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January 31, 2007
Open Source perspectives
Sometimes I'm still amazed at how Open Source is perceived.
Perspective #1
The other week, the German version of CIO magazine published an article titled "Open Source - a real alternative for the IT market?" by Mathieu Paujol.
His general take on Open Source is that is only relevant if you have simple or specialized needs and also have a team of developers.
A quote from the article: "Open Source-Software is only interesting for simple scenarios of little strategic importance."
From my current and past experience I know that there are plenty of major companies using or looking to use Open Source in mission-critical situations, so I was somewhat surprised at the angle discussed in the article.
Perspective #2
A couple of weeks ago I received a phone-call from a German journalist I've known for a few years. He was researching an article for iX on how companies are running businesses in the Open Source eco-system.
(Actually he was supposed to be writing about companies that receive payment to go into failing Open Source projects and rescue them. However he hadn't been able to find any companies that actually do this - no surprise there).
So the journalist then changed the subject to be more about how companies less well-known than say IBM or Red Hat (i.e. companies like ours) are building a business around Open Source. A much more interesting perspective (but then I'm biased).
So, what's your perspective on Open Source in 2007?
Update: altered the post to make the quote clearer.
Posted by Matthew at January 31, 2007 05:59 PM