Predictions on Open Source from CIO.com

[red1]

I put here some market research info. This is from:

http://www.cio.com/archive/121503/softfuture.html

"Open-source software will not be the answer to integration problems either, though it will continue to drive down prices in selected areas of the software infrastructure. In fact, open source may turn expensive databases such as Oracle and IBM's DB2 into commodities by 2010. Smaller vendors will move toward the open-source model because it will lower their marketing costs. Rather than devoting 15 percent to 50 percent of revenue to selling, they will simply give it away, build a user base through word of mouth and then sell services and add-ons. "

and also,

"A market will emerge to service these applications. Small developers will get paid by the line of code, but also for servicing and supporting the stuff they've written. If their client decides to make the code available for incorporation into the open-source package for redistribution, they will be able to sell services to other companies that adopt it. Open source will become a respectable route for startups and individual developers, and proprietary add-ons that need service will attract venture capital money to build real businesses.

Could it happen? Sure. "All you need is one good set of code out there" to act as a foundation for building the complex software systems, says Jeremy Allison, developer of Samba software. Open source avoids the biggest barrier to entering the software industry: marketing and sales. Open source needs no sales and marketing budget, only a good development leader, quality software and word of mouth for adoption. The open-source enterprise software is not free, but it is cheaper, and services vendors that install and run it for customers are happy to contribute paid developers to the cause. Innovation will flower because it will be much easier to get new projects going and to sell add-ons for existing open source. To separate the promising software from the bad, good CIOs will be more in demand—and more valued—than ever. "

red1

[red1]

Here is an article that was refered to me by Adaxa :
http://www.csc.com/features/2004/upload ... SOURCE.pdf

Highly compact and well researched piece from CSC's Leading Edge Forum.

red1