JBOSS For Sale, Corporations Buying OS Projects, What's The Impact on the Open Source Culture?
posted 13 February 2006, Monday
With all the Open Source Projects being bought by Corporations what is the impact on the Open Source Culture? How will the quality be affected? What's the overall impact?
As I recall, THE EDGE 94.5FM in Dallas was a great venue for new bands. The music, at the time was truly on the edge and they promoted alot of fantastic/alternative music. It was a great radio station in it's day!! Green Day, Weezer and the bands on the brink of greatness at the time where the standard, or non-standard, which was the point, after all. Then poof, the masses got all over it and commercialism manifested its complacency and forced what they thought the listener should hear!! NO more edge, just corporate bantering and pumping to get at the dollars removing the edge with the wall of commercialism. The push toward conforming to this model was deafening. I think 94.5 is now 102.1 and I just don't feel compelled to really turn the dial. The edge in my mind, is cracked, crumbling and sounds like the same ole' ordinary stuff.
So, is this the way Open Source will go? Are corporations like IBM purchasing Geronimo and tentatively Oracle Buying JBOSS about to kill a culture? It's to early to tell!
IBM has really gotten Open Source some serious attention as Apple, HP and Oracle have done in recent years. The concern here is we maybe embarking on the death of an Open Source culture. With every death comes a new birth, perhaps Open Source will not follow TheEdge's path to commercial mediocrity. Who knows, it may carve out a new and edgy culture. We'll just have to see! Think optimistically, toward the futre!!!
As I recall, THE EDGE 94.5FM in Dallas was a great venue for new bands. The music, at the time was truly on the edge and they promoted alot of fantastic/alternative music. It was a great radio station in it's day!! Green Day, Weezer and the bands on the brink of greatness at the time where the standard, or non-standard, which was the point, after all. Then poof, the masses got all over it and commercialism manifested its complacency and forced what they thought the listener should hear!! NO more edge, just corporate bantering and pumping to get at the dollars removing the edge with the wall of commercialism. The push toward conforming to this model was deafening. I think 94.5 is now 102.1 and I just don't feel compelled to really turn the dial. The edge in my mind, is cracked, crumbling and sounds like the same ole' ordinary stuff.
So, is this the way Open Source will go? Are corporations like IBM purchasing Geronimo and tentatively Oracle Buying JBOSS about to kill a culture? It's to early to tell!
IBM has really gotten Open Source some serious attention as Apple, HP and Oracle have done in recent years. The concern here is we maybe embarking on the death of an Open Source culture. With every death comes a new birth, perhaps Open Source will not follow TheEdge's path to commercial mediocrity. Who knows, it may carve out a new and edgy culture. We'll just have to see! Think optimistically, toward the futre!!!