notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

Re: how well does open source currently meet the needs of shareholders and ceo’s?

I DON’T ENJOY “PHILOSOPHICAL” DEBATES, and I wouldn’t jump into this one except that Hugh McLeod is a brilliant fellow and I wonder if I may be missing something.

He says:

If Open Source software is free, then why bother spending money on Microsoft Partner stuff? [...]

I know very little about software, so my hunch is that the reason Microsoft is able to make money, is simply that running a large business with 2000 people on the payroll requires very different ways of going about it, than just hacking together something in your garage. Open Source may be free [at least at first], but how well does it scale? How well does Open Source currently meet the needs of shareholders and CEOs?

You tell me. Anybody who has more insight than me [pro or anti Microsoft, I don't care], please feel free to leave a comment, Thanks.

I’m afraid the question is too general to inspire a meaningful discussion. What software are we talking about? Office? No comment necessary - Microsoft rules the game. Servers? Hey, doesn’t much of the web run on LAMP? I bet CEOs are quite happy about how their server farms do, even if they’ve never heard of Apache.

He’d need to get specific to even begin a conversation that would get us somewhere.

So forgive me if I pause now with a platitude (this being my answer to Hugh): Open Source isn’t about “hacking stuff in the garage”, it’s ultimately about transparency and freedom to configure the value chain the way your business needs it, and given how much businesses like to overstate their uniqueness, it’s no wonder they are adopting it wherever and whenever they can. There’s a thriving vendor market, and though there may be no Open Source billionaires just yet, that doesn’t mean the market isn’t real. It is.

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April 16, 2007 | Filed Under Open Source 

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