Is it time for Open Source to grow up?
Submitted by srlinuxx on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 06:28.
In the past ten years Open Source software and its poster child, Linux, has expanded quite remarkably. It has changed from a rebel without a cause to an entity that even the tried and true establishments have sat up and taken notice. Heck, if it is good enough for such mission critical, world changing Wall Street then it is good enough for anything.
Yet Linux and open source seems to have hit a glass ceiling and it hasn't yet found or used the hammer to break it. That glass ceiling, in my ever so humble opinion, is the general perception that people have of Linux and Open Source. Some programs have become immensely popular ala firefox. Yet some are still struggling as in Open Office. For the rest of this post I will use the term Linux to quantify anything open source.
Even though many others, including me, believe that Linux is ready for anything and has a solution for any need. There are many others that do not think so. So I think that, as the walrus said, the time has come to talk of many things. Not ceiling was or cabbages and kings but Linux. Linux needs to mentally grow up and show the world that it is no longer a kid in short pants.
re: Grow Up
Another naive fanboy that has no clue how the business world operates.
First it will NEVER happen (remember the race car fiasco???) and second - even if it did, it would raise about enough money for a little teeny tiny ad ran ONCE in the Tuesday edition of just one or two national newspapers.
For Linux to prosper - it needs less ignorant fanboys who are clueless in marketing and business (and what it actually costs to run with the big boys) and more MBA's.