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August 2, 2008

Intuit, the tax and financial software developer has joined the open source and Linux community.

A few months ago, Intuit opened up its QuickBase product to Linux developers, but now the Mountain View, Calif. company seems to be paving the way for a more complete launch into open source with its LBRC (Linux Business Resource Center).

Since Intuit was born many years ago, it had little to fear from open-source products trying to compete against its business, which makes its proactive push around open source all the more notable.

It's a safe bet to say that about 98 percent of all Intuit customers use Windows almost exclusively to run the tax and accounting software Intuit is renowned for, so this piece of news is interesting.

In a nutshell, Intuit wishes to encourage its 25 million plus QuickBooks users to adopt Linux as their new or alternate operating system. In fact, it is estimated that a percentage of those users might want to try to install Ubuntu on their desktops. Time will tell.

At least Dell is certainly cashing in on it!

Some in the Linux community are now saying that Intuit is currently seeking companies that use open-source solutions to power their businesses to try the 'New Intuit' apps.

Just to be sure, Intuit isn't currently offering its products under an open-source license, but this 'enticement' or push to the open-source model is interesting. In fact, they must have learned something from Big Blue!

For Intuit, maybe it is the beginning of something a lot bigger with the open source model. Remember that this is also how Novell began in open source back in 2000. That's not that long ago, right?

It will certainly be interesting to see how Intuit develops new ideas with this new model. We will keep you posted on this, rest assured.

Source: Intuit Software.

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