CNET News: Companies Are Facing a Cannibalizing Dilemma

“Once every three months, Alan Nugent, chief technology officer
of billion-dollar software company Novell, sits down with a small
group of colleagues to decide what software the company will give
away for free.

“For the most part, Novell still sells software the
old-fashioned way, with a license to use applications written and
controlled by Novell. But in the past year, the company has
partially converted to the open-source software approach, with
which anybody can download a program’s source code and modify
it.

“The result is a hybrid strategy that forces Novell to question
whether its commercial products–even portions of its flagship
NetWare line–have become commodities that can be easily replaced
by open-source substitutes. And increasingly, the answer is
yes…”

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