Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Bartz: Open source won’t take over software industry

news
Sep 14, 20053 mins

Not all software will become open source, according to longtime Autodesk Chairman, President and CEO Carol Bartz.

Speaking at a Computer History Museum event in Mountain View, Calif., on Tuesday evening, Bartz noted that programmers developing open source software for free still have paying, daytime jobs.

“Where I fall apart with open source is it’s [that] all those people are getting paychecks with software companies who are doing open source programming at night,” Bartz said. Once those paychecks stop, what happens to those programmers, Bartz asked.

Interviewied afterward, she said that while open source programmers may be fanatic about the free software movement, not all software will be made available via open source. Her comments echoed similar sentiments expressed by a Microsoft executive in 2004.

Bartz also touched on the issue of basing programmers overseas.

“We find China to be a better development place for us than India for many reasons,” she said. However, she added, “I personally think that India’s important to our country and our industry as a longterm balance to China. I think China is going to be very difficult to do business with in the next decade.” India, with its emerging middle class, will be more amenable to global and American business, she said.

Bartz also talked about her days at Autodesk and prior to that. After joining Autodesk in 1992, she discovered on her second day on the job that she had breast cancer, which required surgery and seven months of chemotherapy.

During Bartz’s tenure, Autodesk has grown its revenues from $285 million to $1.23 billion in fiscal year 2005. The company has diversified beyond its AutoCAD software base, participating in endeavors ranging from graphics software for entertainment to assisting emergency management management efforts in places like the Gulf states, with software for shelter and evacuation management.

Commenting on Autodesk’s attractiveness as a merger target, Bartz said the company once was viewed as having a crazy culture that would be difficult to assimilate. (Earler, she noted that the company has allowed dogs in its building, for example.)

However, “I think we have certainly proven that we have a good culture and a great product and a great market. We now also have become expensive and that’s good,” Bartz said.

Bartz is not ready to leave Autodesk. “You’ve got to leave when things are going well and they are, but not yet. I want to enjoy it,” she said.

Although Bartz may be the best-known woman CEO in the technology industry, she is not an advocate of the concept of mentoring.

“I don’t believe in those,” she said. “I think you have to learn from everybody,” including politicians and teachers, Bartz said.

She acknowledged being contacted about mentoring requests.

“I just don’t like that idea,” Bartz said.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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