Enterprise open source Toolkit

In association with Network Liberation Movement

Story: Shadow chancellor slams government over open source

Posted by: andrewdonoghue (Thursday 8 March 2007, 5:37 PM)

The genie is out of the bottle

Right – so it seems that you are saying that the software industry can only be sustained if we carry on with the locked-down approach to software development that has characterised the WinTel era? You sound a bit like a record executive in the mid-90s bemoaning downloading – and look what happened there. Failing to embrace and accept change cost the music companies dearly and allowed innovators such as Apple to come in and clean-up. The revenues were still there to be made but the old ways of going to market had been subverted by new technology – and that is exactly what is happening with open source. The genie is out of the bottle and you can't put it back.

You may have a point though about the margins. Traditional IT software and hardware companies may not be able to enjoy the kind of margins that they were able to dictate thanks in part to the closed nature of IT development and the draconian patent regime that accompanies it. But that may be no bad thing. That approach to software gave us some innovation but it also gave us a lot of bug-ridden, and prohibitively licensed software. Open source companies enjoying reasonable margins for the software and services they provide on top of a robust, community developed platform sounds an infinitely better option.

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