Todd Barr of Fiveruns (formerly of Red Hat) has a thought-provoking post comparing the software industry to the energy industry. Specifically, he calls out open source as akin to regulated energy companies, while proprietary software vendors are more like unregulated energy companies. The interesting part is what happens when you combine the two:
I think the future looks similar to the energy industry: large technology companies will have a mix of regulated and unregulated businesses, that maximizes the advantages of both. For standard, widely-used technologies, open source "regulation" makes sense because it lowers development costs and provides a standards-based, predictable subscription base of business.
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I was just reading Todd Barr's blog this morning, only to discover he has left Red Hat and joined FiveRuns. I know Red Hat. I know FiveRuns. I even know Todd ([former] director of product marketing at Red Hat and a super-sharp guy).
But I didn't know Todd had left Red Hat to join FiveRuns, an open-source systems management company for monitoring Rails applications.
Funny enough, I was thinking of pinging Todd yesterday but forbear because I didn't want to annoy Red Hat by hiring out of its ranks...Todd, if you decide to change jobs again, I'd appreciate a call. :-)
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