eWeek: Open source is the right road to take

May 23, 2000, 02:14 (4 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Timothy Dyck)

[ Thanks to Timothy Dyck / eWEEK Labs for this link. ]

"Contrary to the May 1 column by my eWeek colleague John Taschek ("Open source is (so far) an open road to nowhere"), open source is far from a road to nowhere. Instead, it's leading us somewhere very important-somewhere we want to be."

"Let's distinguish between two fundamentally different parts of the IT market. One is infrastructure-standards-based technologies such as operating system APIs, network services, compilers, storage, databases, transaction monitors, authentication systems, Web protocols and encryption. The other is value-added services, which provide business-specific logic, make infrastructure products easier to use, or provide specialized or infrequently used products."

"Open source is absolutely the right infrastructure development methodology for our age. Value-added services don't benefit as much from open source, and it may be necessary to use closed-source approaches to get them developed. I'll address only infrastructure services here."

Complete Story

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