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December 22, 2008

While OSS (open source software) is getting so popular in the IT industry, and its presence is growing more rapidly than previously estimated, the basic nature of open source software is changing from project-based, developer-driven community initiatives to vendor-driven, and vendor-owned, software.

One result of all of this is to make traditional methods of measuring open source’s presence and roles within user enterprises impractical.

Developers, and Linux developers in particular are finding that much of open source development is actually being directed and supported by companies like IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle and others — rather than being the exclusive domain of unpaid volunteers.

Although the effect of the volunteer contributors shouldn't be overlooked, it was the volunteers, early adopters and early commercial supporters that put OSS and FOSS (free and open source software) on the map.

Solution vendors and IT system integrators have had to integrate some basic elements of open source into its environment because that was what the market was telling them to do. They didn't have a choice, really...

It is clear now that vendor involvement and open source adoption go hand-in-hand. Commercial involvement has driven the adoption of open source at nearly every turn.

Companies like Red Hat and openSUSE Linux drove adoption of the free operating system when it was still new and unknown by packaging and selling it and continually making it more useful for use by a wider audience with each release.

Source: openSUSE Linux.

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