Comments on: The ‘other’ value of open source in this economy

By: 451 CAOS Theory » Does Consona-Compiere mean community doesn’t matter?

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:26:32 +0000

[...] how does this jibe, or not, with our views on how M&A deals and valuations involving open source software vendors tend to highlight the [...]

By: The Open Source Innovation Backbone for Startups

The Open Source Innovation Backbone for Startups — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:48:24 +0000

[...] Open source can enable innovation, not only in recession times. Companies like Google (probably before anyone else), Facebook or Twitter are all heavily relying upon open source technologies. Beyond standing on giants’ shoulders, those companies give also back to the open source community, as seen with Google summer of code and at large with Google code, open source at Facebook as well as open source at Twitter. [...]

By: 451 CAOS Theory » Economy down, Red Hat and open source up

451 CAOS Theory » Economy down, Red Hat and open source up — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:37:19 +0000

[...] numbers. This is further reinforcement of the value of open source software and particularly the value of communities, which may not translate to dollars today, but can certainly mean value in the future — [...]

By: 451 CAOS Theory » Where have all the community managers gone?

451 CAOS Theory » Where have all the community managers gone? — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:03:54 +0000

[...] as we covered in an interesting discussion of the value of community on our last CAOS podcast, there is opportunity in sustaining an open source community in difficult [...]

By: Jay Lyman

Jay Lyman — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:23:25 +0000

Thanks for the comment Jeb,

I would have to disagree that open source requires more work by IT to implement. This may have been more true a few years ago, but it seems the comfort, experience and skill level with open source has risen to the point that it is no longer as foreign, new or difficult for most enterprise IT shops.

You raise an interesting point, though. I think what we may end up seeing is more adoption of open source which is free, but not necessarily adoption of commercial open source or commercial support that costs. Still, commercial open source is still arguably in a good position if it costs less.

By: Jeb Bolding

Jeb Bolding — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:39:04 +0000

I guess the one comment that I have regarding this is that it seems the real impact of the downturn will be a desire not to hire, or, even, to lay off IT workers. With fewer resources, IT usage of free and non-commercial will drop off (not what’s already in place, but, rather, the adoption).

Linked to that is that generally, I believe most open source IT solutions require more work by IT to implement. Ease of use isn’t typically the highest priority for IT open source software. If you agree with this assumption, it seems to me that open source adoption will decrease further compared to commercial because of the IT shortage (assuming that an IT shortage does appear) and lack of resource to implement the often more manual open source products.

By: Boycott Novell » Links 10/10/2008: Mandriva 2009 Released, Wikipedia Consolidates on Ubuntu

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:41:17 +0000

[...] The ‘other’ value of open source in this economy [...]