451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
If open source has won, then where do we go from here?
Matthew Aslett, May 28, 2009 @ 1:12 pm ETMy three-year-old son is currently obsessed with winning. Whether it is walking up the stairs or cleaning his teeth he has to be declared the winner. The interesting thing is, he doesn’t mind not actually being the first up the stairs just as long as he is acknowledged to have “won”.
I mention this because there has been a spate of declarations of victory regarding open source in recent weeks.
“Open source has won. Open source increasingly finds itself in virtually all software, open source or proprietary,” stated Matt Asay recently, prompting a debate with Savio Rodrigues, as a result of which he conceded that “‘we both won’ (we= the overall software industry, oss or traditional vendors).”
Or as The Economist put it today: “The argument has been won. It is now generally accepted that the future will involve a blend of both proprietary and open-source software.”
A victory or the ultimate failure? That is the question that lies at the heart of the recent tension between those that would seek to defend the purity of the free and open source model, and those happy to see open source assimilated into the mainstream. The tension has been simmering for some time.
As I noted in March, with reference to Microsoft’s position paper on open source, “the war between proprietary and open source is over. Its not altogether clear who won however.”
Declaring victory for the adoption of software licensing and development methodologies is as futile as declaring victory in the “race” up the stairs. Winning isn’t the important thing, it’s what you do when you’ve won that counts.
Now that open source is an industry-wide accepted development and licensing strategy, where does open source go from here? What further benefits can open source deliver to the industry beyond merely “winning”. This is the focus that CAOS Theory will increasingly be turning its attention to, I believe.
Supporters of open source are fond of quoting Mohandas Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Did he happen to say what happened after that?
Categories: Software
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You cannot say that open source has ‘won’ without defining what the battle was.
Linux has 1% of the desktop market - is that winning?
Open source seems to be (slowly) gaining adoption and market-share without regard for segment, technology, or economy. This is good new for open source.
I would say that for most (or all) cases where the battle was defined and a winner can clearly be declared, open source probably won more than its share. For example - in the battle of “Microsoft’s public acknowledgment of the power of open source” the creation of CodePlex could be considered evidence that open source won.
Open source (as a whole) still has a very long way to go in mainstream IT and consumer adoption.
James
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[...] If open source has won, then where do we go from here? Supporters of open source are fond of quoting Mohandas Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Did he happen to say what happened after that? [...]
[...] you, then you win. Then what? Matthew Aslett, June 1, 2009 @ 10:20 am ET Last week I asked the question, if open source has won, then where do we go from [...]
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[...] While we’ve already gone over some discussion of whether open source has won and what that even means, I believe it is truly folly to try and pick a winner when looking at open and closed technologies. [...]