blog.openboxsoftware.com

The open source movement continues to gather momentum as more and more people not only become aware of it, but also begin to use software developed from it in their everyday lives.

For me the defining “moment” for something like this is when it becomes a nature part of what is available “out there” and gets used without a great deal of pre-thought. An example of this is the internet or e-mail or Instant Messaging – how many times to you actually think about it before you use it now days? Not many, if at all, which is not the same answer that you would have given only a handful of years back (even less if you live in a “telecommunications challenged” country but I’m not going to get on THAT hobby-horse!). Well, open source solutions are very much in that phase now. Most of (the more technical of you) have known, and used, Apache as a web server for some time. The less technical of you probably use (or should use) Firefox as your browser, and these are just a small number of solutions in the “stack” that are the higher profile ones.

There are now literally millions of tiny open source solutions that are part of much greater solutions that we all use everyday. Gareth in his blog mentions this and references a very interesting CSC report which speaks to this in more detail. So what does this mean? Well it demonstrates a maturity of the movement, in my opinion, but it also perhaps points to where the movement’s “place” in the greater scheme of things is.

I’ll be honest (usually am anyway, but it has a greater effect to actually say it) the “what to do” about open source question, speaking as a manager of a software development company (and yes, we do actually try/need to create some money by doing this) has been something of an enigma for me as I have viewed it from a distance over the last 5 years or so. I have always wondered how we could embrace open source while still earning money so we can do things like paying people – something that most enthusiasts for the open source movement conveniently forget about when talking about its (de)merits. From so many angles, open source makes so much sense: software development is very much a collaborative and iterative process that should be a fun filled adventure for those involved – something that the open source community has rightly whole-hearted embraced. It just has the one (some people would say many) downside that unless you have the money of Mark Shuttleworth or Sun (both made/make their money elsewhere in IT) you have to actually think about what the cost vs. revenue return actually is.

If (and I actually believe in some areas that we are pretty much there already) open source can co-exist with proprietary software and, in many cases, actually enhance and improve on both the process of the creation of it as well as the final product then we have something that everyone can really embrace. Essentially the movement has achieved its aim of disrupting some markets/industries but to continue this it has needed to evolve, along with its environment, to the point where it is now being embraced by its environment, which by definition has changed to facilitate this.

Or have I just talked my way around in a circle? Maybe but at least “I” feel better (and have got you thinking).