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Nik Butler writes:
You can pick your metaphors for the apparent increase in positive stories about Open Source - you can call it a Tipping Point, a Rising tide, a ground swell - all manner of descriptions suggest Open Source is coming out into the open.
Jon Brodkin writes for Network World about Gartners' (latest) report on how by 2011 it will be impossible to avoid Open Source in Business, postulating that at least 80% of commercial software will contain Open Source code. I'm with Jon in suggesting that it's not as late as 2011: it's happening now, though 'industry' experts and analysts seem uncomfortable with committing to anything that isn't so far into the future as to ensure their opinions could be biased by history.
Certainly Yahoo's purchase of Zimbra will increase the value of Yahoo's own Email and its dependency on code and code bases inherited from an open source world. This news followed a while after Citrix announced that it was buying into the Desktop Virtualisation market with its acquisition of XenSource.
With companies like Dell, HP, Creative, Intel and IBM all making use of Open Source software to provide an additional vertical market to their corporate strategies, I think it's time for Gartner to reappraise the conversation on delivery times. It seems the Future is Now and software suppliers who are not getting into the Open strategy will very quickly become sidelined.
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