All the advantages of FOSS are for the customer, not the supplier. As the developer of code, there is no advantage to me in the customer having access to the source. However, customers should demand that all the applications they purchase are FOSS as it stops lock-in and offers great flexibility in future.
The fact that a product is FOSS should be a major advantage to a company when selling their product. If its not at the moment, that is because of a poor level of understanding/knowledge among customers. The expectation that all software products/services are FOSS will grow in future.
The great programmers in this world are those who have demonstrated their abilities by actually designing and implementing great software. Coding the solution in a competition proves nothing. You don't have to look any further than the GNU, Linux, Apache, KDE, Gnome etc. etc. CVS logs and mailing lists to find the real greats! As a European I say that the US can hold its head up high on this front.
I think it is significant that this story breaks a few weeks after the Google Ubuntu rumours. Google cannot launch an OS if it does not run their desktop application suite so this is a low risk way of porting their apps. There are very few gaps left before they can roll out a GNU/Linux based OS.
Debian and Ubuntu have produced a solid OS. Firefox and OpenOffice provide a solid browser and office suite. Multimedia is the one remaining problem - how will their OS support the required range of proprietary codecs for streaming and video? Maybe they'll license codecs a la Linspire or else it'll run native Realplayer and Quicktime with Mediaplayer running using Crossover.
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All the advantages of FOSS are for the customer, not the supplier. As the developer of code, there is no advantage to me in the customer having access to the source. However, customers should demand that all the applications they purchase are FOSS as it stops lock-in and offers great flexibility in future. The fact that a product is FOSS should be a major advantage to a company when selling their product. If its not at the moment, that is because of a poor level of understanding/knowledge among customers. The expectation that all software products/services are FOSS will grow in future.
The great programmers in this world are those who have demonstrated their abilities by actually designing and implementing great software. Coding the solution in a competition proves nothing. You don't have to look any further than the GNU, Linux, Apache, KDE, Gnome etc. etc. CVS logs and mailing lists to find the real greats! As a European I say that the US can hold its head up high on this front.
I think it is significant that this story breaks a few weeks after the Google Ubuntu rumours. Google cannot launch an OS if it does not run their desktop application suite so this is a low risk way of porting their apps. There are very few gaps left before they can roll out a GNU/Linux based OS. Debian and Ubuntu have produced a solid OS. Firefox and OpenOffice provide a solid browser and office suite. Multimedia is the one remaining problem - how will their OS support the required range of proprietary codecs for streaming and video? Maybe they'll license codecs a la Linspire or else it'll run native Realplayer and Quicktime with Mediaplayer running using Crossover.