"The idea that software available at no cost will become popular
in a recession is a no-brainer. As Peter Vescuso, VP of Marketing
at Black Duck Software points out, "The recession is going to force
a lot of people to be more careful with their spending, and look to
get more and more value out of their resources as they spend." And,
Vescuso adds, the pressure to do more with less will be
particularly hard on IT departments, who are always under pressure
to deliver efficient, uninterrupted service. Under the
circumstances, interest in software that is available at no cost or
only a small one is only natural.
"But FOSS has many more advantages than simply being a cheaper
way of building infrastructure. Jim Zemlin, executive director of
the Linux Foundation, points out that not only is FOSS in general
and Linux in particular well-supported, with billions of dollars of
investment from top tier companies, but that, unlike Windows, it is
"massively hedged," by which he means that it is available in every
form from cheap notebooks through embedded systems to super
computers."
