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Comment by jwildeboer

8 years ago

After 12 years working at Red Hat, I can assure you that Open Source not only competes, it is actually winning everywhere. And business models exist that are fair to all sides, allowing us to employ a lot of developers and participating in upstream.

Ads are not a solution IMHO, they are a big part of the problem.

16 comments

jwildeboer

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veidr  8 years ago

> winning everywhere

I like open source as much as the next guy, but I'm pretty sure you have a peculiar definition of "everywhere".

(Or, perhaps "winning".)

  • annabellish  8 years ago

    The internet primarily runs on open source software. Your browser is primarily open source software, unless it's IE/Edge, but let's be serious here. Your phone - primarily open source, unless it's WP/BB, but again, let's be serious.

    The desktop/laptop you're using right now probably isn't open source, but much of the important software running on it is, and most of the computers it talks to are, and most of the other computers, obvious or hidden, in your life are too.

    • StavrosK  8 years ago

      Not to mention that pretty much all of the services you use are mostly a glue layer over open source projects/libraries/services, including its OS and all those services.

    • ClassyJacket  8 years ago

      "Your phone - primarily open source"

      Is the iPhone actually primarily open source? There's certainly parts of iOS that are but I had no idea it was the majority of it.

      3 replies →

jacquesm  8 years ago

> I can assure you that Open Source not only competes, it is actually winning everywhere. And business models exist that are fair to all sides, allowing us to employ a lot of developers and participating in upstream.

It would be great to see not only an assertion but an article that spells this out in some detail.

mikekchar  8 years ago

I think it's fair to say that open source has made inroads everywhere. If I were to tell my 30-year younger self what the future looks like, I don't think I would have believed myself. Having said that, there are lots of places where open source is having a hard time. In telecom and medical software for instance. I mean, I can set up a SIP server and inspect the Android source code, but there is a long way to go (like actually being able to build and deploy on a piece of commodity hardware in the case of Android). For medical software, just try to get access to source code for any medical device. You get the thing installed in your body and you can't even look at it.

Like I said, in every place open source has won important battles. The future looks good, but let's not understate the challenges either.