Monday, April 30, 2007

Open Source and the Enterprise

Here's an interesting question - is commercialization killing Open Source?. Personally, I don't believe commercialization is killing it, but it certainly has done plenty of damage. Free software OS's are thought of as products with free labor by profit-driven outfits, which is why, I think, FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) all of a sudden became so popular. The FOSS programmer on the other hand usually thinks of free software as a tool to scratch an itch.

This commercialization of free software might be why many forums, including popular ones like Slashdot, has been overrun by people who only see the business angle of FOSS (yuppies, I call them) and loudly protest any concept or idea that might present problems to businesses that capitalize on FOSS.