Has Open Source really won?
The Economist has posted yesterday that “open source software has won the argument“.Others, for example Matthew Aslett expanded on this thought and asked additional questions, i.e. where to go from here.
In my eyes this is not really about war and winning, it’s more about finding a well thought through co-existence of proprietary and Open Source software. It’s about industrializing software production, i.e. making the development process more effective and efficient. And it’s about broadening access to good software for everybody. There are good reasons for inventors and clever engineers to publish their work as proprietary software and generating some return for their hard work. And there are good reasons for opening commodity technologies and for leveraging the distribution power of the Open Source approach. I always stated that the future will bring co-existence of both worlds and this seems where we are heading too. Good for us.
One caveat though: As it has recently been discussed there is still often no fair competition between commercial vendors and Open Source solutions. The case of Switzerland where a big Microsoft deal was closed without even looking at (Open Source) alternatives is an example. So, maybe the “war” is still not won?
Entries (RSS)