Open Source – Growing Up

As far as I am concerned, OSBC is the most important conference of the year for those who are looking to use open source to create leverage for their business…
This year I attended a talk titled “What can Open Source learn from Microsoft and the proprietary world.†Moderator Steven Walli (Consultant), Jean Barmash (Alfresco), Neelan Choski (SpringSource), Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation) and Sam Ramji (Microsoft). I have to admit I was pretty excited for this talk…
Does Open Source have something to learn from Microsoft? My hypothesis? You better believe it! Microsoft’s business is orders of magnitude larger than the entire open source market at the moment. The open source industry is trying to institute open source from the bottom up. If Microsoft were to open up; it would have to do so from the top down. Small groups inside Microsoft may favor open source but it’s going to take someone with a title which includes the words: “Director†or “EVP†and the words: “open source†and a top-level management commitment to really facilitate any serious change in a reasonable timeframe. It takes control of the helm to effectively turn an aircraft carrier.