Am just refreshing my references and arguments for open source for education and small business. Stumbled across this paper entitled " Open Access, Open Archives And Open Source in Higher Education" delivered at the State Library Of New South Wales, in Sydney in 2005 as part of the National Scholarly Communications Forum by Professor John M. Unsworth, of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, USA.
Professor Unsworth notes that the business success of open-source products like Linux lies in the fact people can make money selling them, without allowing the seller exclusive control. In effect, it is the ultimate free market. Sellers must compete on adding value, as there is no monopoly control.
He says "Liberation Technology wants to keep information free; Command and Control wants to make the Internet safe for private property."
"Open systems require interoperability, and that in turn requires that everyone who designs or modifies the systems does so under the same set of rules."
Good stuff.
