Ibrahim Haddad

This article discusses Open Source compliance and the challenges faced when establishing a compliance program, provides an overview of best practices, and offers recommendations on how to deal with compliance inquiries. Introduction Traditionally, platforms and software stacks were built using proprietary software and consisted of various software building blocks that came from different companies with negotiated licensing terms. The business environment was predictable and potential risks were mitigated through license and contract negotiations with the software vendors. In time, companies started to incorporate Open Source software in their platforms for the different advantages it offers (technical merit, time-to-market, access to source code, customization, etc). Wit... (more)

Toward Highly Available Linux Clusters

This article describes the HA-OSCAR architecture and features, and demonstrates how to set up a highly available Linux cluster using the first beta release of HA-OSCAR version 1.0. Introduction In 2002, Ibrahim Haddad, Chokchai Leangsuksun, and Stephen L. Scott established the HA-OSCAR (High Availability OSCAR) project with a primary goal of leveraging the existing OSCAR (Open Source Clus... (more)

Getting Started with Red Hat Linux

This article provides a glimpse into Red Hat: The Complete Reference Enterprise Linux and Fedora Edition (with DVD), published by McGraw-Hill/Osborne. It covers what you need to get started with Red Hat Linux - including the overall design of Linux, Linux distributions, and online resources. As an operating system, Linux performs many of the same functions as Unix, Macintosh, Windows, a... (more)

Is the Open Source Development Model Right for Your Organization?

The open source development model has unique characteristics that make it in some instances a superior model for developing software compared to the traditional software engineering cascade model. As with other practices, the open source development model had its advantages and inconveniences. Will adopting the open source development model improve the way your corporate developers work ... (more)

Can Linux Clusters Move into Mainstream Information Technology?

The emergence of commodity supercomputing has driven clusters based on the Linux operating system into engineering and scientific research organizations that couldn't afford their own supercomputing resources before. But Linux clusters have the potential to become a hot topic in traditional information technology circles as well. The coming year may well be the technology tipping point w... (more)