Compaq chief plays party pooper at LinuxWorld

Last week's LinuxWorld may have featured rabble-rousing speeches and product announcements showing companies' commitment to the open source software, but not everybody was in confident mood about the future of Linux.

Shane Robinson, Compaq's chief technology officer, said in his keynote that corporations are still wary and are not going to rush to deploy Linux. "The number one reason corporations are hesitant to deploy Linux in the enterprise surrounds the very nature of the open-source model," Robinson was reported saying.

The business world equates open source deployment with a lot of hard work and effort, he said. Companies worry about the lack of standards and the fact that each part of the Linux component has to be bought from a separate vendor.

US newswires, quoted Robinson as saying: "Linux lacks a one-stop point of contact."

Other speeches included Red Hat's CEO Matthew Szulik who announced the company is working on setting up a non-profit organisation, led by its chairman Bob Young, which aims to push Linux and open source software in schools.

Meanwhile, Linux NetworX, a Linux-based supercomputer company announced its collaboration with Silicon Graphics and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop software for storing data on supercomputers to simulate nuclear weapons tests.

And finally, the Linux desktop company Ximian launched two versions of boxed products, Ximian Desktop which includes the Gnome interface and a more sophisticated version with Sun Microsystems' StarOffice suite of programs.