There’s a new incentive for writing that open source device
driver: Money. Doc Searls talks with Brian Behlendorf of
sourceXchange and Wayne Caccomo of Hewlett-Packard and Bernie
Thompson of CoSource.com.
“Hewlett-Packard… discovered a way to help its own pragmatist
agenda… they approached O’Reilly & Associates with some
ideas. The end result is sourceXchange, a new online marketplace
for open source development, hosted by O’Reilly and headed by Brian
Behlendorf, whose own creds as a hacker have few equals (code he
wrote for Apache is serving up the pages you’re reading right
now).
“Coincidentally, a similar effort is taking shape in Seattle,
where CoSource.com is growing from the fertile mind of Bernie
Thompson and his own crew. The two efforts have an identical
agenda: creating a real marketplace for open source development –
one that allows real market conversations between supply and
demand, where customers get added values and suppliers get added
dollars.
“And what does Eric Raymond think of it? “I love it!” he says.
“One company is just a bunch of crazy guys. But two companies is an
industry.”