THE FUTURE IS OPEN SOURCE

Source: Sadagopan

Like many developments in the IT sector, open source seemed to come out of nowhere. Linux was first developed in 1991, and since it began to be taken seriously as a commercial product a few years later, the industry has been caught up in a whirlwind that saw developing business models threaten established ones and philosophical wars break out.People who thought the whole thing was a storm in a teacup began to realise otherwise when they heard Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer call open source "a cancer" in 2001.

Bill Welty, a mySQL customer who works at the California Air Resources Board quotes

"There's the flexibility that you have to prototype - if you don't like it you can throw it away. It doesn't have to cost anything." Statistics from Netcraft show that 70 per cent of web servers on the internet use the open source Apache compared to a share of roughly 25 per cent for Microsoft's Internet Information Server. Many governments around the world are recommending the use of open source in its performance review, following national governments across Europe who are developing a public sector love affair with open source.

First, companies who want to do business with governments will need to embrace open source.

Second, as governments continue to show support of open source, we should see a knock on effect on the private sector

Third, government systems are complex, which will force the open source community to innovate in line with more complex needs of government." Developments such as these are bound to leave Microsoft worried in the coming years.

This article appears more to be a monologue, repeatedly shouting against Microsoft, where they loose the real sight of open source.

Category:Open Source