Comment by TylerE

11 years ago

History doesn't really support this. Even Linux had to get some corporate backing (initially Red Hat, Suse, and the like), and later Canonical and others before it really took off.

Open source has proven to be a long term survivor, but not a winner.

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TylerE

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Mikeb85  11 years ago

Open source is most definitely winning in infrastructure, high performance computing, servers, etc...

Ask IBM or Oracle if Linux is losing...

  • TylerE  11 years ago

    You're conflating the reasons though...would Linux be winning in those areas without big corporate $$$?

    • andrewflnr  11 years ago

      I was going to say, "well, most people aren't actually using a corporate-sponsored distro", but I guess the real question is whether Linux would have become the impressive piece of technology it is today without corporate backing, if there had never been anyone working on it full-time. Maybe FreeBSD would have taken it's place if Linus didn't have enough time to work on it. Either way, it's really hard for me to imagine a non-open system in this position of dominance.

    • Mikeb85  11 years ago

      Does it matter? Corporations adopted Linux because of it's openness, and Linux is winning in those areas because of corporations who adopted it because of....

      Open doesn't mean 'hobbyist', it merely refers to the freedoms enabled by the code's license...

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