Gartner Says Open Source "Impossible To Avoid" 167
alphadogg writes in with a Network World article that covers a Gartner open source conference, in which VP Mark Driver seems to be going out of his way to be provocative. "You can try to avoid open source, but it's probably easier to get out of the IT business altogether. By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code..." After this lead-in, in which open source seems to be regarded as some kind of communicable disease, the rest of the article outlines a perfectly rational plan for developing an open source strategy.
In other news (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"Strategy" is Not Rational (Score:4, Informative)
I can provide examples, but that won't satisfy you.
Browser history [wikipedia.org], if not the web itself, and symbolic manipulation [wikipedia.org] are good places to start. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing you can do with a computer that someone has not used for their PhD and created a free, working copy. Often, there will be a great big pool of public domain code from government sponsored research, but some of that has been stolen and given to private interests. The great wave of source code theft that happened in the 1980s was the exception, not the rule.
I did not imply that free software is inherently superior for every person. It is mostly is if value performance. It's always superior if you value freedom and flexibility. I value freedom and have not given up much to have it. There are a few cases where you might have to keep a Windows machine around, but most people can do without it and be better off.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, so I can't help you anymore than that.
Re:So when were you able to avoid it? (Score:3, Informative)
No, there are multiple implementations of a TCP/IP stack. I've heard that e.g. Linux uses its own implementation, and Microsoft claims to have reimplemented the stack for Vista.
I've also read that the IETF wouldn't accept a protocol specification as an internet standard if there aren't at least two independent implementations of the protocol, which wouldn't be the case if everyone was using the BSD stack.