From the political side we live in a world of Microsoft dominance in many areas of IT. The case against Microsoft has been well documented but historically it has been difficult to change such situations. It was not so long ago that the dominance of IBM was consider unassailable. Nobody got fired for choosing IBM. The advent of the PC changed that and turned the cards in Microsoft's favour. Now we are once again seeing a change that was considered unlikely a short period of time ago.

Open Source has already more than proved itself although it's a proof often lost on the general public. Much of the intranet is driven by Open Source software - our emails are sent across Open Source email servers, we view web pages sent by Open Source web servers. 'Under the bonnet' of the internet much of the engine that drives it is based on Open Source technology. Microsoft has been unable to make inroads in these areas.

And now the battle lines are being drawn for the next battle. Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is the next territory to be fought over and although we may not be witnessing revolution we can certainly see an evolution which is rapidly accelerating. People are wondering why they have to rely on Office applications that throw numerous options and an unwieldy interface at the user. Why they need to use email clients or web browsers that can destroy their working environment with one simple security flaw. And why the fixes for those faults are quickly found to suffer their own issues - usually within days of release. The revolution is to show that the applications we use on a day to day basis (be they applications for word processing, applications for email or applications for business processes) can be done NOW outside of the Microsoft sphere of influence. A first step towards freeing a customer from the trap of Microsoft lockin.

Blue Fountain is involved in this revolution. We provide solutions to clients which can be run on desktops on which no 'commercial' software is present (or can work within . Our work is interesting as we increasingly realise that presented solutions can be creatively provided not because the client is tied into a given solution - but because we have the flexibility to choose the best solution available.

Increasingly those solutions will revolve around some core technologies.

Python             A clean, flexible, cross platform language. Useful for a multitude of differen requirements.

Zope                 An application server written in Python and used throughout the world in clients such as NASA and NATO.

Plone                A system which can be used as an intranet and extranet server, a document publishing system, a portal server and as a groupware tool for collaboration between separately located entities.

PostgreSQL     An object oriented database offering power and scalability that matches commercial offerings but remains completely open.

Once again - they are not revolutionary in themselves - although they are certainly well evolved. But the freedom of the code and the resulting community that drives these technologies makes the solutions capable with them astonishing.

In the 70's and 80's Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM? In the 90's Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft? Within the next few years surely we hope to be saying  "Nobody ever got fired for freeing their systems".