Business Day: Waking From Open Source Dream

“The ponytails have been in short supply at the annual
LinuxWorld bash in San Francisco this week. Chris DiBona of Google
sported one of the few, as if to stress that one of the richest
software companies in Silicon Valley remains studiously
antiestablishment. Surrounded by trimmer figures in suits, he
looked out of place–a throwback to the mythical days of late-night
coding, libertarian politics and takeout pizza.

“Something has happened to the open-source software movement. It
is losing some of the intellectual purity that first drew in the
ponytail crowd. It is being subverted to the interests of bigger
technology companies–something that makes the idealists who
created it angry and perturbs the romantics who like to see in it
proof that individual human ingenuity can still outsmart faceless
corporate power…”

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