Recession: A Boon for Open Source?
by Sam Dean - Mar. 07, 2008Comments (7)- Related Blog Posts
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Sun Microsystems executives, speaking at last week's Sun Tech Days in Hyderabad, India, were quoted as saying that a widely expected recession in the United States would boost open source, instead of negatively impacting it. They also made the point that since Sun went predominantly open source, the company has fared much better financially than it did before. I don't doubt either of these points, but there's more to say.
Whether the United States runs into an extended enough period of negative real economic growth (two or more successive quarters, according to the classical definition) or if the country simply sees a noticeable slowdown in economic growth, IT budgets are guaranteed to be restricted--possibly dramatically. "During an economic slowdown, not everything slows down [and] IT projects will continue to be undertaken," Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software was quoted as saying. "But IT budgets will be reduced," and he noted that lower cost options, including open source, would get a boost. Green was also quoted as saying that FOSS is changing the world, although he stopped short of saying that proprietary software would go away.
Not long ago, it would have been unthinkable to run an entire company of any size on open source software, but that's not true anymore. Enterprise-class database applications such as MySQL, customer relationship management applications such as SplendidCRM that can compete with paid offerings such as Salesforce.com, and growing numbers of useful, free on-demand web applications are all combining to make it a serious proposition for some companies to have software licensing budgets equal to zero--or nearly so. The drive to achieve that, for lots of companies, would be accelerated by a recession.
Green was also quoted as saying that Sun's revenues have increased by 13 percent year-on-year since it went predominantly open source. That strikes me as the first leg in a number of open source-related events that could benefit Sun in a big way. As Reuven astutely pointed out one of the big boons of Sun's ownership of MySQL is that it can offer the classic combination of hardware, operating system and enterprise-class database to companies at a fraction of what IBM and Oracle will charge. In fact, IBM and Oracle may be forced to come up with a good answer to Sun on that front.
Do you think a recession would accelerate open source adoption?
