ONLamp: OSCon 2003 Wrap-Up

“The tone at the 2003 O’Reilly Open Source Convention was one of
business-like confidence. I sensed much less of the demonstrative
posturing that I noticed at earlier conferences, where many people
felt that they had to prove themselves as well as their projects’
viability. The free software movement has made it by now. Just look
how the trade and mainstream press has covered the story of the SCO
lawsuit. A few years ago, all the buzz would have asked what the
suit meant for IBM, but now everybody’s more concerned about
Linux.

“And with this mainstreaming comes responsibility. Developers,
system integrators, and other professionals are acutely conscious
of the millions of people who depend directly on Open Software. The
time has come not for manifestos but for the unflagging work of
keeping the systems at peak operation.

“One corollary of this sense, I believe, is a silent acceptance
by now that the world of proprietary software is deeply entwined
with Open Source. This entwinement has been going on from the
beginning, whether one considers the popularity of Cygwin tools or
the many free software bindings for proprietary databases…”

Complete
Story