Open Source or Not?

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2002 at 6:36 PM | Category: Meryl's Notes Blog No comments

Yesterday, I watched Anti-Trust. Today, I read Dave‘s thoughts on “to open source or not to open source.” It’s this quote that gets you:

“Where you want competition, give away the technology. Where you want to be competitive, keep it to yourself.”

The movie is about a CEO who is obviously Bill Gates. How so, even though Tim Robbins and Bill Gates look nothing alike? Well, Tim Robbins’ character is planning to launch a worldwide media program that is not open source, controls everything, and reeks of monopoly.

The good guys, of course, are programmers in their 20s who work out of garages to create an open source program with funding from VCs.

Take a look at Apache, the open source server. According to Netcraft, it has the top market share for servers. If it weren’t open source, how would it impact the market share?

There is no black and white answer to when to open source and when not to do it. It’s a matter of playing Chess. You take a risk, some moves are treasure and others are duds. Microsoft doesn’t have a creative bone in its fiber, but give Bill Gates credit for making the right moves.

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