[ Thanks to Glyn
Moody for this link. ]
“His answer was a good one. He said that he did think that Red
Hat could get to $5 billion in due course, but that this entailed
‘replacing $50 billion of revenue’ currently enjoyed by other
computer companies. What he meant was that to attain that $5
billion of revenue Red Hat would have to displace software that
currently costs $50 billion. Selling $50 billion-worth of software
– even if it only costs $5 billion – is somewhat hard,
which is why it will take a while to achieve.“I think this is the first time I’ve heard someone as senior as
Whitehurst admit something rather profound: that open source
solutions save money for customers by doing away with the fat
margins for existing computer companies – and thus shrink the
overall market. Opponents of open source like to paint this as
“value destruction” that takes money ‘out of the economy’ – as if
free software went around burning down offices and warehouses.”