Slashdot Mirror
Open Source In the Datacenter: It Was Never About Innovation
An anonymous reader writes "The secret to open source innovation, and the reason for its triumphal success, has nothing to do with the desire to innovate. It's because of the four freedoms and the level playing field (and agility) that was the end result. It's like Douglas Adams' definition of flying: you don't try to fly, you throw yourself at the ground and miss. This article explains why it was never about innovation — it was always about freedom. Quoting: 'When the forces of economics put constant downward price pressure on software, developers look for other ways to derive income. Given the choice between simply submitting to economic forces and releasing no-cost software in proprietary form, developers found open source models to be a much better deal. Some of us didn't necessarily like the mechanics of those models, which included dual licensing and using copyleft as a means of collecting ransom, but it was a model in which developers could thrive.'"
90% of everything is crap, but at least with open source you can find out why instead of waiting for the developers who can't reproduce your problem.
Don't forget a total lack of license management, the purgatory of IT. Essentially, with Open Source, you can spend less time dealing with how to get the software, and more time working on interesting stuff.