Who will free us from Microsoft's proprietary grasp CNET blogger Matt Asay asks? His answer may surprise you. It's not Red Hat, or Sun or IBM.
He writes
Google, not Red Hat or Sun, appears to be the long-awaited redeemer of
both personal computers and servers, and has even staked a credible
claim in the mobile world, as well. Google achieves this, in part, by writing copious lines of open-source code,
but pays for this "generosity" with insanely profitable proprietary
services, services that have long appealed to consumers but increasingly appeal to enterprises, too.
Is it a win-win that we benefit from lots of high quality open source code if the price is to drive us towards Google's proprietary services?
Perhaps we're getting what we deserve. Asay points out that
In an ideal world, open-source software companies would thrive by
simply giving away lots of code, and having enterprises and government
organizations serve their long-term interests by paying for support.We don't live in that world. Some organizations do buy
support for open-source software, of course, though many others do not,
and some only pay long enough to become self-sufficient whereupon they
dump their support contracts, as former CTO of NBC iVillage Jon Williams once declared.
Do you take the software and run, or would you pay for support? How do you think open source can grow and thrive?
Doug Yriart
Linux Rocks! | 
