British Telecom devotes a day to open source
Open source has landed at British Telecom. Yesterday, it was in full effect as Phil Whitehouse, an open-source community developer at BT, notes on his blog. BT has its own open-source website, so devoting a day to open source was perhaps a natural extension to that support.
As Phil notes, the event demonstrated several things about open source, including executive support from BT's officers:
Want cost benefits? Well, the savings in terms of licensing are dwarfed by the cost of vendor lock-in. This can tip the balance in a business case....
Want flexibility? How can you get more flexible than being able to adapt the code to your specific needs yourself? And choose the open standards that make complex technology stacks fit together?...
So it was great to see the focus being on the best ways to implement open source in BT, rather than on whether it should happen in the first place. And all with the support of the top brass. Brilliant!
If you're a developer at BT, that support just made your job a lot more enjoyable. If you're anyone else at the company, it makes your technology more trustworthy. Both good things.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
