2005 InnoTech Oregon

March 9th and 10th I was able to attend the InnoTech conference at the convention center here in Portland Oregon. I am not one to give up two full days with out good cause, but when I saw the track focused on the Open Source Software (OSS) movement I had to attend. With titles like “Adopt Open Source Software or Die” and “How a Phenomenon is Turning into an Exciting New Industry” how could I not go. The “How a Phenomenon is Turning into an Exciting New Industry” was a panel discussion with:

Andrew Aitken, Founder and Managing Partner, Olliance Group, a Palo Alto-based open source consulting firm

Steve Bissell, President, Axian, Inc.

Daniel Frye, VP, IBM Linux Technology Center, IBM

William C. Campbell, CEO, Partner, Ater, Wynne

LaVonne Reimer, Executive Director, The Open Technology Business Center

This discussion was very informative and honest discussion of how OSS is growing up. If you love to tinker and play with code that is all well and good and the best of the OSS solutions started out as a night time hobby but they have now grown up into a force to be dealt with.
When it comes to the bottom line Mr. Frye with IBM was succinct and to the point with his comment about how the free nature and philanthropic nature of open source is great but IBM is in the business of making money and open source translates to billions of dollars in profits. That’s right billions with a “B”. So the notion of this little cottage fringe of software developers who live in this utopia of free code has meet the board room and free may mean no cost for the actual code but how to make it work and extending it to meet customer needs is a very viable and profitable notion.
I loved an analogy that William Campbell used when speaking of Microsoft and the “charge of the light brigade” idea of attacking them head on to take the desk top for Linux. If I may paraphrase him Mr. Campbell stated that this is a foolish notion to attack head on into the 800 pound gorilla of Redmond it is a poor utilization of man power and unneeded. He said to look at OSS as water that will flow around and flow through holes or cracks until the gorilla is on it own island surrounded by a sea OSS solutions. To add my own two cents I feel that Microsoft must build bridges and dams or a much better idea is to learn how to swim and join the current. There is a small glimmer that Redmond is putting on there water wings with three open source offerings FlexWiki, Windows Installer XML and Windows Template Library. I guess we will see if Wired article “The Microsoft Memo” comes to light.