"Make has always been described to me as if one were baking a cake. You have a prescribed list of ingredients, each one with its own place in the recipe. The directions are followed and out pops a cake. Make is great for cake. But it really shines when you're baking things like a motorcycle."

"The primary drawback to ksh has been that it was proprietary. This has recently changed however. The new AT&T open source license allows ksh source and binaries to be shipped as part of the system and is now just beginning to start showing up in Linux systems; for example the latest slackware."

Software that is placed under "copyleft" -- as opposed to copyright -- may be in a legal limbo and is still reliant on the concept of copyright, an Irish legal expert says.

Software that is placed under "copyleft" -- as opposed to copyright -- may be in a legal limbo and is still reliant on the concept of copyright, an Irish legal expert says.

The London-based investment banking arm of Dresdner Bank AG, Germany's third-biggest bank, last week launched its custom-built, back-end integration tool, called Openadaptor. The open-source application lets the bank reconcile its global banking and trading accounts faster.

The London-based investment banking arm of Dresdner Bank AG, Germany's third-biggest bank, last week launched its custom-built, back-end integration tool, called Openadaptor. The open-source application lets the bank reconcile its global banking and trading accounts faster.

Contract-manufacturing giant Flextronics is laying plans to tap into open-source hardware for its ASICs. And both Metaflow Technologies Inc. and IROC Technologies SA are building products using the Leon-1, a Sparc-like open-source processor developed at the European Space Agency's Technology Center.

Contract-manufacturing giant Flextronics is laying plans to tap into open-source hardware for its ASICs. And both Metaflow Technologies Inc. and IROC Technologies SA are building products using the Leon-1, a Sparc-like open-source processor developed at the European Space Agency's Technology Center.

While Microsoft executives publicly vacillate between declaring Linux either the most hyped operating system or the biggest threat to Windows, in reality, the company has learned some powerful lessons from its open-source competitors.

While Microsoft executives publicly vacillate between declaring Linux either the most hyped operating system or the biggest threat to Windows, in reality, the company has learned some powerful lessons from its open-source competitors.