I keep seeing this posts by some of the manager types on planet MySQL about how they or some other guy is worrying about open source vendors not raking in billions or revenues are not stealing billions of money out of peoples pockets that should not be playing on the stock market and things along those lines. While I do agree that its great to see open source software flourish .. actually let me clear that up, why do I even care if open source software flourishes? I care because I think open source software enables a different kind of growth for society, one that is shared, one that lowers barriers, one that I feel is more in tune with a world at peace.

Of course I want people that take part in this to be able to provide themselves and their families a decent life. But the fact of the matter is, these people do not need millions, the people that use this open source as an enabler do not need millions in marketing budgets either to realize the usefulness. Of course market capital can help in funding boring tasks like QA and documentation or full time developers etc. But the show will go on even without that.

And guess what? Those small companies that make a buck with open source, they foster a culture where people go home happy at the end of the day instead of being bitter like most others. This is of course not something easily valued in monetary terms, but its nice that the pool of would be homocidal maniacs is reduced by these companies. At the same time even big guys are making plenty of money and giving back a bit here and there. New companies are popping up and slowly making it to big bucks too. So whats the point of this blog post? Lets get over this obsession with these companies that are supposed to make a few people insanly rich by selling their life (aka modern slaves) to VCs that are owned by people that haven't figured out yet to do better things in their lifes but to stack their millions higher and higher.

Reminds me about the irritation I see these aquisition rumors: Of course it matters to people who their are getting gobbled up by and so its not trivial that a Microsoft goes knocking at the doors of Yahoo (not that Yahoo is a small shop or entirely dependent on open source, but from the outside it seems none the less sufficiently open sourcy for a fair share of the tech staff). Do they really believe that key people will stick around after they are required to use their new "@microsoft.com" email adress? Especially since these key people have plenty of options. Then again I guess these guys know their risk-analysis 101 and they are mostly after buying users.

While I am trying to safe the world, I might also want to mention that its time we kick the system a serious jolt. I like standards, but the out dated processes by ISO and the likes are making a mockery if the idea. Seems like a little less corruption in such public services is too much to ask. Anyways, lets end this post not well formed </rant>