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February 14, 2006
How Disruptive Is Open Source?
Along with the discussion of Open Source technologies is often how disruptive they are to established technologies, and commercial companies.
Open-source continues to loom large for Oracle as their recent shopping spree attests. With Sun's dual-source model it continues to confound entrenched companies how they should deal with open-source, whether it's a fight, mixed, join-em or acquire-em approach. In Joe McKendrick's ZDNet Blog he asks is it SOA or Open-source which is killing the software industry faster?
Although open-source is clearly a factor, and a big one for firms like Sun, there is still much to debate here. Some argue that Open-source innovation remains somewhat elusive. I tend to agree on the whole. Here's why.
I think there are a few different ways open-source projects get started as can be seen in our open-source interviews post a couple of weeks ago.
1. University or government project where public funds fuel the work (think CiviCRM)
2. Starts with a small community building up around a need (think Toad or Apache)
3. Commercial company sponsoring existing project to promote a better market playing field (Google, IBM, Novell)
4. Pet college project which then gains a huge following (Linux)
Of course there's a lot of overlap here, but the point is that there are a lot of starting points. Fame and respect among ones peers is certainly a driver, but leveling the playing field is often just a big a driver, think Firefox, and Linux as serious alternatives to Microsoft offerings.
Innovation is still difficult and startup companies with great ideas still abound to try their hand at building the next great internet platform or application. It will likely continue to be a combination of grassroots open-source projects, and commercial startups that fuel innovation in the future.
Posted by admin at February 14, 2006 02:46 PM