"Two sales people (the kind of staff most evident at LinuxWorld) from two different companies approached me within a 24-hour period to say they want to talk to me about making part or all of their product open source. I was flattered to be consulted, being neither a system designer nor a marketing expert. But before I directed them to others I thought would have more direct experience, I had some interesting conversations that laid out some of the issues.
"The determination of a company to open-source its product is at least as significant as the decision of a customer to use open-source software. When a company entrusts its core value to the community, and declares that it can make a living by doing so, the movement has a major gain..."
