Has Open Source Jumped the Shark?

AlexGr writes to tell us that Jeff Gould has a somewhat jaded look at the commercial push of Open Source and what that may be doing to the overall Open Source movement. "I've been a Linux fan for years, but lately I wonder if the drum beating from the big IT vendors in favor of open source hasn't finally slipped over the edge from sincere enthusiasm to meaningless — or in some cases downright hypocritical — sloganeering. The example that brought this gloomy thought to mind was a recent IBM press release touting a 'new open client solution' as an 'alternative to vendor lock-in'. Wow. Imagine that. An alternative to vendor lock-in."

It is possible to overuse the Cavuto

[fatduck]

End times?

Takes One to Know One?

[richg74]

As others have already pointed out, this announcement really isn't about Open Source at all.

Nonetheless, for some of us who are old enough to have done business with IBM in the 1970s and 1980s, having them talk about avoiding "vendor lock-in" is a useful test to see if the old irony detector is still working.

Re:Umm?

[gEvil (beta)]

Take the source and make hippie-love-fest-2.0 thats the point of open-source no?

Is that gonna be like hippie-love-fest-1.0 except with even more user interaction? If so, count me in!

Re:Jumping the Shark

[danpsmith]

Jumping the shark has jumped the shark.

Correct, I much prefer the Tom Cruise inspired phrase "jumped the couch."

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

[g1zmo]

It might have been confusing, were this a Dickies [dickies.com] message board. But the sales guy's misunderstanding of the term 'free' as it would be used at an FSF event is clearly his own fault.

Open != Open Source

[sameeer]

Boy, I better think twice before asking people to open the door. Somebody might think I'm asking them to break it into pieces and distribute it to the neighbors.

Yet another redefiinition

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! It looks like they've changed the meaning of Insightful now, too...

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

[wall0159]

>That's what the rest of the world thinks when they hear "free".

Really?!? So _that's_ what they mean by "the land of the free"...

Now I get it..

Re:He doesn't understand Open Source at all.

[aix tom]

On the other hand, if you go to Slashdot and tell people that Oracle [wikipedia.org] was in Delphi [wikipedia.org] originally, you can really confuse people. ;-)