Industry News & Trends | OnSIP

Money Crisis Good for OpenSource

Written by Mike Oeth | October 17, 2008 at 4:02 PM

I agree with the article at "ZD Net about the current Money Crisis being good for Open Source. Red Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, stated that the current economic climate would cause more companies to consider open-source software as an option. Whitehurst said that this was because open-source software provided a better economic model for creating software. We, at Junction Networks agree: OpenSource, in any economic climate, is a better economic model. I've also seen it in my personal life. My daughter's friend was throwing out a PC because she couldn't upgrade it. My daughter, who did not have a personal computer, decided to pick it up to see if she could do something with it. She (with some help from me) put Debian on it and, aside from some WiFi issues, it is working great. I would think we'd see something similar in the work-place as well. Instead of upgrading the hardware and software, I would expect to see firms start to shun the bloatware and switch existing hardware to OpenSource alternatives to keep from having to make further capital expenditures. That's why we love OpenSource.