December 4th, 2008
Open source does not need new buzzwords
At Springsource’s winter getaway this week, Forrester Research vice president John Rymer coined a clever new term to make the open source argument.
Lean as opposed to bloated. Pieces as opposed to an integrated whole.
Why lean instead of just open source? Because Microsoft, through .Net, is also pushing a lean cuisine. Lean is the way Microsoft will push rivals like Oracle, IBM, and SAP out of the way, Rymer said.
Open source adapts well to a lean world, because many open source projects are point solutions. This is what makes them manageable.
This may also explain Microsoft’s recent bout of happy talk regarding open source. Place cheap open source projects inside a proprietary framework and you can then embrace-and-extend at your leisure.
Don’t dismiss the idea of .Net as a Microsoft spider web. Rymer has echoed Microsoft talking points in the past. Forrester draws enormous benefit from a top-heavy, even bureaucratic software industry.
Personally I can’t afford to even watch Rymer do his Forrester walk, let alone pay to hear a Forrester talk. Neither can many in the open source community.
So going lean, to me, is a lot like getting advice to diet. How you do it will determine whether those pounds, or cost, stay off.
Going lean with Microsoft may well be one of those diet plans Oprah did back in the day. Weight off, weight on. Fads don’t work.
If you want to keep the weight off you have to go about it the right way, with a regimen you can live with. If you want to keep costs off the same rule applies.
You can lose budget in the short term with Microsoft and its proprietary approach. But you will gain it back. A disciplined, long-term approach, based on open code and royalty-free standards, is how you keep the weight off.
Otherwise lean is just another buzzword.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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