For Application Development & Program Management Professionals (Length: 7 pages)

March 23, 2006

Vendors Refine Open Source Strategies

The Risk Of Subverting Open Source Freedoms Mounts

This is the first document in the "Open Source Strategy Review" series.

by Michael Goulde, Sam Higgins

with John R. Rymer, Mike Gilpin

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

As major software suppliers adopt open source software as part of their strategies, the risk increases that the goals of the open source movement — user freedom to use, modify, and distribute software — will be undermined. Vendor strategies support these open source goals to varying degrees, from willing participation to grudging partnerships. What is clear is that vendors retain their core proprietary software principles, adapting existing business models to embrace open source in some way. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the traditional open source adherents to succeed in maintaining the purity of the model they created. As major vendor strategies are executed in the market, open source communities will have to work to retain their hard-won independence, and users may wonder what happened to the benefits they hoped to achieve from open source software. To avoid this fate, open source proponents must ensure that the most critical tenet of open source — a collaborative community for participation in development — is protected.

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