds
>decided to use a piece of software that wasn't open-
source to help
>develop Linux. "The place he wants to lead people is a 
mistake. It
>isn't to freedom," says Stallman of Torvalds. During 
speaking
>engagements, Stallman often adopts the persona of "St. 
IGNUcius,"
>donning a robe and a halo made of a computer disk. Chris 
Wright, a
>young programmer for OSDL, recalls a group dinner at a 
restaurant
>where the trade group hosted Stallman. Wright was 
impressed with
>Stallman's beliefs but put off by his style. "He wanted 
to taste
>everybody's food, so it was a little awkward," says 
Wright.
>
>Torvalds proved to be just the guy to lead the Linux 
charge. He was
>only a casual programmer in 1991 when he started writing 
software to
>run on a PC. But after he posted the first Linux code on 
the Internet
>for others to contribute to, he got the knack for 
spotting quality and
>handling the flow of fixes. Gradually, he developed a 
support
>organization of volunteers.
>
>Begun as a meritocracy, Linux continues to operate that 
way. In a
>world where everybody can look at every bit of code that 
is submitted,
>only the A+ stuff gets in and only the best programmers 
rise to become
>Torvalds' top aides. "The lieutenants get picked -- but 
not by me,"
>explains Torvalds. "Somebody who gets things done, and 
shows good
>taste -- people just start sending them suggestions and 
patches. I
>didn't design it this way. It happens because this is 
the way people
>work naturally."
>
>One reason that Linux Inc. bears little resemblance to a 
traditional
>company is that Torvalds has almost nothing in common 
with classic,
>hard-driving, and autocratic tech-industry leaders. He 
rarely appears
>in public and largely lets other people set priorities 
for
>development. Once others come up with improvements, he 
shepherds them
>along. "Linus has power, but he doesn't have it by 
fiat," says Havoc
>Pennington, a Linux contributor who works for Red 
Hat. "He has power
>because people trust him. As long as he keeps making 
good decisions,
>people won't take it away from him."
>
>Yet for all of his seeming passivity, Torvalds is a 
strong leader. He
>stays scrupulously neutral, never taking one company's 
side over
>another. He focuses on the open-source development 
process. There, he
>demands high-quality work. Things must be just so, with 
the least
>amount of coding. As a result, Linux has few errors that 
can be
>exploited by virus writers. That gives it an edge on 
Windows, which
>has become a favorite target of hackers -- largely 
because it's so
>widely used, but also because it has vulnerabilities 
that Linux
>doesn't. "He has set a compelling vision and inspired 
people to follow
>it," says Larry Augustin, a venture capitalist at Azure 
Capital
>Partners and an OSDL board member: "It's leadership by 
example, rather
>than leadership by hype."
>
>Even today, Torvalds operates in a virtual world of e-
mails and Web
>sites. He works almost entirely from a roomy house that 
sits on a
>wooded Oregon mountaintop and is decorated with 
taxidermic specimens,
>including a piranha and a crocodile. He gets up early, 
making strong
>cups of coffee for himself and his wife, Tove, a former 
karate
>champion in Finland. Then he settles in for hours of 
reviewing code
>and snapping off e-mail messages in his basement office. 
It's lined
>with science fiction and fantasy books, including 
classics such as
>Dune and the Wheel of Time series. In the afternoon, he 
coasts down
>the hill on his bicycle to a quaint village, stops at a 
Peet's coffee
>shop for a latte or Chai tea, and pumps back up the 
hill. Then he
>returns to his computers.
>
>Although Torvalds is physically near his comrades at 
OSDL, he almost
>never sees them face to face. He visited the 
organization's office
>only once in his first three months in the Portland 
area, and he
>rarely meets with Morton, an Aussie who lives in Silicon 
Valley. "It's
>a long-distance mind-meld," says Morton. In a rare 
encounter last
>summer, they shook hands and made small talk at a 
picnic. The Linux
>community, Torvalds says, is like a huge spider web, or 
better yet,
>multiple spider webs representing dozens of related open-
source
>projects. His office is "near where those webs 
intersect."
>
>The Linux development process begins and ends with the 
programmers.
>While there are still some individual volunteers and 
government
>agencies that chip in, more than 90% of the patches now 
come from
>employees at tech companies. Many of those workers are 
formerly
>independent aces who have been scooped up over the past 
few years.
>Some of these people simply submit code, and others, 
called
>maintainers, are in charge of improving specific 
functions.
>
>From there on, it's a continuous cycle. Individuals 
submit patches;
>maintainers improve them. Then they're passed off to 
Torvalds and
>Morton, who review the patches, ask for improvements, 
and update the
>kernel. Every four to six weeks, Torvalds releases a new 
test version
>so that thousands of people around the world can probe 
it for flaws.
>He puts out a major upgrade every three years or so. 
Unlike at
>traditional software companies, there are no deadlines. 
The Linux
>kernel is done when Torvalds decides it's ready.
>
>Linux Inc. is a series of concentric circles radiating 
out from
>Torvalds. In the first circle, you have Open Source 
Development Labs.
>The top tech companies with a stake in Linux -- 
including HP, IBM, and
>Intel -- have technical people on the board of 
directors. The board
>sets priorities, such as getting Linux running better 
for huge data
>centers and desktop PCs. In addition, the board is 
responsible for
>raising $10 million to protect customers from potential
>intellectual-property claims.
>
>TAKING THE SUBWAY 
>The second circle is a dozen or so Linux distributors. 
Spearheaded by
>Red Hat and Novell, this group also includes such 
regional players as
>Red Flag Software in China and MandrakeLinux in Europe. 
They pick up
>the latest version of the kernel about once a year and 
package it with
>1,000 or so related open-source programs, including the 
GNOME
>graphical-user interface, the Firefox browser, and the 
OpenOffice
>desktop application suite.
>
>The distributors race one another to be first out with 
Linux updates,
>but their engineers spend most of their time on projects 
they share
>with everybody else. For example, Novell employs open-
source pioneer
>Miguel de Icaza, who is both a Novell vice-presi- dent 
and the leader
>of the Mono project -- software for building 
applications to run on
>Linux. The 34-year-old Mexican coordinates 25 Novell 
employees plus
>more than 300 other programmers, many of whom work for 
other tech
>companies. So far, de Icaza says, there have been no 
conflicts. His
>explanation: "Cooperating gets you further along than 
screwing your
>neighbor."
>
>These Linux companies have little in common with their 
brethren from
>the dot-com boom. They're typically frugal. Matthew J. 
Szulik, CEO of
>Red Hat, takes the subway rather than a cab when he 
visits customers
>in New York and Boston. And rather than being motivated 
by big money,
>Linux programmers say their goal is making Linux an ever-
bigger force
>in computing. Red Hat's Pennington doesn't covet 
expensive wheels,
>proudly pointing to his 2001 Toyota Corolla in the 
parking lot, which
>he jokes is "fully loaded."
>
>For his part, Torvalds has been amply rewarded for his 
role, but he's
>no Bill Gates billionaire. OSDL pays him a salary of 
nearly $200,000.
>In addition, he sold initial public offering shares that 
he got as
>gifts from a couple of Linux companies, including VA 
Linux Systems.
>That helped him afford his house and put money away for 
his daughters'
>educations.
>
>ALL-PURPOSE SYSTEM 
>In Linux society, there's no bowing and scraping before 
the rich and
>powerful. Executives and product managers at HP, IBM, 
Intel, and
>Oracle (ORCL ) don't even try to pressure Torvalds and 
Morton to
>further their interests. Instead, their input goes 
through their
>engineers, who, as members of the open-source community, 
submit
>patches for the kernel or other pieces of Linux software.
>
>The tech powerhouses have learned to play by new rules. 
You can't meet
>in private, come up with new features, and then drop 
massive changes
>on Torvalds. A handful of companies, including Intel and 
Nokia Corp.
>(NOK ), learned this lesson the hard way when they went 
about making
>Linux capable of running telecom gear. About two dozen 
of their
>engineers worked on the "carrier-grade" Linux project, 
and then, in
>late 2002, they posted hundreds of thousands of lines of 
code on a Web
>site. The response: outrage. "We were offended by the 
whole process,"
>says Alan Cox, a top kernel programmer. The posting was 
quickly
>removed.
>
>Still, the cultures of open-source and commercial 
software are melding
>together. Red Hat used to scatter employees around the 
world, the
>typical open-source approach. Now the company brings its 
workers
>together so young programmers can cross-pollinate with 
gray-haired
>veterans. It works. Not only did 46-year-old Larry 
Woodman bond with
>26-year-old Rik van Riel by teaching him how to drive a 
car, but the
>two are working in tandem on improvements to memory 
management in
>Linux. "We complement each other," says Woodman.
>
>These collaborations are turning Linux into an all-
purpose operating
>system. It's secure enough that Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory
>loads it not only on desktop and server computers but 
also on
>supercomputers it uses to simulate the aging of nuclear 
materials.
>"Linux is definitely more secure than Windows," says 
Mark Seager, the
>lab's assistant department head for advanced 
technology. "There aren't
>as many ways to break the system." With the latest 
improvements, Linux
>now works on servers with more than 128 processors and 
can run the
>largest databases. The newest versions also have 
features, such as
>power management, that make them more suitable for 
laptop PCs.
>
>Linux is so solid that staid corporate purchasers are 
adopting it
>aggressively for run-the-company applications. Holcim 
Ltd. (HCMLY ),
>the Swiss cement giant, just switched from Unix to Linux 
for some of
>its accounting, manufacturing, and human-resource 
applications. The
>attraction: 50% savings on hardware and 20% on 
software. "It was a
>no-brainer to go with Linux," says Carl Wilson, chief 
operations
>manager for the company's North American data center.
>
>Cost isn't the only reason that companies are switching 
to Linux. The
>data processor Axciom Corp. recently shifted some 
servers to the
>operating system, after using Unix in the past. Alex 
Dietz, the
>company's chief information officer, says he's thinking 
about
>replacing the Windows operating system with Linux on the 
company's
>desktop computers. One important reason: Axciom doesn't 
want to be too
>dependent on Microsoft. "[Linux] has an innate guarantee 
that you
>won't be held hostage," says Dietz.
>
>Torvalds takes tremendous satisfaction in seeing his 
baby grow up.
>"It's like a river. It starts off a bouncy small stream 
and turns into
>a slower-moving big thing," he says.
>
>Indeed, Linux Inc. has emerged as a model for 
collaborating in a new
>way on software development, which could have 
reverberations
>throughout the business world. Its essence is captured 
in one of the
>mottoes of the open-source world: Give a little, take a 
lot. In a
>business environment where efficiency rules, that's a 
potent formula
>-- maybe even strong enough to knock mighty Microsoft 
down a peg.
>http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_05/b39180
01_mz001.htm?
campaign_id=nws_insdr_jan21&link_position=link1
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