Got your attention yet?
Firefox usage has hit almost 25% in Europe. This is amazing -- it's getting very close to the tipping point of becoming the dominant browser. Remember that you have to go and download firefox and install it, while IE comes by default on the desktop of 95% of corporate and home computers. So people have had to go and explicitly choose a non-default choice, and they've done so 25% of the time. Amazing.
The thing is, while Microsoft and SAP are spawning dozens of teams driven by burnt-out middle managers to try to figure out what the next big thing is, the open source guys are busy building it. They don't need a business case, they don't need to justify it, they just need to open up a file and start coding away -- which they can do for free.
Firefox has taken off because the big guys let the ball drop on browser development. It's fast, it's free, it's extensible, and the number and frequency of security problems are miniscule compared to closed-source tools like IE.
In my opinion, the same thing could happen to SAP with things like SugarCRM, especially now that the lead visionary behind SAP (Shai Agassi) has left to form the long tail pipe, an alternative energy/green vehicle company.
Seth Godin, a brilliant marketing strategist and long-tail thinker himself has this to say about OSS:
Almost no new idea meets the needs of shareholders and CEOs. That's because most of all they need predictability and apparent freedom from risk. This is why public companies are almost always on the road to disaster. They flee from change in order to do what they think is meeting the needs of those constituents. They fight changes in laws, policies, technologies and markets because their CEO (especially) wants a nice even flight pattern while he racks up big time options.
Shrink wrap software feels safe. Secure. Supported. Beyond reproach.
But...
It turns out that open source can do a brilliant job of meeting their actual needs (lower overhead to install and maintain, higher productivity to use, more stable over time) but the problem is that apparent needs (playing it safe, making your boss happy) almost always get in the way. Until it's too late. When it's too late, the competition has leapfrogged you.
Remember, this isn't coming from some geek. He's in marketing, not software. And I think he's got it right.
Who needs Microsoft Office when you've got Open Office? Who needs MS Project when you've got GantProject and TaskJuggler? Who needs MS Exchange now that Thunderbird and Google are teaming up? I could go on...
And closed source commercial software will never have the kind of cred and passionate following that free open source software does.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/meeting_needs.html
