Interactive Week editor Charles Babcock reports on the growing trend of using open source software within mainstream Corporate America. Babcock writes . . .

“It started as a small rebellion — a warning shot fired at the Windows monopoly by independent-minded programmers. But the open source movement traditionally associated with the happy penguin and the pierced, tattooed crowd is increasingly moving into the enterprise, mingling peacefully with commercial and proprietary code.”

“Sure, plenty of reservations linger. With one or two exceptions, open source code continues to be held at arm's length by information technology managers who believe it's fine on their Web or domain name servers, but they don't let it get too much of a foot in the corporate door. After all, they ask, if it's developed on a volunteer basis, it's free and support depends on an appeal to an invisible crowd, then how can it be any good?”

“But more and more enterprises are proving that it is just as good as, or better than, commercial code. And that despite the traditions and culture clashes between the open source community and commercial enterprise, there's an increasing need for merging the best of both worlds and running a mix of the two.”

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