Andy Astor
CEO
EnterpriseDB

Astor: The greatest challenge for open source projects is to stay smart and passionate. The earliest open source projects were by and large built relatively small groups of people who were excited about a particular idea. And they were built, quite frankly, independent of any monetary award. But as the open source movement grows, practitioners will have to be careful. Somebody once said to me, "As organizations grow bigger, they get dumber." And I think that applies to any new technology or trend in the marketplace. So, what open source projects need to do is to stay smart and retain their edge, and not appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Eric S. Raymond
Programmer, author, and
open source software advocate

Raymond: I don't think it creates any new problems; it just changes the scale a bit on issues we've been coping with (fairly successfully) for at least the last decade. Frankly, all the "will commercialization spoil open source?" worrying that the trade press is so fond of already struck me as old and boring five years ago. Next question?

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