Growing the OSS Ecosystem

The IT world is in its infancy. The excitement and promise of its youth is pervasive and irrepressible. Pressure for automating even the most common information and activities is rising exponentially. But the early atmosphere of IT is still a little heavy with proprietary elements and not yet suitable for the full blossoming of life. However, just as the demands of life changed Earth’s early atmosphere, demands for cost-effective automation are changing the atmosphere of IT. The IT world is at the beginning of an explosion of biological activity and oxygen is just starting to be produced. OSS is that oxygen and its concentration in the atmosphere of IT will keep growing and growing.

For example, the efforts of projects like gnuLinEx are beginning to pump oxygen into the changing atmosphere of IT. gnuLinEx is a government-sponsored modernization and information access program spearheaded by the province of Extremadura, Spain. gnuLinEx has been an inspiration for other automation outreach projects in regions around the world. Now in its third year, it has been transformed from the efforts of a single province to a project in collaboration with its much larger neighbor, the province of Andalusia. These IT enablement projects have spawned an indigenous service industry and have incubated an entire regional ecosystem of OSS applications and support.

Despite successes of general computing in places like Extremadura and Andalusia, there is a common belief among even the biggest players in open source, that OSS remains better suited for enterprise and controlled computing roles where the variety of hardware and devices, especially peripherals, can be carefully managed. In this view, OSS currently favors niche environments. After all, it’s only the beginning of life here on Planet IT. Fortunately, OSS excels at performing basic, well-defined and transactional tasks with predefined hardware. For example, Linux is being adopted for transaction workers in call centers, banks and other work environments that require only one or two computer functions. And with an infinite ability to customize itself, OSS may well adapt itself into an endless variety and quantity of specialized habitats. A niche here, a niche there and pretty soon its the whole ecosystem!

It is the transformation of these niches into a larger ecology that is convincing companies and governments of all sizes to invest in projects that generate products, services and support for the OSS ecosystem. Ecosystem investment is essential for real market growth. Even moderate investment will create a business cycle that produces new products and services for an OSS market that in turn creates demand for further products and services. As this business cycle progresses, and the OSS ecosystem grows and matures, the suitability of open source for all computing tasks, including fully empowered desktops and other general computing environments, will become accepted by all players.

Just as Earth’s biological cycle uses oxygen to fuel the business of life, an evolving cycle of cost-effective automation will use OSS to fuel the business of IT. As the concentration and quality of OSS in IT increases, the benefits of automation will become accessible for all of us – on your desktop and mine and in all the appliances that surround us.