title: The “underhyping” of Open Source link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/the-underhyping-of-open-source/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 567 created: 2008/01/28 02:45:35 created_gmt: 2008/01/28 02:45:35 comment_status: open post_name: the-underhyping-of-open-source status: publish post_type: post

The “underhyping” of Open Source

From the usually big vendor-safe CNET, comes this headline, Gartner underhypes open source.

In fact it should be no surprise that an enterprise that has made so much money off selling big enterprise software to big enterprises would be cool to open source. While struggling vendors like Sun (with it’s recent purchase of open source database leader MySQL) and not-so-struggling powerhouses like Oracle (with it’s earlier purchase of the developer of the ubiquitous open source Berkeley DB, Sleepycat), have obviously found something compelling about products that originated in the open source community, Gartner doesn’t have the same kind of competitive pressure at work to disturb their nearly religious devotion to the proprietary software industry.

It was amusing to read this week in both Sun’s own statements, and reviews by others, of the historic and unique nature of their move towards offering an integrated open source software stack — as if Red Hat had not been doing just that since they first started publishing Red Hat Linux in 1994. What it most reminds me of is a political contest in which the presumptive front runner and acknowledged eventual nominee refuses to acknowledge the presence in the race of an unforseen competitor who has been quietly gaining overwhelming support and is about to change the rules of the game (I am writing this the day after the Democrat’s South Carolina primary in January, 2008 — hopefully people won’t have to be historians to understand the significance of the analogy).

In the end, it is, and will continue to be, impossible for anyone to “underhype” open source. Not only is copyleft software here to stay, within a very short time it may become the standard, leaving the wreckage of “overhyped” proprietary software models in its wake.

Now wouldn’t that be something?

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo