[ Thanks to Paul B.
Krause for this link. ]
“Eric Steven Raymond is a very busy man. One recent spring
morning, the open-source software guru was sitting in his Malvern
home, juggling arrangements to speak to groups in New Jersey,
California and Japan — all in one month. “You have no idea
what sorts of demands are being thrust upon me,” he said with a
sigh.“
“Raymond, with his pale complexion, strands of blondish hair and
ragged moustache, looks every inch the computer hacker. But these
days Raymond is spending more time in front of an audience than
behind a keyboard. CEOs, programmers, engineers, government
officials and market analysts all want to hear his views on a
market trend that’s rapidly transforming the software
industry.”
“Open-source software — programming source code distributed to
the world for free — is one of the hottest technology trends.
Software publishers use this approach to lure customers to their
product line and quickly build a large user base. For example,
Netscape (through mozilla.org) published the source code for its
Web browser in an effort to regain market share captured by
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — a strategy that ultimately failed
because of internal corporate bickering, said Raymond. “It wasn’t
anything attributable to the open-source model.”