Todd Barr of Fiveruns (formerly of Red Hat) has a thought-provoking post comparing the software industry to the energy industry. Specifically, he calls out open source as akin to regulated energy companies, while proprietary software vendors are more like unregulated energy companies. The interesting part is what happens when you combine the two:
I think the future looks similar to the energy industry: massive technology companies will have a mix of regulated and unregulated businesses, that maximizes the advantages of both. For standard, widely-used technologies, open source “regulation” makes sense because it lowers development costs and provides a standards-based, predictable subscription base of business.
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