I’ve been enthusiastically (and probably very naively) posting about open source for awhile now; however, I came across an article on linux.com that brought me down off of my fluffy little conceptual cloud, and I thought it was important to add Bob Metcalfe’s point to my stream of inexerienced positivity:
Metcalfe hasn’t swallowed the full glass of open source Kool-Aid. “It’s the sustainability long-term of the open source model that I worry about. Who will take care of the software after the novelty wears off and the volunteers lose interest and get real jobs?”
Something to ground me. For a bit, anyway.
June 4, 2007 at 12:51 am
Sustainability is inevitable. Open source particularly Linux has been around for over fifteen years and I believe the open source/wiki model is the present and the future in our increasingly global economy. Closed systems and the industrial model are history. Just last week the Chinese government posted 50 programmers to Sun to work on the Chinese version of Open Office. Ad hoc groups spring up to solve certain problems in Linux and other open source software. I think the Kool-aid is in thinking that proprietary solutions will ever regain prominence.
Study the emergence of Wikipedia and see where it has come in such a short period of time and the veracity of its sources say vis a vis Britanica or some other more closed system of publishing.
Don