“The big news in Open Source is the sudden and conspicuous
arrival of big business. A number of Summit attendees hailed from
Fortune 500s like IBM, Hewlett/Packard, and Silicon Graphics,
intent on figuring out a way to ride the Open Source wave. Tom
Kalil from the National Economic Council was at the table, for
god’s sake. Even the more illustrious Open Source theoreticians
without commercial affiliations spent a good deal of time outlining
diabolical rhetorical strategies to sell the Open Source concept to
business. Eric Raymond in particular seems to have refined the
practice into a high art.
“It was a lively discussion, to be sure. One of the saving
graces of the Open Source scene is that most of its vanguard,
unlike the majority of mainstream computer industry chieftains, are
highly entertaining and self-effacing. But despite my amusement,
something about the direction of the debate didn’t feel right to
me, though I was at a loss why.”
Article by Thomas Scoville.