There is no question that patents can be a hurdle when it comes to the innovation for Open Source software. Having said this, the closed source world should have its level of protection. They are people trying to run a business just like anyone else. Still, I would like to see some common ground someplace where patents are not so much an obstacle, but only time and patience will show us the path to a true open Source future here I suppose.

A friend of mine gave me a truly fresh view of open source Get the total cost of ownership facts on Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and Linux. Latest News about open source the other day when he told me that human beings are the epitome of open-source bio-engineering.

“Think about it,” he said, “You and I share at least 96 percent of the exact same DNA. It’s that 4 percent which differentiates us and differentiates a talented Dutch artist from a Thai civil servant.” In essence, one might say that the 96 percent base is the open-source code which we share and the 4 percent is the extra bit — the additions to the DNA source code — that each individual, each ethnic race, has put in to the open-source project called “Humanity” to improve upon it.

Once that happens, the bits of Darwinian source code improvements we put in, similarly to what happens with the GNU Public License, then become open-source. How? They are passed on, through our genetics to our offspring. Good code succeeds; bad code fails and dies off.
More Than Packaging

Yet even with the same core source code, siblings and twins fare differently. Only a few years ago, we had many Linux Meet the server enhanced for Linux®: the new IBM eServer™ OpenPower™ system. distributions fighting it out in a battle royale — Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) Latest News about Red Hat, SuSE Latest News about SuSE, Slackware and Caldera to name but a few. The way each company has chosen to take the same Linux kernel, package it and sell it mirrors how siblings can meet a very different fate — and how it takes more than just packaging software together to survive.

The survivors of the evolutionary process have each added their own to Linux as we knew it five to ten years ago and have carved out a niche for themselves. Today, Red Hat is very much an enterprise package and they have spun off Fedora as their offering for geeks. SuSE seems to be more European centric while many others, such as Thailand’s own TLE, are small evolutionary islands in the vast ocean of existence.

With a large enough market niche (or evolutionary island), we get the evolutionary burst that greeted Charles Darwin when he visited the Galapagos islands. What probably started out as a small flock of common finches had evolved into a wonderful, wide variety of different sub-species, each adapted to their unique environment and foods among the many islands. But in an ecosystem which is too small and too stable; one without threat or change, what we get is not the diversity and beauty of the finches, but rather the evolutionary cul-de-sac of the Dodo, that ill-fated flightless bird.