Computerworld Australia: Opinion: Open for Business

“What, oh what, has happened to these open-source people? At
this week’s O’Reilly & Associates Open Source Convention in the
US, I didn’t hear a lot about the philosophy and politics of ‘the
movement.’ I didn’t hear bitter fights over which open-source
license is best, or endless fretting about the confusion over what
the free in free software means–free as in beer? Free as in ride?
Free as in not in jail?

“What I did hear a lot about was business.

“And not just the business of selling Linux operating systems,
or selling hardware bundled with MySQL databases, or selling
services to install and maintain Apache Web servers and Perl
scripts. No, these open-source people were talking about the kind
of business issues that matter to corporate IT: how to cost-justify
projects, how to stay connected with user needs, how a company can
innovate by using free software–not just profit by selling
it…”

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