Open Source Software to Accelerate?
One of the key obstacles for acceptance of Open Source Software (OSS) — like Linux, Open Office, and many of the other 93,000+ OSS projects displayed on the OSS site SourceForge — has been the lack of support for this software.
I.T. leaders have told me things in the past like, “So what am I gonna do if I adopt an OSS application, operating system or application server and I have a problem with it. Send an email to the ‘community’? I’ve got to have a vendor to lean on.”
Today there’s an acceleration in companies (such as IBM & HP) supporting either an open source stack (web, application servers; database, etc.). In addition, Ray Lane (former #2 at Oracle) along with Kim Polese (former CEO of Marimba) have started a new company called SpikeSource to support the whole enchilada (the entire OSS stack).
So if you’re a company that’s chosen any OSS offering, now there’s a place to turn to for technical and user support. This is a big deal on the way to OSS acceptance. It’s going to get more interesting going forward.
About Steve Borsch
Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.
Connecting the Dots Podcast
Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.