On 10/04/06, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Biju Chacko wrote: > > > Sounds impressive. But I wonder how much of a benefit these companies > > derive from Open Source. If you look at how they handle it and how the > > deals were structured, all they're getting is cheaper software. > > The large 'enterprise' deals are rarely done on the strength of rah-rah > FLOSS. At the end of the day the rock bottom price gets the deal. The > important point is that do they return back to Open Source and do they > also foresee Open Source playing a part in some future deployments
The large enterprise deals involve open source software, yes. However, it's just seen as another alternative software. As Jace said, thats not necessarily a bad thing -- business decisions *must* be driven by pragmatism not ideology. However, that finally does imply that one cannot blindly point at these cases and say that they are major wins for open source. They're good, but they aren't that significant in the greater scheme of things. Certainly nothing for the /. crowd to go beserk about. Far more significant would be an Indian problem being solved using OSS. Say, something like ITC's eChaupal implemented as open source for farmers co-operatives. Just my 2c -- b
