[LINK] ZDNet Editorial: Aussie battlers battle for innovation

[Tony Barry]

Extracted item provided for information.

Source:ZDNet Australia News & Tech - Wednesday November 7, 2001
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Editorial: Aussie battlers battle for innovation

The word 'innovation' often draws connotations of Microsoft minions cooking up
new products in overpriced, overstaffed R&D labs in America, and bringing to
the world tales of amazing new technologies. All too often though, these
innovations are little more than new takes on old products, designed to boost
the monolith's bank balance and--if lucky--to benefit the end user. Take
Windows XP as a great example of this-- a new version of a not-so-old product
that has cost amazing amounts of money to develop, research, market 
and release.

With money and innovation seemingly so inextricably linked, it is not often
that the IT community hears tales of small companies developing amazing new
tools, and then offering them to the world at large...for free. That these
innovators may be Australian is even harder to imagine, given the Government's
constant voicing of concerns over the so-called 'brain drain'.

Yet, a very small Australian-owned company has just released a new security
tool for Linux-based operating systems to the world market. Apart from
providing the end user with a vital ingredient previously missing from the
Linux OS, this tool may also encourage enterprise-level Linux adoption in
Australia.

It gets better. Not only is this tool truly innovative, it has also been
released as open source software--allowing free access for all--in what the
company's directors claim is an attempt to give something back to the Linux
community.

Isn't this a great day for all Aussie battlers?
http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink?160338

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