October 9th, 2008
Where open source will be sucked into the downdraft
No use denying it. Parts of the open source industry are going to be sucked into Wall Street’s downdraft.
Gordon Haff at The Pervasive DataCenter offers some good wisdom here, which our own Matt Asay may find dispiriting. The pure play open source company is going the way of the dot-bomb.
This doesn’t mean open source won’t survive. A lot of people are going to have to start over, especially those concerned with business models.
I described some working ones earlier today. But none is an easy dollar. For one thing, many take scale to work. Others take marketing, which proprietary companies always have more money for.
I disagree with Gordon on the desktop. The cheap, sturdy netbook is a great invention, and if we’re all getting foreclosed on we can use them in the street. Will code for food.
One thing that won’t die is the open source movement. Another thing that won’t die is the need for open source expertise. If you know Linux, or Java, or a 100 smaller niches you can probably find work, even if for a time you’re a freelance.
The best analogy for this recession is that we’re all at a poker table when someone scoops up most of the chips and walks out. The rest — proprietary, open source, public and private — have fewer chips to play with. A lot fewer.
This is where the values of open source really come into play. Finding a way to live simply, or simply live, on what you do will take cooperation. Open source has that as a central value.
Google will survive, albeit in a much smaller form. IBM will survive, and be ready to thrive when this is over. Everything else will consolidate. Bye-bye Sun. Red Hat, find a buyer.
What do you think the results will be?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
