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Chapter 5 IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies 219

5.4 CONTEMPORARY SOFTWARE PLATFORM TRENDS

There are four major themes in contemporary software platform evolution:

• Linux and open source software
• Java, HTML, and HTML5
• Web services and service-oriented architecture
• Software outsourcing and cloud services

LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Open source software is software produced by a community of several
hundred thousand programmers around the world. According to the leading
open source professional association, OpenSource.org, open source software
is free and can be modified by users. Works derived from the original code
must also be free, and the software can be redistributed by the user without
additional licensing. Open source software is by definition not restricted to any
specific operating system or hardware technology, although most open source
software is currently based on a Linux or Unix operating system.
The open source movement has been evolving for more than 30 years and
has demonstrated that it can produce commercially acceptable, high-qual-
ity software. Popular open source software tools include the Linux operat-
ing system, the Apache HTTP Web server, the Mozilla Firefox Web browser,
and the Apache OpenOffice desktop productivity suite. Open source tools
are being used on netbooks as inexpensive alternatives to Microsoft Office.
Major hardware and software vendors, including IBM, HP, Dell, Oracle, and
SAP, now offer Linux-compatible versions of their products. You can find
out more out more about the Open Source Definition from the Open Source
Initiative and the history of open source software at the Learning Tracks for
this chapter.

Linux
Perhaps the most well-known open source software is Linux, an operating
system related to Unix. Linux was created by the Finnish programmer Linus
Torvalds and first posted on the Internet in August 1991. Linux applications are
embedded in cell phones, smartphones, netbooks, and consumer electronics.
Linux is available in free versions downloadable from the Internet or in low-
cost commercial versions that include tools and support from vendors such as
Red Hat.
Although Linux is not used in many desktop systems, it is a major force in
local area networks, Web servers, and high-performance computing work. IBM,
HP, Intel, Dell, and Oracle have made Linux a central part of their offerings to
corporations.
The rise of open source software, particularly Linux and the applications
it supports, has profound implications for corporate software platforms: cost
reduction, reliability and resilience, and integration, because Linux works on
all the major hardware platforms from mainframes to servers to clients.

SOFTWARE FOR THE WEB: JAVA, HTML, AND HTML5

Java is an operating system-independent, processor-independent, object-ori-
ented programming language that has become the leading interactive environ-
ment for the Web. Java was created by James Gosling and the Green Team at

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