Open source is in our DNA, argues Yahoo! exec
I once took Jeremy Zawodny, technical director at Yahoo!, to task for not contributing enough back to open source. Today, Zawodny made it clear that openness and open source are in Yahoo!'s DNA. It is a trend that started long ago, Zawodny writes, and will only accelerate over time:
We've been on the openness road for a long, long time at Yahoo. And we take it rather seriously. Some times it hasn't been as visible as others, but believe me, the trend is quite clear when you look at all the data. The Open Source adoption and work. The APIs. The way we communicate with users and partners. The Blogs. The RSS feeds....
You'll be reading more and hearing more about openness at Yahoo! from me and Yahoo's much higher up the food chain in the coming months....If you think the last few weeks are big, you haven't seen anything yet!
A year ago, I wouldn't have believed Zawodny. As you might have sensed over the past few months, however, my views on Yahoo! and open source have changed as I've watched the company get behind Zimbra, Hadoop, etc. Open source can be a real differentiator for Yahoo! - something it can leverage against Google and for its users.
Google hasn't been standing still, either. In fact, between the two it has been gratifying to see how much more willing the two seem to be to contribute to open source on its terms, not theirs. Hopefully other web companies will follow suit.
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. 
You just cant be serious. I have not checked for the last few weeks but the top selling laptop in the world the Asus EEE is unable to run Yahoo's major draw card there excellent "Yahoo messenger" . The outdated Linux version as supplied is uninstallable on Ubuntu and if you can be bothered "hand" instalingl it with 3 year out of date dependencies you get a version of yahoo mesenger for Linux so old it has no features.
Yet Skype 2.0 is out of beta and now has Video for linux. Also most Google apps run on Linux and hence the Asus EEE.
What is the Yahoo board thinking. The future is the "Net" and cheap access devices ie the EEE not the "Microsoft" desktop of the past. The growing mass of Linux users are being forced onto other Yahoo competitors products ie Skype and Pidgin and are liking them a lot. Yahoo has a great "Messenger product" and I would love to be able to use it on Ubuntu but alas no wonder Yahoo are a poor second to Google and Gurgling further behind.
In the internet market why would you give away market share you already own. All Windows users migrating to Linux will want their "Yahoo Messenger". They can certainly have their Skype. This has to be one of the dumbest marketing blunders ever. Yahoo board and hence its shareholders have not only given away customers but handed them to Skype and Google. I just cant believe it when I hear yahoo moaning about loosing market share to Google!!!!!!!
Love your Column.