Gartner Says Open Source "Impossible To Avoid"

alphadogg writes in with a Network World article that covers a Gartner open source conference, in which VP Mark Driver seems to be going out of his way to be provocative. "You can try to avoid open source, but it's probably easier to get out of the IT business altogether. By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code..." After this lead-in, in which open source seems to be regarded as some kind of communicable disease, the rest of the article outlines a perfectly rational plan for developing an open source strategy.

Comments

Re:Already here.

[kebes]

In addition to the domains where open-source is already firmly established (the Internet, as you mention, and many embedded device spaces, too), there are indeed many new domains where open-source is becoming more and more "necessary." Consider this (admittedly brief) writeup on a talk given by "Intel's Chief Linux and Open-Source Technologist." The writeup says:

He also mentioned that a major OEM is requiring that by next year their hardware suppliers must either have an open-source driver available or be able to provide an open-source driver within the next twelve months. The likely company that comes to mind is Dell but Dirk refused to comment any further.

If the speculation is correct (that Dell wants all hardware to have open-source drivers available within 12 months), that's a big deal. Such a push is an example of the benefits of open-source being pushed into a new market (in this case, the desktop commodity hardware space).

Re:Consider the Source

[arun_s]

Heheh. I just did a search for 'site:slashdot.org gartner' and here are some weird analyses they've come up with in the past:
Gartner Says Linux PCs Just Used To Pirate Windows (2004)
Gartner Recommends Holding Onto The SCO Money (2003)
(Sure they got some better ones too, I just picked the funnies)

Re:It is a disease, and that's why it works!

[arun_s]

There's nothing wrong a viral idea, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that an idea is viral. Your comment made me think of what first attracted me to the Free Software world. To any one who's discovered the elegant beauty of Darwin's evolutionary theory, there is an equal attractiveness in the way the GPL license is framed.
The very fact that the GPL attaches itself to the code its released under, and survives into the downstream modifications that are made to the code.. there are beautiful resemblances to the way successful life itself evolves.
I'm inclined to believe that licenses that are not viral (e.g. BSD) and depend on altruistic reasons to survive, are somehow doomed to extinction (i.e. will be swallowed by proprietary licenses that couldn't care less about perpetuating the BSD cause). In the long run, the GPL will emerge as the fitter license that made its way into the larger user base while retaining pefect copies of itself.
(Of course I'm neither a biologist nor a programmer, so apologies if I sound like I'm talking outta my ass.)