Comments on: What is Open Source? The Follow Up

By: Port 25 : Are you inspired by Open?

Port 25 : Are you inspired by Open? — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:05:50 +0000

[...] in (or actively hostile to) the “what really deserves to be called open source” debate (useful round up from Stephen O’Grady at Redmonk) for understandable reasons: flexibility to do what they need to do to help their businesses [...]

By: links for 2007-03-13 « rand($thoughts);

links for 2007-03-13 « rand($thoughts); — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:28:47 +0000

[...] What is Open Source? The Follow Up A must read for anyone interested in the open source arena. Well done Stephen! (tags: opensource redmonk) [...]

By: Zend Technologies » Blog Archive » We’ll Know One When We See One

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 09:25:23 +0000

[...] check these entries by Allison Randal, Matt Asay, Open Source Magazine, Stephen O’Grady (incl follow up), Michael Tieman and Lukas [...]

By: tecosystems » How Timely: EnterpriseDB on RedMonk Radio

tecosystems » How Timely: EnterpriseDB on RedMonk Radio — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 01:35:37 +0000

[...] Radio, we couldn’t know that the firm would become a central, even polarizing, figure in an ongoing debate regarding the definition of open source. We wanted to explore those questions, yes, but we [...]

By: Brent Williams

Brent Williams — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:17:07 +0000

Regarding Stephen’s comment, “if customers are indeed so concerned about lockin, why are Office and Windows such dominant products?” Their dominance today is a result of decisions made 10-15 years ago, often not by the people who are in position to make those decisions today.

A more powerful question to ask that has some predictive power is, “if you knew then what you knew now about the consequences, good and bad, for standardizing on Office and Windows, would you have made the same decision?” When the number of people that would make the same decision starts to go down, then people are starting to get ready to switch and a big opportunity is in the wind.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:06:43 +0000

Respectfully disagree. I know that *you* care, and that you’re educated on these subjects, but in my experience you’re the exception rather than the rule. You attend OSBC, most do not.

If you don’t buy that, answer this: if customers are indeed so concerned about lockin, why are Office and Windows such dominant products in terms of marketshare?

I think Dave (of MuleSource) would agree, as he says:

“…I can absolutely tell you that customers (and potential customers) simply don’t care about anything but GPL. That may be because of where the product lives in the stack or because they have no intention of ever paying for it, or because they want to fork it or whatever else. I would tell you that 100% of the time the GPL misgivings are incorrect. The GPL simply has a brand problem.”

By: James

James — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 23:48:48 +0000

Customers DO care about open source beyond simply looking for a solution. Being open prevents lockin and ultimately allows us access to ALL source code which allows us to not only contribute but hopefully influence others in a particular direction.