“The O’Reilly Open Source Software Convention here has
become the meeting place between the informality of geek culture
and the buttoned-down business world.“
“For example, at last week’s event, information technology
vendors and user companies came to learn how to develop open-source
projects without incurring the ire of the community. At the same
time, open-source guru Eric Raymond explained how to talk about the
free source-code market to business executives.”
“The term “open source” was created in 1998 by advocates who
hoped it would be more palatable to commercial companies than the
alarming term free software. In the past two years, commercial
vendors have embraced open source for selected products. The latest
is Sun Microsystems Inc., which last week released the code to
StarOffice.”