[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“I heard two different computer industry executives make
the following comments. One is, how do you have a software industry
if there’s open source? And the other is, open source lowers
revenues for everybody. How would you respond to
those?“Well again, open source is only free or free software is only
free if your time is free. And I don’t know about you, but my time
is definitely not free. And in terms of lowering revenues, I don’t
think that’s necessarily true. I think the money changes to a
different place. The revenue opportunity changes to a different
place. So it’s a disruptive event in the software industry. But
disruptive events create opportunities for those who are agile
enough or have the foresight to see the changes that are coming and
can adapt. And so Sun’s embrace of open source is just a part of
adapting and changing with the changing of landscape. There’s still
plenty of money to be made, it’s just shifting to a different
place. Again, pay at the point of deriving some value from having a
relationship with your vendor versus pay to get access to the
technology…”