Open Source 2009: It's the Economy, Stupid. Or is it?
Apr 16, 2009, 03:02 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Bill Baker)
[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but opening keynote
speaker Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian made the case that a shrinking
GDP, cautious CFOs and general uncertainty translates into IT
spending cuts of up to 10 percent. He then declared that "open
source will be the largest beneficiary of this economic downturn."
I had not yet finished my first cup of coffee and I was convinced
that the world was ending, but for the saving grace of open source.
"RedHat CEO Jim Whitehurst continued the theme in his afternoon
keynote. Whitehurst was a speaker last year, and in his 2008 speech
he pointed out that ill economic breezes were kicking up. This
year, in so many words, he said I told you so and by the way, "This
is a fantastic time for open source." He said that tough economic
times cause people to re-think strategies and that RedHat came into
its own after the dot.com bust. It should be noted that the next
day, RedHat released its quarterly results, which basically hit the
ball out of the park.
"Next up, a group panel moderated by Jim Zemlin of the Linux
Foundation featured Whitehurst and a group of open source end-users
including K.S. Bhaskar of Fidelity Information Services, Timothy
Golden of Bank of America and Vinod Kutty of the Chicago Mercantile
Exchange."
Complete
Story
Related Stories:
- The Value of Sharing(Apr 15, 2009)
- Linux gets reseller friendly(Apr 14, 2009)
- Ordering Ubuntu on a Dell Laptop(Apr 13, 2009)
- IDC: Linux spending set to boom by 21 percent in 2009(Apr 13, 2009)
- Why Mozilla must win the hearts of new Web users(Apr 10, 2009)
- Geekonomics 101(Apr 10, 2009)
- Addressing the State of the Linux Union(Apr 08, 2009)
- The key to Linux's mainstream success(Apr 04, 2009)
- Linux, Windows Server both hit by economy(Apr 03, 2009)
- Security Absurdity: The Complete, Unquestionable,
And Total Failure of Information Security(Apr 03, 2009)
- The Cost Savings of FOSS: Business Success for the Wrong Reason(Apr 01, 2009)
