Tuesday, July 26, 2005

How not to introduce open source

A recent article on Slashdot covered the topic of how to discuss open source software within the context of the a business. As most of these discussion often do, it focused on the "openness" or availability of the source code as the primary introduction point. I think at this point in the development of open source software, focusing a discussion on the availability of the source code is a waste of time. For small businesses an esoteric discussion over which open source license (GPL vs FreeBSD) is a confusing waste of time. Discuss how this meets the business needs, not the availability of the source code.