4. Encourage free redistribution of derived works, for instance KDE and GNOME, both are X Windows desktop for Linux. .
5. Embraced mostly by globally distributed developer communities, collaborating primarily through internet voluntarily. There are estimated around 750,000 developers working on Linux-related projects (referred Appendix C for some Linux vendors).
Same as most other OSS product, Linux has an interesting development environment called the "Bazaar Model" (Raymond, E.S., 1997) where there are a large number of team members dynamically working on the software collaboratively via Internet. It usually has frequent product release cycles (around 4 to 6 months) and is fundamentally different from those traditional software development methods, referred as Cathedral Model. .
Linux development has implicitly divided into two majors, there are kernel development which is quite tightly controlled by Linus Torvalds (with GPL, he forced all competing companies to work on kernel code together) and Linux applications which has been ongoing quite uncontrolled without much uniformity. This somehow has created concerns over Linux's potential to penetrate widely in corporate market.
OSS portal such as www.sourceforge.com provide a reference list of established OSS products, while websites such as www.linux.org and www.linuxcentral.com have become the portal for Linux-based projects and resources. Today, the most recognized OSS distribution is Apache web server (Refer to Appendix A) and GNU/Linux Operating System (refer to Appendix B).
Why Linux and Why Red Hat?.
We have go further enough on this paper for people to start asking why Linux is chosen to be the key focus for discussion among so many OSS products. Also there are many Linux distributions and why Red Hat is picked for business implementation review?.
Although Apache web server is considered the most recognized OSS implementation (refer to Appendix A) but GNU/Linux arguably has been the trigger for high interest in OSS development (Bezroukov, 1999).
