No, its not software patents. Curtis Gittens from ITBusiness writes:

Info-Tech Research Group's recent survey of over 1,900 IT professionals tells the tale of a software licensing model and delivery paradigm that is slowly, if painfully, gaining acceptance.
…
This slow adoption is a reflection of the ambivalence decision makers have towards open source software. IT leaders are drawn to the idea of the continuous innovation, the availability of multiple free sources, and the low implementation cost open source provides. At the same time, these IT leaders worry about the copyright, security, and stability issues that plague some open source software products.

Open source software such as BIND, LDAP, and sendmail facilitate domain management, security management and communication for millions of users. Yet despite the ubiquity, stability and robustness of these solutions, the results of our survey show that many IT managers still consider open source unsuitable for their environments. There are two reasons for this attitude:

1. Commercial applications are more mature and feature-rich. They also command greater mind share than their open source cousins. 2. The open source movement lacks the marketing muscle available to commercial software vendors.

… open source enterprise solutions typically implement the highly commoditized features and functions of the enterprise application and are usually short on innovative techniques. As a result, IT professionals in mid-sized and large enterprises who are looking for an enterprise solution will usually find the open source offerings lag behind their closed source counterparts by at least five years.

posted by Noel Le @ 8:03 PM | Free Culture Movement

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