Traveling The Open Road with Matt Asay

Consider this my "Hello World" from the Land of CNET. I've spent the last year or two of my life talking with you from my Open Sources blog on Infoworld.com. Now it's time to open a new chapter.

For better or for worse, however, I'm the same person. With the same biases. And gunning for the same goal: complete and absolute world domination. :-)

Not really, of course. I'm a pragmatist and understand that the world moves slowly, especially in IT. Remember, I used to work for Novell where the company largely stopped selling new software licenses a few eons ago, yet continues to pull down over $1B each year.

That, however, is a testament to the power and peril of proprietary software. As Si Chen argues, one of the functions of open source is to pull down bloated monopolies and general inefficiencies in software economics. This blog is my attempt to help drive those inefficiencies out of the market.

I invite you to join me as we travel this ever opening road of software. I will undoubtedly be wrong at times, if history is a good indicator of the future, and so ask you to rebut erroneous conclusions, challenge assumptions, etc. If you've followed my blogs over the last four years, you know that I have changed my opinions in that time. I will likely continue to do so.

But that likelihood goes up the more you contribute back to my understanding . This is an open source blog. Your contributions matter.

One thing that I'd like to request, however: when commenting, please use your real name (unless you absolutely can't, for whatever reason). I use my real name and expect that anyone that truly wants to have a discussion will use theirs. I will delete any comments that are scabrous or attack me (or others) personally. Ad hominem attacks, however, have a reasonable chance of making it to "print" if they're accompanied by your real name. I can take abuse from those willing to stand behind it.

With that out of the way, let's get started!