Maybe I've learned a few things over the years. Then again maybe I haven't. In the previous post I've tried to highlight how I bought into the concept of Open Systems, especially the aspect of portability and how twenty years later we've somehow failed to fully exploit all the potential benefits.
The second Open concept that came along was that of Open Source. Basically, this is the idea that a bunch of sad geeks sitting in their bedrooms with nothing better to do with their time will develop a bunch of software for free that will be as good, if not better, that commercially available software.
There are thousand of Open Source software products out there (Linux, MySQL, Apache, Firefox, Open Office are just a few) and the best part is that they're absolutely free. You'd have thought that this would have turned the IT world upside down - but no. Somehow we, and by that I mean corporate IT, have failed to embrace Open Source as perhaps we should have.
I'm sure there are lots of reasons for this but fundamentally I suspect that we just don't trust something we don't pay for. Here's a quote I heard the other day from the Enterprise Architect I'm currently working with. "I don't trust Linux or Apache. I'd much rather have something (in this case from Microsoft) that is properly supported".
The guy is delusional if he believes that because he pays liscence fees and maintenance he will somehow get better service. I know - I've worked in a couple of software houses. This just shows that no matter how Open the software it that it will fail when it meets with closed minds.
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