Open Source Comes of Age, And Then Some

Time was when open source was synonymous with Linux, the vaunted operating system pioneered by Linus Torvalds, and the Apache Web server. No more. If 2004 showed anything, it demonstrated that the open-source community has a rapacious, insatiable appetite.

For just about every category of proprietary software you can think of, there is now an open-source version of that software under development, if not already on the market. MySQL, for example, offers a credible, open-source alternative to IBM's DB2 and Oracle's database software. Likewise, JBoss offers a compelling alternative to WebSphere or WebLogic. And the list of examples goes on.

Think security, programming languages and anything related to the Web. And, yes, even office productivity tools. Sun's open-source based StarOffice has been downloaded more than 40 million times, according to the company.

Clearly, open-source software companies are getting stronger and growing up. But expectations about these companies may be out of whack with what they are able to deliver at this point. Consider Red Hat, for example. It recently posted quarterly results that saw sales grow 55 over the previous year. Subscription sales, meantime, increased 80 percent. But the company's shares still fell because the results were below the aggressive expectations of those who follow the company on Wall Street.

From here, the sky is the limit so long as the heads of these companies can keep up with what is amounting to unrealistic expectations for open-source software companies. What is clear is that the ongoing encroachment of open-source software on mainstream, proprietary software titles will continue, causing proprietary vendors to react in a variety of ways. Novell, for example, has decided to completely redirect its efforts and transform itself into an open-source-focused software company. Sun, too, continues to meld the best of open source and proprietary software together to create compelling new offerings for customers. SCO is going the complete opposite way, while Microsoft, well ... it continues to be Microsoft. In other words, there's no free lunch when it comes to software from the world's largest software company.

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