February 2004 Archives

According to the latest figures released by WebHosting.info we are now ranked 21st for Ireland. There are a number of flaws with the webhosting.info stats, however, as an extremely rough barometer, it is interesting. John McCormack's WhoisIreland also provides statistics, which seem to be slightly closer to reality. In either case we are definitely expanding, whether this current trend will continue or not is another matter. Other companies in the sector continue to grow, while some, such as IEInternet seem to be fairly static. On the other hand, there are an increasing number of "reseller" type hosts emerging from the "woodwork". If past trends are anything to go by the bulk of these "companies" do not pose any real threat to us, or our nearest rivals.

Earlier this week a number of media sources reported on the aftermath of the MyDoom virus. What was quite shocking was the way they handled or, more accurately, mishandled it. Both RTE and BBC attributed the blame to linux / Open Source. If that were not bad enough, one of the commentators on Irish radio chose to add insult to injury ny threatening legal action against ILUG. The legal battle, if it ensues, will, naturally, be fought "tooth and nail" by some companies who have a vested interest in Open Source, however that is not the real issue at stake here. So, what is? In my opinion 1 the key issue that needs to be addressed is education. It is not an easily achieved goal, but one that could reap benefits not only for geeks or large companies, but also for "humble" end users. The current situation is all too clear: M$ dominates both the desktop and the SME office server market. However it is obviously not so confident now of its position as it once was. Unfortunately the "average Joe" is in essence forced to use the M$ solution without any choice. Choice in this instance costs. The downside to the cost is probably two-fold: On the one hand the cost of legitimate software is prohibitively high, so people end up using pirated copies. On the other side the companies producing the software claim that the pirated software is costing them in lost revenue and dutifully pass the losses directly onto the consumer by way of price increases. Does it have to be this way? Probably not. The problem is of course that of education. Corporate America (and Ireland for that matter) relies on scare tactics etc., to maintain the monopoly. If a company considers switching to an open source solution they are immediately met with the classic arguments of: "You pay for what you get" - fallacy. If this held water how come so many servers used for sensitive and mission critical applications run Apache? Even Oracle use a web server based on Apache's httpd "No company = no support" or "support costs are higher" : Hardly realistic. If you consider the amount of time and money invested by an average sized IT department to apply "critical" M$ patches and compare that to the time involved in maintaining *nix like systems... Of course this is not a complete picture.. more a ramble 1. Mine and mine alone, if you share it great, if you don't I don't care and no it is not my company's by definition, though it may be in fact.