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Matt Asay: Making Utah a Center for Open-Source Innovation
Matt Asay is something of a fixture here in Utah and clearly a big booster of open source (he founded the Open Source Business Conference). He’s giving the first keynote of the evening on bring open-source home (to Utah).
He uses Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to talk about how many people aren’t prepared to understand that FOSS is better and works. The prisoners, in this case, are traditional IT folks. This is changing; he points to a Gartner study showing people believe FOSS software is better.
FOSS achieves ubiquity through exceptional software, focus on the product to drive self-selected sales, low conversion rates on lots of leads, and superior service. FOSS developers worry about adoption first and protection later.
Ten open source vendors will do over $10 million in business this year.
Matt points out that major FOSS projects aren’t from Silicon Valley—they’re from all over: Sweden (MySQL), Atlanta (jBoss), Belgium (Drupal), or Alabama (Asterisk). You don’t need to move to do open source. Open source is geography neutral. Developers are everywhere. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to move.
Posted by windley on September 6, 2007 6:44 PM
Comment from Michael R. Bernstein at September 6, 2007 6:55 PM
Phil, are the keynotes or other sessions going to be available as recordings (video or audio)?
Comment from roger pack at September 6, 2007 8:01 PM
Ten open source vendors will do over $10 million in business this year.
Wow. That is all I can say. I wonder how that compares with Oracle... just kidding :)
-Roger
Comment from Matt Asay at September 6, 2007 10:27 PM
@Roger: I know you said you're kidding, but keep in mind that just a few years ago JBoss was hitting the $10M mark, and now it's doing north of $60M. Not big compared to Oracle? Well, no, but its adoption far exceeds its monetization. I can guarantee that Oracle worries every day about "little" MySQL. $60M or so in sales and 70 million or so in downloads.
Look at growth trajectories not where the revenue is today. You look where it will be tomorrow. I think Oracle has cause for concern.
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