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This all remains to be seen. I can remember when BBSs were big. I also
remember Compuserve forums, and how the web ended all that. And, I'm sure
other list members remember phenomena that are no longer what they once
were. At home, I play with the mozilla.org web browser, and am not convinced
that it will ultimately succeed, or that any OSS really will have staying
power. Sure, there are still CB and ham radio operators, but they hardly
form an infrastructure that is generally relied on (anecdotes to the
contrary aside). I just worry and wonder if the party might end for OSS, if
OSS could lose the momentum it needs to continue to work, which leaves us at
the mercy of a sort of bandwagon mentality, a popularity contest of sorts.
For that matter, how long did the GNU Foundation wait for someone to write a
UNIX kernel? Linux and Apache are success stories. Samba is wonderful to
have, but seldom mission critical or even business core. perl has proven
itself. I'm hard pressed to think of a fifth example, which doesn't mean
much, but I bet a top ten OSS list would be a matter of dispute. But then,
this could be said of shareware and freeware.
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Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com
not that we shouldn't take advantage of it while we can

-----Original Message-----
From: Lars Appel [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 5:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Open Source SW -- was: HP LETS GO OF LEGATO ON HP E3000

<snip>
My posting was not meant to make Open Source look as "last resort" for those
products that nobody wants any more. I tried to point out that software that
comes from the Open Source community and spirit does typically not have the
issue of being bound to the "mercy" of a single vendor. Over the last couple
of years I've got the impression that many people seem to think "let's go
with a big name vendor, then we are on the safe side" (like Microsoft,
Oracle
or whatever). But it simply puts them "at the mercy" of a single vendor. In
my opinion, it does not buy them the perceived safety. If the vendor is
large
enough, he might have no problem with even dropping a larger number of users
or (trying to) force them to another software package, platform, whatever.