FUTURE BELONGS TO OPEN SOURCE

Source: News.com

In the next five to 10 years, the open-source movement will transform the software business, according to several top industry executives speaking at the AO 2005 Innovation Summit at Stanford University.

Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource, said she believes that every application in a proprietary technology environment will become an open-source tool in the coming years. Her company provides an integrated package of interoperable pretested software to CIOs. She added Companies will also learn to better cooperate with industry rivals to build and adapt open-source applications that work for their businesses.

That sentiment drew mixed reviews from other panelists, who wondered if the software simply seemed more secure because virus writers are more focused on larger pools of users, such as those who rely on Windows.

This is a good note on the reason behind firefox's growth against internet explorer, "Why is Firefox being adopted so quickly? Because IE is a lame product. It's not so much about open source--but that's great--but that it works so much better".

To conclude the future will be dominated by open source, with proprietary software makers understanding the values of open source.

Category:Open Source