Cloudy bigshots eclipse open source

I think

one of the most important "features" of open source is the inability to support closed standards.

Open standards are really the first and biggest advantages with open source.

Also there is not less open source but more and better each year.

Linux it is not advertised on each box running Linux. It does not interest people if the television or router or this or that runs Linux, and the same goes for open source.

Using Google search for finding the name of the next president of the USA would probably be more useful than trying to predict anything about open source using Google.

rounding error?

"While an imperfect measure, have a look at the frequency of searches for "open source", "cloud" and "mobile" on Google"

It might be rather obvious that "mobile" is a term that would be used in many more contexts and frequency, not in the least that it's part of major company names unlike 'open source' is.

If I type linux instead: wow linux is still trashing 'cloud' and it's just one open source product!

"Firefox" almost keeps up with "mobile" for many years which is remarkable in itself. I fyou compare Firefox and salesforge, it's even more obvious.

Now compare 'android' and 'mobile'. But is android part of opensource or mobile?

Yes, I made my point clear by now, this is not an "imperfect" measure, it just says what you want it to say. Makes the whole article suspicious because "open source" might just as easily use the cloud as playing field like happens with the app mobile market. The whole article defines the terms wrong and mixes categories from the get go and never really recovers.

Very narrow minded article IMO

The author has several good points. But whats with this cloud fascination? Customers who are currently using the cloud couldn't care less. Whether their stuff sits in the cloud or on a single server; as long as it works they're happy. That has absolutely /nothing/ to do with cloud nor open source. The cloud became popular because it was cheaper to use than regular hosting solutions.

You can't use "cloud" as a general entity anymore. I have a dozen virtual servers thus I'm using "the cloud" they say. A friend of mine got website hosting, thus he has webspace with a database to use. Guess what; he's also using "the cloud", or so they say.

How come that I have to perform maintenance and he doesn't? Didn't we both use "the cloud', or so you (dear author) tried to make us believe ?

"Open source has largely been a boon to developers, to vendors."

Nonsense. With this sentence you totally ignore the effects which open source and OSS in general have had on the market.

Back in the day, as an end user, I had to pay (from mind) approx. E 500,- to E 600,- to get my hands on a legit version of Microsoft Office. Keep in mind: that was it; full Office, no more, no less!

Nowadays? I can pick up a full Office for approx. E 120,- now, if I want a little more (say Outlook) I pay no more than approx. E 300,-. And that's not all; if I agree with MS' policy and get myself a Windows Live ID then I'll even get 25Gb online storage, Office webapps and means for (small) collaborating services in the same deal!

Do you /really/ think this would have been possible when solutions such as Star Office, Open Office and Libre Office ("open source software") weren't around? And that's just one example!

What have you been smoking lately? ;-)

The cloud

A service provided by somebody else.

We need new words for old things, i suppose, but not so long ago punched cards where sent to data centers to be stored and processed by somebody else.

Now that same data is sent by the internet to similar data centers to be stored and processed by somebody at home or perhaps in India.

I can understand the interest in providing this service to day by large companies like they provided the same service thirty years ago. So why this hype about something new when there is absolutely nothing really new, except the word. Still we need new words. Just look at how many new words are invented related to toothpaste and toothbrushes.

"not a chance to play buzzword bingo"

Pfft. Not like any other managers I've heard about on here then.