O'Reilly on the Open Source Industry

Idmat writes "Tim's latest opus, "The Strange Case of the Disappearing Open Source Vendors," starts with Sherlock Holmes ruminating on "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" and winds up explaining why open source is good for businesses even if it isn't always good for software vendors."

Comments

Re:Gov't name withdrawal

[Chris Johnson]

Gee, my first question was, "Microsoft can tell government employees what they can and cannot do?"

It's fine what you say, but disingenious- you do understand that a rep for the FAA can make statements that civilian aircraft can be SHOT DOWN ON SUSPICION by navy gunners and not lose his job, and yet you are suggesting that a mere identification of a government employee publically will cause the person to be held so accountable that they flee the event in fear and abandon all their plans?

Maybe it's somewhere in the middle. How about this? Microsoft lobbying has pressured the government to tighten ranks and not make any mistakes. One of these mistakes is what you mention above. Because of the threats by Microsoft, the employee's superiors crank up the heat, with the results we're seeing. So technically, the reason is as you describe it. The reason it _mattered_ this time is because Microsoft is capable of ordering the government agencies about. Possibly through some sort of blackmail, like threatening to make the agency the focus of the next 'independent report on opensource corruption in government' and get it in trouble? If what you say is true, the agency could have been singled out and attacked in this manner.

Or do you figure 'really heavy lobbying' means just 'woohoo our products are great'? I think somebody was looking for a weakness, and found it in what you outlined above. And attacked it to gain a position of power. And in that situation, Microsoft gave the government orders.