451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
We were promised jetpacks: four quick predictions about open source in 2020
Matthew Aslett, December 22, 2009 @ 11:59 am ETWe recently published (451 clients only) our predictions for open source in 2010. As a child of the 1970s it was a little disappointing to be making predictions about the year 2010 that did not involve living on the moon, driving hovercars, and flying around using jetpacks.
It’s always more fun to look a bit further ahead when making predictions, which got me thinking about the state of open source ten years from now. Here’s four quick predictions about the state of open source in 2020:
- By 2020 open source will have been completely assimilated in to the fabric of software development and licensing practices.
- By 2020 open source will continue to be used for differentiating features, but the idea of open source itself as a differentiator will be long-gone.
- By 2020 the idea of software vendors using proprietary development methods for non-differentiating software will be considered ludicrous.
- By 2020 the idea of software users paying for proprietary software for non-differentiating technology will be a sackable offence.
Don’t write in – it’s just for fun.
I stole the phrase We Were Promised Jetpacks ifrom a band of the same name. They’re pretty good. Details here.
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