The success of open source software seems obvious to me — I started writing open source almost a decade ago now, and it couldn’t be clearer that the use of it creates an extremely healthy software and intellectual ecosystem. Despite this, I’m periodically shocked at how successful that it’s been. Years before we had the term “open source,” years before the Internet was a buzzword, the idea that a big company might ever become a part of the OSS ecosystem was a pipe dream. This article in the Salt Lake Tribune regarding Novell’s newfound commitment to OSS reads like something that would have been written by Richard Stallman in 1994 as an “article from the future.”
“It was the Novell chief executive and chairman’s commitment to the ‘open source’ operating system movement — at odds with the longtime emphasis on marketing proprietary networking software that the Provo company employed for much of its 20-year history — that drew sustained applause from BrainShare’s estimated 5,500 attendees.”
Wow.