Enterprise Open Source

Looking at the VMware Technology Networks following a colleague advice, I discovered that since this summer hundreds of ready-to-download vmware appliances are available. I’m amazed of how VMware is good at marketing. Whatever, that’s not the point. The point is that on 169 community build appliances, 169 are running on top of open source operating systems (Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD,…). Yes. 169/169. The reason is of course that there is no licencing scheme, enabling full download of a ready to use system. Just imagine thousands of professionals downloading VMware appliances to test these appliances ( and that is happening every minute, believe me). They will just be more and more used to see Linux & all. as the preferred operating system. They will have proof that Linux is ready for..well.. quite everything…. This is really, really bad news for Microsoft and their Windows push to the server market in the enterprise.