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December 13, 2005
Open Source: Unleveling the Playing Field
by Sridhar Ramanathan
In Thomas Friedman’s hot seller, “The World is Flat,” he writes about open-source software calling it a movement that “involves thousands of people around the world coming together online to collaborate in writing everything from their own software to their own operating systems to their own dictionary…” One of the most famous examples of open software is Linux. Some have seen Linux as a lower cost alternative to Microsoft Windows but other real advantages are emerging such as greater flexibility, quality (because more people can debug than handful of employees), scalability and performance. There are drawbacks too. Linda Sonne does a very nice job of presenting a balanced view on open source and its implications to enterprise software vendors in her paper “Open Source: How Will it Reshape the Enterprise Applications World”. I encourage you to give this a careful read. And we welcome your own views and experiences on open source software.
Posted December 13, 2005 | Permalink
Posted to Technology
Comments
Sridhar,
I'm glad to see you adding to everyone's vacation reading list. I'd love to see other comments on open source from your blog readers. The commercial movement has been changing quickly this year!
Posted by: Linda Sonne | December 26, 2005 8:54 AM
I enjoyed this book which I listened to (on my ipod) rather than read suggesting another aspect of this new, online collaborative world - on-demand communication which is being fed by blogs and accessed by hand-hand devices.
The playing field is definintely leveling out and the network is becoming the platform. Interesting stuff!
Posted by: Gil Roberts | December 22, 2005 6:41 AM