Interesting session, with a good mix of analysts, enterprise IT, and Mike Olson (Oracle - only vendor on the panel). The panel was designed to tackle questions about how big, proprietary companies are responding to open source startups. Net net: open source and proprietary software companies have a lot to learn from one another. Niel Armstrong (VP of IT, Activision) indicated that the first step in the software Interesting session, with a good mix of analysts, enterprise IT, and Mike Olson (Oracle – only vendor on the panel). The panel was designed to tackle questions about how big, proprietary companies are responding to open source startups. Net net: open source and proprietary software companies have a lot to learn from one another.Niel Armstrong (VP of IT, Activision) indicated that the first step in the software negotiation process is always to start an open source pilot. It “scares the heck” out of proprietary vendors, allowing the company to knock down prices. This actually ties well into something that Tim Golden said (SVP, Bank of America). Namely, what a difference a year makes. A year ago much of the open source software that his company is adopting or evaluating would have had zero chance. The market has shifted – open source has crossed the chasm. Mike Olson (VP, Embedded Tecnologies, Oracle) made a really interesting point. He suggested that one of the benefits of open source is ease of distribution and procurement, a point that I’ve made before. But when I pressed him on this (why haven’t proprietary vendors glommed onto free downloads, trials, etc.), he gave an interesting (and insightful) response: they haven’t had to provide this easy distribution in order to sell software. Open source is changing this for all vendors – any product that requires a salesforce to get it into customers’ hands will lose. This begs an important question: once “everyone is doing it,” will open source retain its lead? If you take away the distribution benefit from open source, will it continue to proliferate (at the expense of proprietary software expansion)? I’m not sure. I believe there are other benefits to open source – customer benefits – but I suspect proprietary vendors can stem the open source tide a bit by emulating its distribution model.The session concluded with an analysis of Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux. Jason Maynard kicked it off by saying that Linux is critical to Oracle’s business, and that it wins more new business on the Linux platform than the Windows platform. He also suggested that it’s a net positive for Red Hat, because the move pushes Red Hat to invest in services and technology to better compete. As Jason said, “competing against Novell is like taking candy from a baby, so Red Hat likely got a little fat without competition.” That drew a lot of laughs, but the serious point is that competition is good for Red Hat, just as it’s good for Microsoft and every vendor.Tim gave his riff on this, too, wondering what the move means for the horizontal Linux market. It’s one thing to do a vertical play (Oracle Linux on Oracle databases), but what happens with other applications (BEA, IBM, etc.). Does everyone need to have their own flavor of Linux running under their middleware/applications/databases? Isn’t that the very fragmentation the industry needs to avoid? (This last point is mine, not Tim’s.)Mike closed off by suggesting that for the heavily used open source projects, it is very likely that “Unbreakable Linux”-type actions will almost certainly happen. In more than just the Linux space. I believe him, but I still find this sort of quasi-trademark piracy wrong. But, right or wrong, it will likely happen, so better be prepared…. Open Source