Not to be heckling the Big Yin...

IMO the biggest issue is what should (in an ideal world) be the biggest plus - choice. Lets say a Gov entity tenders for service X - which is potentially provided perfectly well by OS software Y. There will be a (approx) gazillion SMEs submitting proposals - which nobody is going to wade through to assess properly. And in fact we'd criticise if it happened.

So.. tenders will be subject to pre-qualification to sort out the 'serious players' from the - guess what - SMEs. In generall, one doesn't get to compete on price at pre-qualification stage.

There's a reason why it is so costly to become a <strike>made man<\strike> incumbent vendor - because once the position is achieved - its bloody valuable.

You think the Adobe blogs are pooly designed?

Comparison:

http://www.macworldexpo.com/macblog

All about google

Lads.. since google seems to be recurring theme (all through the two shows), Chew on this:

After another small blip on my attempts to replace Windows with Ubuntu, I can safely say that Google IS the enabling technology for Ubuntu.

Great Meat

Just got around to listening to the 'cast. Good stuff - I'm looking forward to the next installment.

One point I would disagree with is the assertion that a $10m revenue is not sufficient for IPO. That may well be true if the IPO is for NASDAQ, NYSE et al but there are plenty of smaller exchanges where smaller revenues may well be welcomed.

Interesting comments around the topic of IPOs (or indeed buyouts) changing the culture of OSS companies. While the T&Cs of such transactions are somewhat focussed on the rules of the relevant authorities/exchange, surely there is plenty of room in the shareholder agreements to protect the OSS culture whoever happens to own the shares - a kind of GPL of shareholder agreements?