Pennington: Open Source and Services

"To me open source vs. proprietary isn't a good vs. evil question, simply two different things with different costs and benefits. That said, open source tilts the benefits toward users over software companies, all else being equal. That's why open source evangelism makes sense.

"Since the Internet appeared, a trend in the software industry has been toward 'software as a service'; which can be enterprise-oriented like Salesforce.com or consumer-oriented like GMail or MySpace. In addition to web sites, it can include the cable box and cell phone model of automatically-managed software on a client device..."

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