Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker somewhat nonchalantly noted on Tuesday that Google and Mozilla have renewed their vows for another three years. She should have ordered serious fireworks.

Why? Because Google’s beneficence has granted Mozilla a tremendous amount of leeway in figuring out a way to sell Mozilla’s open-source …

Source:The Open Road

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The open-source dilemma

(Credit: Matt Asay)

At the Utah Open Source Conference yesterday I presented a dilemma. Briefly, the idea is that as open-source buyers grow comfortable with open source they’ll stop spending money on open source. This leads to tragedy of the commons-type problems and a difficulty in encouraging the creation of more open source.

I therefore asked the question, “Who will pay for open source in the future?” I (and the audience) recommended that the problem may resolve itself over time as enterprises come to recognize that their failure to replenish open-source communities with either cash or code may come to harm the code commons from which they derive increasing amounts of value. I also suggested that Eclipse, Mozilla, and other non-profit foundations provide an answer.

Lastly, I suggested that governments might get involved to shore up funding for open-source software development. As I noted, governments derive large benefit from open source (and from IT spending, generally). Why not fund more of it?

Europe loves open source. Why not fund it?

(Credit: Matt Asay)

I didn’t, however, have a clear idea as to the right way for this to be done. France, as noted in InfoWorld recently, advocates a way, as does TechDirt, which suggests that military spending could create the next Silicon Valley (so why not an open-source Silicon Valley, given how much the US military is buying into open source?).

France, the second largest market for open source outside the United Says, does a range of things to promote open source, but its focus on open source for the rising generation is perhaps most important:

… Source:The Open Road

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