Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
large enterprises when they can simply order replacements for damaged
or lost equipment, which will arrive preinstalled with the desired com-
mercial technologies.
Note:
Open-source advocates have long noted that Linux might have a
stronger market share if the larger computer manufacturers offered pre-
installed open-source options rather than the dominant Microsoft Win-
dows platform. However, the flexibility of the platform itself makes this
a difficult task, because there are more than 700 recognized distributions
of the Linux platform alone—before considering the numerous forks of
packages that might be arrayed atop the Linux operating system. A few
manufacturers, such as Dell, offer a limited Linux option. These are typi-
cally based on one of the commercially supported Linux distributions, in
order to ensure that clients can find support at need.
Open Standards
A tangent to the open-source vs. commercial technology argument is the
often-used term “open standards.” Legislation has even been proposed in
several state legislatures to mandate that all purchased technologies must
support open standards. Open standards are those that can be used by
any technology designer to create a solution that will work with all others
of the same type. The SMTP e-mail transport protocol is one such, as a
part of the TCP/IP communications protocol suite.
Open standards are fundamental to the global Internet, and they must
be present for both information sharing and future-proofing an enter-
prise. Whether an open-source or commercial off-the-shelf architecture is
ultimately determined to be correct, connectivity and accessibility must
be based on open standards. Without these standards, critical function-
ality might be lost in future updates or records retention compromised
if new software cannot read older files. Numerous standards have been
recognized for document interchange, such as the Microsoft Office Open
XML (OOXML) or the Open Document Format (ODF) developed by
the OASIS group. One of the most-often-used open standards for docu-
ment interchange is the Portable Document Format (PDF) created by
Adobe Systems and used for many corporate and governmental sites to
