by Dave Rosenberg

Marten Mickos on living in the “modern online world”

analysis
Jun 27, 20071 min

Computerworld has Marten Mickos on the hot seat about the growth of MySQL and what happens next. As always, Marten is insightful and rational. I am jealous that I am not as clear-headed. I am very passionate about open source. And I do believe that it is a superior method. But at the same time, I must be pragmatic. So when they say being dogmatic is very important for the Free Software Foundation — well, they sh

Computerworld has Marten Mickos on the hot seat about the growth of MySQL and what happens next. As always, Marten is insightful and rational. I am jealous that I am not as clear-headed.

I am very passionate about open source. And I do believe that it is a superior method. But at the same time, I must be pragmatic. So when they say being dogmatic is very important for the Free Software Foundation — well, they should be. That’s what we respect them for. But running a business is not about dogma. We are not judgmental about our customers or partners. We are happy to partner with closed-source companies. We believe that in the long run, open source will win anyhow.

This quote is a perfect example of “pragmatic open source”–that there will be other ways of developing and distributing software but that OSS has all the makings of a winner.