The title of that article is Why we won’t be talking about Open Source in the future, by an analyst called Clay Ryder, and I think is provides an insightfull and pragmatic perspective of how Open Source should be looked at by the business world. It perfectly feets what I use to say and present in events.
Here are some quotes:
While there are religious devotees who believe that the most important role of Open Source is to bankrupt Microsoft, there are many who are not on the Redmond attack squad, however, that talk about Open Source as if it remains somehow discrete, or fundamentally different than other software.
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…the reality is that from a bits and bytes perspective, open source software is no different than any other. It is code that runs on the machine and hopefully solves a problem and delivers value to the end user. The development model and the pricing model vary, as do issues related to intellectual property and ownership, but at the end of the day it is just software.
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Open Source software is making the same demands on the marketplace – these technologies are priceless, therefore stop trying to make money them, but instead invest those same dollars in adding value on top of the priceless technology. As a result, freely distributable, standards based, basic technology will be a given, let’s learn innovate on top of it, where the real value, and may I add, margins, will be found.
This kind of article may appeal to clients who are skeptics about Linux fanatics.