Open source could use a face-lift

Recently a reader took offense at a comment I made when I suggested that a well-defended trademark could help win Linux "a seat at the grown-ups' table."

"What makes a commercial product inherently more 'grown-up' than its open source counterpart?" the reader asked.

The answer, of course, is nothing. It isn't hard to come up with examples of industry-leading software born of the open source world -- for example, you could argue that there isn't a Web server in existence that's more mature than Apache.

Still, open source in general has an image problem among business customers, and it's not hard to see why. To give one example, even InfoWorld's own gossip hound Robert X. Cringely took notice of the indignant harangue Eric S. Raymond leveled at a hapless recruiter who offered him a job interview at Microsoft.

Raymond remains one of the foremost names associated with the open source movement, despite the fact that he's becoming better known for this kind of egotistical rant than for the cogent reasoning of his landmark essay, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." He does it so often that there's now even an online comic strip devoted to the subject.

Like it or not, this is the public face of open source. No matter how warmly vendors such as IBM or Novell might embrace Linux, their marketing departments must still contend with the fact that, in the eyes of many customers, the movement as a whole is inseparable from the tirades of Eric S. Raymond, the radical politics of Richard M. Stallman , or that great cafeteria food fight of popular opinion known as Slashdot.

That's what I meant by my reference to the grown-ups' table. That table isn't hard to spot: It's the one where nobody's throwing rolls.

What makes a software project "grown-up," in short, is the same thing that makes a person grown-up. A lot of it boils down to priorities. When you're young, you have the luxury of being free to engage in very idealistic or radicalized thinking. As you mature, however, other concerns take precedence.

You must start paying off those student loans, for starters. You begin a career. You might pick up a car. A mortgage. Insurance payments. A family whose safety and well-being are your responsibility.

The care and feeding of an enterprise is no different, save that the stakes are even higher and the issues play themselves out on a far grander stage. In a business setting, there is simply much more to consider when it comes to IT purchasing decisions than which software package someone else thinks is the most politically correct.

"Microsoft is evil"? That's a college kid's argument. It does nothing to further the case of Linux and open source in the business world.