DoctorMo's Blog

Interesting thought I got via email today:

Open Source will happen with or without us I believe. The production model is already taking over. Red Hat is now the backbone of the NYSE that is a barometer.

Yes Red Hat is looking after the NYSE and did release record revenues, they’re doing quite well with business up 19% this time. So this part is obvious to me:

I have no doubt that FOSS will take over software production, it’s just an economically more successful model of production. I repeat that this is an industrial revolution, but too few want to believe that we might actually be living in such an exciting time as that.

But the question on my mind is whether individuals, home users and small businesses will be in on this ride of freedom or whether they will be left behind by a corporate culture that only want to take money from OEMS, large enterprises and other easy sources of revenue.

Not only is it apparently impossible to make money from individuals, but it’s equally impossible to listen to them. A set of enigmas which are most certainly of the same knot and I’m looking forward to picking over the problem in the future.

Perhaps we’re just waiting for the big success, but I don’t hear FOSS being praised in the media or seized upon in OEM advertisements as loud as the production line was back in that revolution (I’m looking at you Android). It’s disappointing to me that there are still so many people even in our Ubuntu community that continue to explain that “home users don’t care how it was made”.

It’s disappointing because it’s wrong, it’s wrong to think that people are only consumers. It’s also wrong because it’s that same culture of ignorance of where our wealthy possessions come from that has driven the wrongs that laid a path to child labour and environmental problems. We’ve only begun to start fixing some of these problems and yet still a culture of “ignorance is good and normal” keeps FOSS down, that perhaps it’s something worthy for just the self-chosen few.

I do not subscribe to that notion and I will gladly tell every person, even my dear ol’ mum and granny what it’s about, reforming the words I use and the imagery I employ to help make it even easier to communicate. The market isn’t just about business it’s also about perceptions, only when individuals understand FOSS will the market solidify around the best of what we have and not the worst of what open source is according to a few bad Apples.

My thoughts are obviously long and ranty, but I’d still like to hear your thoughts?