While it's pretty painless to convert from commercial office software to an open source version, if you'd like to replace commercial security products with open source counterparts, you'll likely have to do some work. You may need to combine several open source tools to get the functionality you get from a single commercial product.

A little over a year ago, we took a look at 10 Commercial Open Source Security Vendors. As we set out to update that list, two facts jumped out: 1) the number of open source security apps with commercial support has grown substantially and 2) the line between open source and commercial applications continues to blur.

Ron Barrett selects some of his favorite open source tools for Windows administrators. All of these are great products for the IT pro that rival their commercial counterparts and come with that loveable, open-source price.

Pentaho, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI), today announced that Zack Urlocker, vice president of products in Sun's database group and previous EVP of products for MySQL AB, has joined Pentaho's Board of Directors. He will apply his proven success in a wide range of areas spanning products, marketing, sales, and partners.

As open-source coding begins to appear with increasing regularity in commercial software products, government users need to be aware of the potential security vulnerabilities in open-source code, industry experts say.

Defence department: Misconceptions about open source software have made many U.S. Defense Department sectors reluctant to employ this technology. Although a 2003 department policy allows its use, many still believe that open source software poses an increased security risk to networks and that it is not supported as well as commercial products.

Open source tools are viable alternatives to popular closed-source applications and some open source tools offers features or performance benefits that surpass their commercial counterparts.

Socitm president Richard Steel believes open source still lags behind commercial products.

Steve Goodman, co-founder and CEO of network management startup PacketTrap Networks, is predicting that commercial open source companies are doomed to fail. Goodman's not railing against open source or commercial software, per se. It's converting the former into the latter that he sees as inherently flawed.