Mark Spencer
Founder and CTO
Digium

Spencer: The value of open source technology is widely recognized today. Even Microsoft has taken notice and built and is promoting their open source interoperability lab. Open source is a technology and licensing model that is here to stay and grow. Open source projects tend to start by focusing on highly technical interest groups (such as compilers and system libraries, which are focused at software developers). As adaptation of the open source projects grow broader, more products appear addressing a less technical audience, such as Open Office and "The Gimp," Ubuntu, and others have done. In fact, I personally view Open Office as one of the most critical open source software packages because it is the key to transitioning users and enterprises away from Microsoft Office and thus enables users to switch to Linux. Today, we are at the knee of the curve on this movement.

Sam Ramji
Senior director of platform technology
Microsoft

Ramji: As a development model, I think that five years from now open source will be like “object orientation” or “extreme programming” -- a once controversial and transformative idea that has found its way into how most people build software. I hope that we’ll find ways to consistently reward developers of open source with the fame or revenue that help them continue their work. At the heart of development is a love for problem solving and helping users -- and this focus is often at odds with figuring out business plans and asking for what you deserve. Ideally we’d have a small number of well-known, federated marketplaces for open source applications that can connect these dots worldwide. Information technology has transformed the U.S. economy, and I’m personally grateful that it’s the industry I’ve landed in. I’d like to see a marketplace environment enable developers in emerging markets to transform their lives by making their innovation broadly available and appropriately compensated.

As for market opportunities, the strength of open source development -- diversity -- is also a challenge when it comes to skills availability, consistency of user experience, and manageability. I would expect to see some standards emerge in these areas, or else to see new offerings that focus on integrating existing open source technologies in these three dimensions.

Chris DiBona
Open source programs manager
Google

DiBona: Development: I see more interesting work happening in the Web toolkit/CMS space than in more tested and mature technologies like kernels and the like.

Community: I think that the community that matters most to me, that of the developers, is in a healthy state, growing slowly, without a lot of sturm und drang. That said, we'll see the regular ebb and flow of applications and projects, especially in the CMS space. For instance, I think that Drupal will be a dominant force for some time, but other CMSes might ebb a bit.

Market: Hmm, I think that Android will heavily influence embedded Linux upon its full release later this year. I also think that the "market" is contracting a little bit right now.