What Does MS Software And A Welded-Shut Car Have In Common?
(Other LinuxWorld Expo: Paris Diary, Page 3)
By T. Bruce Tober
February 14, 2000
RedHat's Tenwick told me he likes the analogy that buying software is
a bit like buying a car.
I thought that rather strange, until he said, "With Open Source the car's bonnet is open
so you can fix a broken fan belt or top up the oil or jazz up the engine's performance. But in a proprietary model,
which is the standard in operating systems, it's like buying a car with everything welded shut. You can't do anything
to it, can't fix it, can't even move it."
He sees a three-fold advantage to investing in open source software. First, customers get flexibility.
"We're seeing large numbers of customers who are able now to extend an operating system to perfectly match
their requirements. That's particularly true in the ISP marketplace and certain of the large enterprise customers
like Oracle and SAP, who we're working with."
The second benefit, Tenwick said, is the customers get it "at a price point that is incredible.
The value price model is being turned on its head. People are used to having to wait a very long time between releases
and are led to believe functionality costs a lot of money. What we're demonstrating with open source is a price,
performance, and value position that brings Unix performance and power at Intel pricing."
And finally, Tenwick said, "The benefit of the open source model, which I think is one of
the most interesting, is open source came about as a result of the Internet and the Net came about as a result
of open source. The two are inextricably linked. If you pulled open source, the Net would fall over today. Look
at Apache or SendMail, all these things, all these features and functions are open source.
"You've got hundreds of thousands of developers working essentially as a single body, working
on different projects where you have a development methodology that no proprietary model can get close to."
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